ProBlogger

Bloggers adopt a revenue stream more lucrative than panhandling

'The odds of making a living by writing a blog are a lot like the odds of a garage band turning out a hit album: It can happen, but you better enjoy the music and hang on to your day job in the meantime.

Two years ago, the odds were even longer. The main source of income for bloggers was panhandling, for example, putting the ubiquitous PayPal or Amazon Honor System micropayment bug on your site, and periodically passing the metaphorical tip jar among the faithful for an electronic funds transfer. Even the most successful bloggers were barely making beer money, and were astonished when Libertarian Republican Andrew Sullivan announced his blog's fund drive had earned enough, along with some ads for Amazon.com, to hire an assistant.

Since then the economics of blogging have shifted rapidly, thanks to a simple but brilliant idea called Blogads, which allows bloggers to outsource the equivalent of a newspaper's business and advertising departments, and focus solely on writing. You report! You decide! Blogads sends check!'

Read more at Bloggers adopt a revenue stream more lucrative than panhandling

Spy Journal ProBlogs

Tim has emailed this week while I was taking a bit of a holiday in New Zealand to let me know of a mini problogging network that he's started reading the tips here on Problogger. You can check his new blogs at:

• Blog Tips
• Tech Tips
• Excel Tips
• Personal Blog

He's using Adsense as an income stream. He's asked for some constructive criticism of his blogs as he's still developing them and I'll be shooting him off an email tonight with some of my suggestions - but drop by and say g'day (he's an Aussie) and give your own encouragement and suggestions there on his blogs.

Blog Business Summit

The Blog Business Summit will be held between 24-25 January in 2005 in Seattle. It looks like a good gathering to get involved with if the founding board are anything to go by. It might be a bit out of reach of the average blogger at $795 for the two days but for US bloggers serious about exploring business blogging I suspect that the lessons learnt and the networking done would make it pay for itself pretty quickly.

'The summit will be the gathering place for hundreds of entrepreneurs, marketing professionals, and current bloggers who want to leverage the latest in Web publishing tools and technologies.'

Hopefully we'll see other such events held around the globe to make these types of gatherings accessible to us non US bloggers also in the years ahead. I'll look forward to hearing about the conference via the web as the airfare to the US from Australia could be a bit of a killer.

The Stylephile

The Stylephile is a new commercial blog from the Variety stable of blogs that is focussing upon Shopping.

They're posting on sales, openings and products/picks of the day.

At this stage their income stream is not overly evident - although the topic of the blog will definitely lend itself to all kinds of options including static advertising, contextual ads and affiliate programs.

Weblogs Inc. adds top execs

'Touting itself now as "the world's largest blog publisher," Weblogs Inc. announced it has hired an editorial director and a vice president of sales and marketing. Judith Meskill, a communications consultant who writes a blog about social networking, will oversee the editorial side of the company. "We're going to have 100 blogs by the end of this year (50 at present), and 300 in 2005. Judith's ability to create systems for managing growth is going to be invaluable," said Brian Alvey, a co-founder of Weblogs Inc. Also, Shawn Gold, former president of eUniverse -- which used the Web and e-mail to distribute online greetings, games, cartoons, jokes and contests -- signed on to head up business and content strategy, the company said.'

Read more at Weblogs Inc. adds top Execs

Shawn Collins on RSS: RSS & Blogs and Affiliate Marketing [MarketingStudies.net]

Here is an interesting interview with Shawn Collins (an affiliate program manager) on the topic of RSS & Blogs and Affiliate Marketing.

'Since it's increasingly challenging to reach the inbox of affiliates, with Spam filters, ISP black lists, abandoned email addresses, etc., I think RSS will emerge as the preferred tool for communicating with affiliates....

It makes all the sense in the world for affiliate programs to pursue and place increased value on blogs as affiliates. In general, contextual placement of ads is the best way to make money in affiliate marketing, especially if an affiliate has unique content, and they integrate text links into their content (i.e. making every instance of the word book link through an Amazon affiliate link).'

Blogs a good buy for Advertisers

'Advertisers including Paramount Pictures, The Wall Street Journal, and The Gap are successfully reaching niche audiences for a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising and a handful of bloggers are earning six-figure incomes from their blogs. Why aren't more advertisers and bloggers getting together? Fear, ignorance and the knowledge that a lot of pioneers got shot.

With clickthrough rates in traditional online advertising dropping, inexpensive blog clickthroughs are as high as 5 percent. Blogs provide advertisers an excellent opportunity to reach a devoted audience niche for as little as $10 a week. Already, blogs like DailyKos which receives 15 million page views a month, get $9,000 a week for advertising and is sold out for weeks in advance.

Advertising on blogs is not like buying a minute on the Super Bowl says Henry Copeland, founder of Blogads, which matches advertisers with blogs. Successful blogs are edgy, have a sense of humor, and are recognized experts in a narrow niche. Blog audiences look at traditional ads, like "Click here, get 20% off," and say "screw this, I've seen it everywhere," Copeland says.'

Read more at Blogs a Good Buy for Advertisers but Fear and Ignorance keep media buyers away

Google Sees Brand-Advertising Opportunities

Those of you using Adsense might be interested in some of the upcoming changes and directions of the program being talked about by Google executives.

' After building its business through direct-response search listings, Google is likely to expand into brand advertising.

Speaking to investment analysts on the company's first-ever earnings call last week, Google executives said its fledgling effort at distributing graphical ads was an important initiative for the company. Google has begun to test the display of graphical ads on Google Image search. For now, the graphic ads shown through AdSense are priced on a click basis. Display advertising is often sold on a cost-per-thousand-impressions basis. Stein said Google is unlikely to simply adopt CPM pricing, but could instead have a hybrid system that charges a flat fee for impressions on top of click charges.'

Read more at Google Sees Brand-Advertising Opportunities

The World of Contextual Advertising

Puneet Mehrotra has a good article introducing the The World of Contextual Advertising. He writes - 'How much? Good question. I know of webpreneurs whose earnings range between $200 to $2,00,000 per month. Of course, it’s not child’s play. But no one said earning big bucks is a child’s play!...'

'So what’s the next boom. Well the web pundits are saying it’s going to be behavioral advertising, where anonymous monitoring and tracking the content viewed, and length of visit are databased and analysed to predict an online behavioral pattern for the user. My say, well I doubt, complicated things seldom do well. And with most computers getting condomed by the day with firewalls and blockers and not to mention privacy violation litigation, I doubt if such a model would succeed. Well, that’s just my say, time will tell what will do well. But yes contextual advertising is definitely there to stay. Notepad is still the favorite editor, no application in the world has been able to replace it so far. SMS is still the favorite text-messaging tool. Bells and whistles might pretend to make noise but simplicity sings its own song.'

Read more at The World of Contextual Advertising : HindustanTimes.com:

Puneet Mehrotra

10 No-Cost Ways to Generate Site Traffic

'No matter how cool your site or how fabulous your product, you're not going to generate enough sales to make your business viable unless you can generate traffic. You have to get the word out about your site and give people a reason to visit it, or else you'll go the way of the dinosaur.

The good news is, there are lots of ways to effectively advertise your site online and drive tons of qualified traffic to your site, all for free! And by qualified, I mean people who belong to your target market and who are most likely to buy the products or services you offer. These are the people you want coming to your site.

Without further ado, here's our countdown of the top 10 traffic-generating tactics:

Traffic Generation Tactic #10: Use viral marketing strategies to "infect" people with the desire to learn more about your product. These days, viral marketing messages are spreading through the Web like wildfire. Viral marketing is any type of advertising that is self-perpetuating, compelling people to share it with others so that it spreads through a community like a virus—but a good one.'

Read more at 10 No-Cost Ways to Generate Site Traffic

The Impact of Blogs on PR

Steve from Micro Persuasion has kindly posted a presentation he did on the Impact of Blogs on PR. It is a well thought out presentation that covers the basics through to some good conclusions on the topic - complete with powerpoint slides and audio.

'Bloggers are the leading force of change here. A blog is basically a web site owned by an individual or group that’s written with a human voice. They are easily discovered, usually organized chronologically, and written by people you can reach out and touch. It’s this last point – the social nature of blogs – that differentiates them from more staid corporate web sites.'

Read more at Micro Persuasion: Presentation on the Impact of Blogs on PR

BloggerCon - Making Money with Your Blog

Doc Searls has an interesting post on making money with blogs in preparation for a session on the topic at the next Blogger Con. He asks a lot of thought provoking questions and then puts forward an interesting case...

'As you can see, I have a position here. I believe it's far more important (and interesting) to make money because of our blogs, rather than with them; just as we make money because we have phones rather than with our phones.

There are exceptions. Some of us make money by selling on the phone. If that's you, think about what trying to sell over your blog (instead of the phone) would do to your relationships with readers.

Of course, lots of people use advertising to defray the costs of blogging. And, to be frank, I really don't care much if you have advertising on your blog, or if you make money that way. If that makes you happy, or makes you money, fine. I expect we'll spend some time comparing various advertising options. But let's also ask, How interesting is that, once you're past describing whatever it takes to get going with Adsense or Blogads? It's cool that they provide a service and an income stream. But I'd like to see us budget time for each of the potential topics we can cover.'

Read more at BloggerCon - Making Money Session

Blogs and Newspapers - Command Post

The Command Post did a talk to editors of Associate Press newspapers recently and put the content of what he said up online - its well worth the read.

'Here’s the lesson from Command Post: information in general, and news in particular, is now a flow, and not a stock.

Before the internet, information was governed by set distribution channels and gatekeepers … brokers … who decided who was able to have what. The stock broker had the price. The real estate agent had the prior housing report. The car salesman had your credit report.

And in news, the journalists had the facts, and the editors acted as brokers, making choices about what would be reported and what wouldn’t.

Not the case now. The Internet hates brokers. It KILLS brokers. Now, because of the Internet, everyone with a computer, an email address and a browser is a point of distribution … the only thing needed for information to “get out” is an interest on the part of one person to supply it, and a demand on the part of another person to have it.

When you have a billion people connected to each other, there is a supply and a demand for everything … and when you have search engines like Google, they actually have the ability to find each other.'
Read more at The Command Post - The Publisher's Desk - Full Text Of My Speech To AP Managing Editors

Corporate Bloggers

Sifry is writing about Corporate Blogger today - he numbers them as 5000:

'These are people who blog in an official or semi-official capacity at a company, or are so affiliated with the company where they work that even though they are not officially spokespeople for the company, they are clearly affiliated. For example, the folks in SAP's developers program get blogs if they want them, and are available to anyone who joins the (free) SAP developers network. This group also includes folks at Sun Microsystems and at Microsoft, where employees are actively encouraged to blog.'

Read more at Sifry's Alerts: Corporate Bloggers

The other posts in this series of posts are also worth reading - at State/Size of the Blogosphere - Growth of the Blogosphere - Big Media vs Blogs.

Do you have time to be a ProBlogger?

I'm currently taking a bit of a working holiday in New Zealand and am spending a few days with two fellow bloggers to talk about the possibilities of working together as a blogging collective. One of the things I've found myself thinking on a number of occasions over the last few days is that it takes time to build a blogging business.

This morning I had an email from a reader of this site telling me that they want to earn money from blogging and they want to earn it fast.

In writing this blog I do not want to create any false impressions that blogs are a silver bullet - that all you have to do is start one, add some ads and then you'll be set for life with a nice passive income.

The truth of the matter (in my experience) is this - if you want to make an honest and modest living from blogging that it is possible. In fact I believe it is possible to make a substantial living from blogging. However it takes a lot of work and it does not just happen over night. I started my first blog just under 2 years ago. Whilst I didn't start blogging for dollars until around 1 year ago that first year was vital for the results I'm seeing today because it was a year of building my domain name's ranking up. I'm just starting to see the fruit of all this hard work now - two years later.

Unless you have an absolutely brilliant concept or strike it incredibly lucky it will take you time to build your blogging up to a position where it earns you a decent income - even then you still need a bit of luck, many hours in front of the computer and a few intelligent strategies in place to make it worth your time. I spend at least 30 hours a week blogging - I treat it as a full time job - if I'm not willing to put substantial hours into it why would I expect it to reward me with a substantial figure?

Of course over the months my rate of return for the hours that I blog is on the increase but in the initial stages (as with any business) one has to be willing to put in the hard yards to get things going.

A recent study (see quote below) of business people found that 71% of marketers saw lack of time as a reason for not starting a business blog. I know business blogs are a different genre of blogging to the type of blogging that I do - however the principle still remains - if you don't have time to blog you'll never earn much from your blogging - and by time I mean time each day and week - but also time in the bigger picture of your life, if you're not willing to work hard for a year or so with little return.

So some important questions to ask yourself when you start your problogging is 'do I have time to dedicate to my blogging?' 'Do I have the patience and long term vision to pull it off?'

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'71% of marketers reported time as a key concern in managing a business blog for their company or organization according to results from a recent WordBiz survey. 45% were unsure what to write about, 18% questioned if the content needs to be edited or pre approved and 15% wondered who would be responsible for the content. Yet, when asked if they have considered starting a business blog, more than 80% responded yes.'

Read more at Lack of Time Top Obstacle to Business Blogging, According to WordBiz Survey

Micropayments and Blogging

When I was in my first year of high school I met a guy who would change my life - ok he didn't really change it, but he taught me a lesson which I still use today in my pro-blogging. He taught me that if you aim small you can actually make it big! Indulge me if you will as I reminisce about my friend Trent.

My most vivid memory of Trent is in an Aussie Fish and Chip shop. For some reason our class was out on a field trip on this particular day and our teacher had taken us to a Fish and Chip shop to get some lunch. We'd all been told to bring a $2 - $3 dollars to get our lunch but as usual Trent hadn't brought any money.

Trent wasn't the most organized person in the world and I suspect money wasn't flowing at home and so he'd developed this wonderful skill to get by when he needed money in such situations as this.

He waited until everyone else in the class had ordered and paid for their fish and chips and then he proceeded to move around my class mates asking if they could spare a few cents. He did it in a funny/clownish kind of way and made most of us laugh in the process. Most people gave him a few cents, no one gave him more than 20 - but when he'd finished his rounds of classmates and fellow customers and the time came to order Trent proceeded to the counter and placed an order that made the rest of us look like we were just having snacks. He'd collected $3.50 - more than enough for lunch - and probably a snack on the way home after school.

None of Trent's classmates really minded about his good fortune - after all it hadn't really cost us much - but when added all together our spare change was significant in Trent's eyes. Trent was ahead of his times - a forerunner in the Micro-Payments industry.

The theory is simple - get enough people to give you a small payment and you'll earn a significant income.

My mum is a regularly user of the phrase - 'If I had a dollar for every time I'd heard that....' Again - my mum is onto something with such a thought. Imagine that you had a dollar, or even 1 cent, for every person that viewed a page on your blog!? Do the sums

1 cent x 1000 page impressions = $10
5 cents x 1000 page impressions = $50
10 cents x 1000 page impressions =$100

You get the idea.... Nice theory isn't it. But how does one earn 1c, or 5c or even, dare we dream it, $1 from someone looking at a page on their website? This is the million dollar (or maybe 1 cent) question that bloggers have been pondering for quite some time now.

Indirect Payments - by far the easiest way to earn a few cents at a time from your blog is not to charge your reader directly but to find another indirect income stream. This is what most of problogger case studies in this blog are doing by running advertising or affiliate programs from their blogs. The Adsense program is perhaps the most widely used such system. Whilst payments per click can earn quite a bit if you pick the right keywords and can compete with the many other competing for traffic on such words, most keywords on this system pay 2-20 cents per click. Doesn't sound much - but if you can generate thousands of clicks per day you suddenly discover the power of micro payments. Of course such an approach brings with it many challenges which I address in my Adsense for Bloggers series.

Other indirect payment systems include using impression based ads like Fastclick (they pay a small % of a cent for each impression), Affiliate programs like Amazon (they pay you 2-7% of what ever your readers buy after clicking through from your site) or Clickbank (which offers thousands of affiliate programs that pay out at a variety of rates).

Direct Payments - Whilst indirect micro payment systems are becoming quite common and increasingly easy to use direct payments from blog readers continue to be a real challenge. Many approaches have been tried in getting readers to part with a few cents or dollars for the privilege of reading website content - but few have been successful to this point. Challenges being face by those wanting to explore direct micro payments include:

- finding readers willing to part with money for something that they can often get elsewhere for free
- finding a system that will allow a quick, easy and secure way of readers paying small amounts of money (it needs to be very quick and easy - web readers have notoriously short attention spans and will not tolerate a system of payment that includes many forms, clicks etc.)
- a cheap, easy and integrated system for bloggers that manages micropayments without costing them too much (this would probably need to be a plug-in for a blogging system that is integrated within the structure of a blog).

Having said this it may be possible to generate income from readers from your blog if some of the following factors are in play:

- You have very high readership. Some of the bigger bloggers going around will occasionally run an appeal for readers to donate money to them in order to keep their blogs running. Andrew Sullivan is one blogger who has reportedly earned a significant amount in this way. Only a small percentage of readers would be likely to respond to such a request and so a readership of considerable size (and demographics) would be needed to make it work well.

- Your blog provides exceptional quality of content. If your readers cannot live without your writing you might be in a position to charge them for the privilege of reading it. Some bloggers have a dedicated, loyal and obsessed readership who might be more than willing to pay a few dollars a year to read their writing.

- Your blog provides highly targeted and/or exclusive content. Similarly to high quality content - some readers will be willing to pay for information that they cannot get anywhere else for free on a particular topic. This would probably only work on a highly targeted topics containing specialist expertise. It would not work on topics such as the many gadget blogs going around which provide readily available information that can be found in any one of up to 10 or 20 sites within ours of new products being released.

- You have a premium content/privledges option on your blog. I've seen a number of bloggers taking this approach. They have a free content section and a pay per view/premium content section for members or subscribers. Such readers might also get other features like posting rights, special access to your as a blogger, ability to get links to their own sites etc.

I invite your thoughts, ideas and experiences on Micro Payments on blogs in the comments section below. What methods have you tried? What challenges do you see in this approach?

Related Micropayments in Blogging Articles:

- Micropayments - Natalie Solent
- The Case Against Micropayments - Clay Shirky
- Thinking about Micropayments and the Blogging Economy - Peter Davidson
- First Fame, Then Fortune: An Alternative Look at Micropayments Potential for Social and Economic Change
- Fame vs Fortune: Micropayments and Free Content - Clay Shirky
- The Case for Micropayments - Jakob Nielsen (1998)
- Paid Content - Three New Studies - vin Crosbie

Blog Advertising - Fear and Ignorance Keep Media Buyers Away

Advertisers including Paramount Pictures, The Wall Street Journal, and The Gap are successfully reaching niche audiences for a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising and a handful of bloggers are earning six-figure incomes from their blogs. Why aren't more advertisers and bloggers getting together? Fear, ignorance and the knowledge that a lot of pioneers got shot.

With clickthrough rates in traditional online advertising dropping, inexpensive blog clickthroughs are as high as 5 percent. Blogs provide advertisers an excellent opportunity to reach a devoted audience niche for as little as $10 a week. Already, blogs like DailyKos which receives 15 million page views a month, get $9,000 a week for advertising and is sold out for weeks in advance.

Advertising on blogs is not like buying a minute on the Super Bowl says Henry Copeland, founder of Blogads, which matches advertisers with blogs. Successful blogs are edgy, have a sense of humor, and are recognized experts in a narrow niche. Blog audiences look at traditional ads, like "Click here, get 20% off," and say "screw this, I've seen it everywhere," Copeland says.' Read more at Blogs are a Good Buy for Advertisers but Fear and Ignorance Keep Media Buyers Away

Article Swapping

Wayne over at Blog Business World has a good article on Article Swapping as a strategy to increase the content on your blog. If you can ensure the quality of your article swapping partners this is a good strategy that can double your article producing power and therefor quantity of content on your page. He writes:

Adding new visitor traffic to your website is always a challenge. Finding fresh and innovative promotional techniques is often as difficult as creating fresh content.

Wait a minute! Why not accomplish both goals at the same time? By working with your current link exchange partners, and other website owners with businesses that complement yours, both goals are achievable.

Every website requires new content to provide interesting information for your site visitors. The same old stale articles won’t bring in much in the way of return traffic.

The various search engines give extra credit for site freshness and incoming links. Every article you provide to other webmasters provides them with new content. It provides your site with a themed incoming link. The same holds true for guest articles hosted on your site.

The level of my blogging earnings are directly related to the number of pages on my blogs (of course there are many other factors but quantity is a significant factor). Therefor one strategy for increasing earnings is obviously more pages as I've written about in my Generating Quantity of Content series.

Street Talk

Street Talk is another blog with an income stream that uses the Adsense program. It is a little different to other blogs that we've featured here in that instead of focusing upon products it focuses upon a popular New Zealand Television show - Shortland Street.

The site is currently in beta and will no doubt add more features and advertising opportunities - it will no doubt be a popular site for private advertisers which will be drawn to the site as traffic levels build - which they will if it goes in the same direction as another NZ fan blog that the owners of Street Talk own - Idolblog which focusses upon the New Zealand Idol and Australian Idol shows (ala 'Pop Idol' (UK) and 'American Idol' (US)). Idolblog has been a massive success for its developers generating a frenzy of activity every week before during and after episodes of the popular shows.

The beauty of these sites is that they are highly targeted on geographic areas and they will appeal to private advertisers from those locations.

Questions for Nick Denton

Nick Denton seems to be on a bit of a publicity tour at the moment as there have been quite a few interviews with him and articles about him online in the past few days. Here is another Questions for... Nick Dention. Here is one of the questions put to Nick:

WSJ: Name two interesting moments in blog-ad history.

Mr. Denton: The first most significant development is Google's AdSense. This enables small Web sites -- like Weblogs -- to at least fund some of their costs without having to build an advertising sales force. It provides very good targeting of text ad to content. If there is an item about Palm Pilots, then Google will supply ads about Palm Pilots automatically without any need for manual intervention. For certain topics, the revenues are quite meaningful. There are some Web sites, like a site called PVRblog, all about personal video recorders, that pretty much cover their running costs with Google ads and nothing else. The other development, in the last six months, advertisers like Nike and Audi are discovering blogs and engaging with the medium. I think it shows that blogs can attract innovative, brave advertisers, not just technology advertising, not just performance-based advertising, but classic brand advertising.

RSS Ads - Monetise your RSS feed

RSS Ads is a system to add ads to your RSS feeds. They are currently signing up publishers for a release of the program shortly.

They write - 'Monetize your RSS feed. Maintain total control over the ads placed in your feed. Expose all of your content via premium RSS feeds.' It will be interesting to watch how this system and others like it work out for bloggers.

If any of you are using such a system drop me a line and let me know how you're finding it and we'll put it up as a case study.

Found via Micro Persuasion

Nick Denton Profile

Fortune Magazine has a profile piece on Nick Denton and his growing blogging ventures:

'With nine sites launched in two years and 24% month-over-month aggregate traffic growth, the business outlook for Gawker's mini-media empire seems promising. Denton won't talk about the company's financials, and he points out that even at 2.5 million unique visitors per month his sites are only just starting to "get the numbers that actually register with media buyers." But he also makes the case that numbers aren't everything. "It's not just a numbers game. If it was, they'd all be advertising with Weather Bug," he says referring to a popular Windows toolbar download.'

Read more at Gawker Grows Up

Blogging for Dollars

WebProNews has a good little article on Blogging for Dollars that picks up a few income streams available for bloggers wanting to make money from their blogging.

'Blogging for dollars might sound like the latest game show or some new drinking game, but it's the latest craze to hit the Internet. Bloggers began blogging for a number of reasons, but as the blog movement has increased in popularity, they have found ways to monetize their blogs and are seeing their commitment pay off'

Also read my article of the same name - Blogging for Dollars

Travel Blog

Travel Blog is one of the best ProBlogging ideas I've seen for a while. They offer free blogs to travellers to update with their latest travelling stories and photos.

'Travel Blog is a collection of travel journals, diaries, stories and photos from all around the world. The journals are added by real travellers, and recount real experiences and impressions from the places they visit. The site includes lots of features that help you keep family and friends back home up to date with your adventure.'

So how do they make money from their blogs? Adsense ads appear on most pages - and adsense ads for travel pay out pretty well from what I've heard and seen.

They also sell Travel Blog Journals on the side. I havn't seen any affiliate ads yet on the site but suspect that they would do well to add some - especially ads for travel books (amazon), cheap flights etc.

Found via Seths Blog

A Short Course in SEO

SEO - A short Course is a useful article written about Search Engine Optimization that will help anyone seeking tips at how to Optimize their blog or website for Search Engines.

'Anyone who does business on the internet today has heard of SEO (search engine optimization), and many have tried their hand at it themselves. Most find, however, that they don’t get much response from their efforts. This leads to a dilemma for a start-up business: Is there any way to capitalize on internet traffic without paying big bucks for a professional SEO?

The answer is, yes and no. As with anything in business, you can’t get something for nothing, and most people who own top listings for competitive search engine keywords have paid dearly for that privilege. However, there are some simple things that can help make your new website more friendly not only to search engines, but also to your customers:

1. Remember that your customers always come first! Make your site easy to use and easy to buy from, and you will win a loyal following. Simple, straightforward sites perform best all around. Clearly labeled navigation, informative page content, secure online purchasing and ease of ordering are some key elements to a successful website.' Read more at SEO - A short Course.

Great Wines of North Carolina

Great Wines of North Carolina is another good example of a Blogger doing his thing by focussing upon a niche market. I'm not seeing too many obvious income streams on the blog - but its an interesting focus and one where he has a good change of capturing a large segment of the market that he's writing about.

Brent Great Wines of North Carolina">explains his blogging strategy.

'I aim to drive it to the top of the search engines for every major keyword associated with wine in North Carolina and the Yadkin Valley.

For example, when you type in "Raffaldini" as a search term on Google, I show up #2....someday this will overpower their site and show up #1...same with all the vineyards, and all the more common terms like "Yadkin Valley", "North Carolina Wine", etc... It will take some time...the funny thing is that I have not started yet! The rankings and traffic today are solely from my initial work, so watch and learn...I've done this a thousand times.

I'll keep you posted as the progress unfolds. Last week traffic increased about 20%, every week it gets a little bit busier!'

If he indeed reaches his goal of dominating Search Engine results for his key words he'll be in a great position to run some well paying private advertising of local wineries and perhaps run Adsense on his site (if there is a big enough stock of good ads).

Blogging Resources - Inc.com

Inc.com has a good list of blogging links including blogging tools and 'how to' guides.

The rise of Micropayments

Clickz has an interesting study into the rise of micropayments which might be of interest to some bloggers. My experience of blogging is that its hard to get much in the way of big payments in one's income stream but that one way forward that many of us are exploring is to generate many small payments which all add up to something more substantial. If you could get each person who visits your site to pay (whether directly or via advertising) a few cents - over time it would add up. Micropayments in my opinion could be the way of the future and are a particularly relevant topic for ProBloggers. The article reads:

'A study of 1,112 Americans aged 12 and older, conducted by Peppercoin and Ipsos-Reid, found 17 percent of survey respondents saying they'd use a non-cash form of payment (credit, debit or charge card) for purchases under $5. That percentage, according to the pollster, equates to some 37 million Americans.

The survey also found more than 14 million Americans made digital content purchases in the past year for less than $2. That represents a 350 percent increase over the previous year (2003 -- 4 million; 2004 -- 14 million). Of the 14 million people who purchased items costing under $2, approximately 1.4 million consumers purchased such items from five or more Web sites.

"In the physical world, we were surprised to see how much value and benefit consumers realize from using credit cards. They want to use them for their everyday purchases," Perry Solomon, VP of strategy and co-founder of Peppercoin, told ClickZ Stats. "Specifically, they want to use them for the everyday purchases that they make many times a month, such as for coffee, fast food, vending and parking. This shows that consumers feel comfortable with the speed, convenience and security of electronic payments."' Read more.

A day in the life of a Search Engine Optimiser

SEO Scoop has written up a day in the life of a search optimiser which gives some hints into what those SEO types do with their time. Its actually got some remarkably similar features to what my daily rhythm can look like as a blogger and will give you some food for thought if you're interested in finding tools to bump up the search engine referrals to your blog.

It also might depress the hell out of you :-)

URL info - Analyze and Improve your Blog

URL info is one of the most useful tools for probloggers that I've recently stumbled upon.

It may not look overly sexy when you first surf into it but this simple page has 107 useful tools for you to analyze and improve your site. They describe it as follows:

URLinfo is a tool for handling web pages: finding information about it, translating it, finding related pages, etc. To use it, type a URL (web page address) into the box in the top frame. Then choose a tab (such as General or Cache), and click on the name of the specific tool you wish to use. The Translate and Search tabs require a bit more, but should be self-explanatory. Click on the [info] link at the end of any tab for details about it.

Some of the tools are more useful than others - but overall I think you'll find plenty of information there to help you improve your blogging. Its a definite bookmarkable link!

Beer Blog

The Brew Site is an interesting commercial blog focused upon Beer (sounds like my kind of blog!). They are basing their income stream at this stage around Adsense. I've done a little research into beer keywords and the ads should pay reasonably well and the topic is one which should attract a fair amount of visitors. There are probably a few other income streams that they could add into the mix to add a few dollars a day to the mix.

The design is clean and professional, the content genuinely helpful and the concept is great - I'll be interested to see how they progress.

Blogs for Lawyers

Feedmelegal> has a good post on how blogs can be useful for lawyers.

'How can lawyers benefit from the use of weblogs? Feedmelegal does not intend to repeat at length what has been written by others, but to summarise and to an extent build on the insightful thinking that has already emerged, as follows:

· given their ease of use, and in conjunction with webfeeds which drive new content into the global blogosphere, blogs enable lawyers to carve a visible niche for themselves in their chosen areas of expertise or specialism (how many lawyers out there are experts or specialised in particular fields but do not market the fact, properly or at all?);

· they can be used for multiple marketing purposes and the sharing of knowledge, from an individual lawyer’s blog, to a practice or industry group blog, to a firm blog;'

Read more at Weblogs: A Primer for Lawyers>

Blogging for Dollars - CFO Magazine - October Issue 2004 - CFO.com

It seems that articles about how executives are blogging are appearing every day now - here is another one - Blogging for Dollars

'Once the domain of the disgruntled and demented, Web logs are being embraced by business executive...

In an earlier time, say 2000, managers at Microsoft didn't appear to be such big fans of blogs. Actually, few corporate executives were. Back then, the personal Web pages gave a free and open voice to customers and ex-employees — too often, irate customers and disgruntled ex-employees. In some cases, corporations went to court to try to get business-bashing bloggers to cease and desist....

Things have changed. Blogs, once the domain of the malcontent, have gone mainstream, thanks in large part to the thousands of Web logs dedicated to celebrities and defunct TV shows ("Buffy" bloggers, you know who you are). In the process, business leaders have come to value what they once feared about Web logs: these online diaries provide an easy way to reach a large audience. Venture capitalists, for example, now use Web logs to uncover inventors and entrepreneurs with promising new ideas. Corporate directors, including those at enterprise resource planning giant SAP, have launched blogs to help them better communicate with stakeholders. And managers at some companies, including Sun Microsystems, use blogs (among other approaches) to talk to employees and let employees talk to one another.' Read more at Blogging for Dollars

Study: Growth in Worldwide Ad Spend Led by Internet

Online expenditure on Advertising is expected to continue to rise according to this report:

'U.K.-based media research firm ZenithOptimedia expects the growth of Internet ad expenditures to outpace other media worldwide, while advertiser confidence holds steady.

According to ZenithOptimedia's quarterly global ad forecast, over the next two years, newspapers, magazines, radio and outdoor advertising are expected to lose about 0.1 percent of share each, while cinema will hold steady. Meanwhile, TV will gain 0.1 percent of share while the Internet adds 0.5 percent, according to the forecast.

Internet advertising has accounted for 3.5 percent of display advertising revenue this year, compared with 3.2 percent in 2003. ZenithOptimedia expects it to account for 3.7 percent in 2005 and 4.0 percent in 2006. By contrast, television leads other media in 2004 with a 37.6 percent share, followed by newspapers with 29.9 percent, magazines with 13.5 percent, radio with 8.8 percent, and outdoor with 5.3 percent. Global Internet advertising leads only cinema, which holds a 0.4 percent share.'

Read More at
Study: Growth in Worldwide Ad Spend Led by Internet

This is yet another pointer to the fact that blogs are positioned nicely to be an income earner - the big challenge is to find advertising tools that help turn potential advertisers in the direction of Bloggers as well as more established web sites.

Google Page Rank Update

There is a lot of talk around the web at the moment about Google's current page ranking update. You may have already noticed your blog's page rank change - most of my blogs are pretty stable although I've noticed one of the new ones has gone up from 2 to 6 which was a nice surprise. Much of the discussion in forums has been by worried bloggers and webmasters whose page rank has decreased and therefore are losing substantial traffic. Dropping down a ranking can mean the difference between a top ten result on Google and a top 100 result. Jim Hedger is writing over at WebProNews about the page rank change with Google and writes: ' Most webmasters will remember last year's Florida Update which turned Google's rankings upside down for about eight weeks. That eight week period caused a great deal of turmoil for SEOs, small businesses and web masters. The Florida Update was introduced on November 15, just six weeks before Christmas and at the start of the most important season for retailers. If Google does update it's algorithm in the next few weeks, another sudden round of "placement dislocation" may occur thus frustrating online retailers desperate for online Christmas sales. While it is impossible to predict such an update with 100% accuracy, there are a number of simple steps webmasters and SEOs can take to protect their clients in the case of a major update.'

Creative Weblogging - Paying for Content

Creative Weblogging is offering to pay bloggers $5 for sending in an article to their growing network of blogs. Creative Weblogging is developing a similar blogging network to that of Weblogs Inc with an interesting array of blogs. Obviously they've done their sums and worked out that in the long run they can make more than $5 per post on certain topics - interesting.

How to explode your blog's traffic by writing Articles

By Christos Varsamis

There is one golden rule, which is inherent in this free and extremely effective internet marketing strategy. First GIVE, and then TAKE. It’s as simple as that. Especially if it’s done properly the results could be tremendous. You provide valuable information regarding to your special field of knowledge but before that you must start a specific process.

What is that process? First focus on what you now best. Write what inspires and motivates you. If you are an artist, for instance share a tip or secret that your readers will not find it anywhere else. Then you will become valuable and an expert to your readers. Your article could be placed to many ezines, article directories, article announcement lists. There are thousands resources on the internet. Imagine if it’s posted to 5 ezines of 10.000 subscribers. That’s an amazing free exposure.

In time, you will start gaining credibility and trust, which leads to sales. No one is going to give you money unless you overcome his doubts, fear of deceit or fear of a wrong choice.

However, that’s not only the case. Search engines will index the pages containing your articles. That means huge link popularity and top ranking in the search engines game. Therefore, you will have traffic from the articles and the search engines too. All this free!

Many people claim that they are not writers. They can’t write. If you can talk, you CAN write. You don’t have to go for literature price, your intention is to inform ordinary people who talk and act everyday like you and me.

Research a topic you know very well. Start writing down your ideas and points and focus on your strongest point. Around that strong point, you will create your headline. It must be a killer title, for example start with the phrase “How to...” Next place sub headings to each point you have written. You have already created the structure of your article! Don’t make the mistake of editing at first. Just write every idea you have coming. You can edit it later in the end.

Then start writing the first paragraph. Always have clear solutions and conclusions in any paragraph. Keep your sentences short and the paragraphs too. Lengthy text is tiring and people don’t have much time. Keep your article between 500-1000 words. These are the standards today. Then follow the publisher’s guidelines, do not extemporize.

Use your signature line the publisher permits you to do. It shouldn’t be more than 4-6 lines of your bio. Finally revise your article for grammar mistakes and typos .Check it and recheck it again using your spell checker and with more tools if you have. Typos make you amateur and unprofessional. You should keep your lines to 60-65 characters. That’s what ezines accept.

Here are some of the best-checked article directories you can find on the net. You can submit your article there and have free exposure for your web site. They have big page rank and great alexa ranking.

http://ideamarketers.com
http://www.articlecity.com
http://www.stickysauce.com
http://www.mikes-marketing-tools.com
http://www.ezinearticles.com
http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.123webmaster.com
http://www.web-source.net/article-announce.htm
http://successdoctor.com/free/archive.htm
http://articles.siteowners.com

If you want to automate your article submission tasks, this is the best software you can find. It is the www.ezineannouncer.com . It automates the submission process and provides great tools. It is a must.

However if you want to automate your article submission task even more you can use this service. It’s amazing, it posts your article to thousands of publishers. Go to www.submityourarticle.com

If you feel that you can’t write an article at all you can use this revolutionary software: www.ezine-article-creator.com It creates articles for you! You just push some buttons and answer questions!

Excellent tools you can use as a writer are the above:
1) dictionary toolbar: http://dictionary.reference.com/tools/toolbar
2) Spell checker: http://aspell.sourceforge.net/suggest
3) Acronym finder: http://www.acronymfinder.com
4) Thesaurus: http://www.thesaurus.com
5) Another dictionary: http://www.rhymer.com
6) Excellent free text editor: http://www.notetab.com/download.php
7) Article, ad , text formatter : http://www.fwointl.com/FWOFormatter.html

Christos Varsamis is an internet marketing consultant and the owner of the exclusive internet-marketing club www.internetmarketingsuccesstips.com. Get his knowledge at your desktop! Subscribe to ims-tips@aweber.com .

Yahoo to launch Overture ads in RSS!!!

The RSS Weblog has just broken the news that Yahoo's Overture (main competitor to Adsense) will be shortly supporting ads in RSS feeds. This is pretty significant news for those of us running contextual ads on our blogs - but only for those using Overture. The question on everyone's lips now is if and when Google will follow in Overture's footsteps and introduce such a system. A number of options for advertising in your RSS feed already exist but I have to say that I've not seen anything that works terribly well yet. Most of the ads are rather annoying and stick out like sore thumbs. We'll follow this story with interest.

RSS Syndication Made Simple - Finding Content Made Easy

Steve Rubel (one of my newest favorite reads) has a very useful post on RSS Syndication Made Simple. It is one of the best and easiest to follow, descriptions of how to use RSS to find and read content of other bloggers and news sources.

Steve writes - 'RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is a new technology standard that enables any online publisher (corporate, blogger, media, etc.) to broadcast information onto the Internet in "feeds." Users can elect to subscribe to as many feeds as they want and view them all at once or individually using one or more different RSS readers, or news aggregators. Such readers include high-end dedicated desktop software applications, mobile devices and increasingly sophisticated Web-based applications. No matter which aggregator you choose, you get the same great benefits: 1) you are alerted to new content from your favorite sites as soon as it hits the web and 2) you can aggregate all your favorite sources of information together and peruse them on one page.'

95% of what I write in my blogs I find through RSS - following specific blogs and using news alerts targeting keywords that my blogs are interested in. Every morning I wake up to a fresh stock of starting points for my days research and postings.

Within minutes of a news article or blog post hitting the internet I can know about it and be posting a link, quote or comment on my own blog responding to what is happening.

So if you're not using RSS to find content for your blog you're probably giving yourself a whole heap of work that you don't need to go through each day - head over to RSS Syndication Made Simple and take a load off!

3 New Adsense Features Being Tested

Adsense may be testing some new features - I just stumbled upon a site that seems to be being used as a testbed for the new stuff. This is a page I first noticed two ads per page on - about a month before it became public that the rest of us could do that. I notice three new features so far:

1. Little dividers between the ads on the skyscraper site. It breaks it up a little and is a little different.

2. Change to Ads About Option - Also I just noticed that this particular user has another option at the bottom of their ads that says:

"Change to Ads About:" and then it lists five other related topics to click on. When you click on one of the options the ads change to ones related to the topic at hand.

3. Change to Ads About Search - Also after you click on a couple of 'change ads' options a search field comes up that says:

"Change to Ads About:"

This allows you to type in a request for ads about any particular topic!

So it seems Adsense are testing a feature that lets our readers choose their own topics for ads! Interesting. I'm not sure how many of my readers would take the time to toggle the ads. But this feature would be useful for ME if I could have a little more control over the ads my users see on particular pages - which I'm not seeing as an option.

Has anyone else seen these options on sites?

Keywords or Keyword Phrases? Effective SEO Strategy

About.com asks the question - should those wanting to optimize their site target single keywords or keyword phrases?

"Consider the keyword "cars." A quick search for this phrase at Google reveals nearly 20 million web sites competing for a ranking for this phrase. Since studies show that few consumers make it past the first few pages of search results, that means that all but about 30 of these web sites are unlikely to see any traffic from this phrase.

Apart from the fact that even the most skilled SEOs would be hard pressed to earn top rankings on this keyword, it's also not a very targeted phrase to optimize for. Will the searcher who types "cars" be looking for pictures of cars? Car sales? Car events? New Cars? Old Cars? The list could go on and on.

Web surfers tend to learn very quickly that in order to find what they are looking for, they need to target their search queries more carefully. So…get specific with your keywords."

Read more at SEO 101 - Beginner's Guide to Keyword Research

The Blog Marketing Explosion

'Rich Orr writes that blogging is 'Possibly, the most powerful type of corporate marketing per dollar spent ever invented.'

'Blogs are a goldmine of formerly hard to get insight from CEO's, marketing guru's and others who never used to have a public forum. These business leaders are utilizing the internet to convey their personal thoughts on happenings in their industry and life. They are blogging for the same reasons they do public speaking, to build credibility for themselves and their company's. Blogging has become a new … less time consuming and less expensive way to reach potential and current customers....'

Read More at The Blog Marketing Explosion

Found via Micro Persuassion

What Can Lots Of Content Do For Your Blog?

by: Matt Colyer

Today there are so many web sites on the web, but so few of them have good content and there are even fewer web sites that have large amounts of content. Why is the web like this? For one most webmasters are trying to make a quick buck and others don't know where to begin or are too lazy to do the work.

Content really is king! Why? because visitors will stay longer or will come back more often and they are more likely to buy from your business. Visitors know you are an expert in your site's topic because you write informative articles, which leads the visitor to trust your business more. And to your visitors it's all about trust because if they can't trust your business, how can they trust the product/service you sale or how can they even know that they will receive the product/service.

Most of the time before an Internet surfer buys a product they will search the web to get more information about it. Sometimes they are just looking to see how it really works or maybe they want to know more about a certain feature. If you write articles about your products, surfers are more likely to find your web site in the search engine and you may even steal a few sales from your competitor, which will result in more sales for you!

Having a site with great and informative information will make another site owners more likely to link to your web site. Think about it! Would you link to a site that just had their products and service web pages? Or would you link to a web site that has great content that will help your visitors? If you are like most webmasters you would chose the 2nd one because this will benefit your web site because it helps the visitors know more about your products.

Search engines such as Google and Yahoo! love themed sites! Having a good themed web site means your ranking is more likely to rank higher than other web sites. Not only does this help out your site's theme, but also allows you to target more keywords. Surfers will find these web pages when searching the web and will result in more sales.

About The Author
Matt Colyer is the owner of the Marhen.com Network which includes www.linkexchangeit.com and is a part-time SEO. He also is a php, CGI and ASP developer.

Linking out is good

by: Trenton Moss

Many websites I come across don't have a single link to another website. Ask the webmaster why not, and the answer you get is simple enough: "If I link to other websites people might leave my site." At this point I break the news that site visitors will leave your site. And there's nothing you can do about this.

Site visitors won't leave your site because you provide links to external sites. They'll leave for one of two reasons:

• They've found what they were looking for and no longer have a reason to stay on your website
• They can't find the information they're looking for and leave to seek it elsewhere

"OK, so site visitors are going to leave my site. But why should I hunt around for websites to link to?" I can think of four reasons why linking out is good for you and will ultimately increase traffic to your website:

Proof there's a real organisation behind the website
One of the best ways to prove your organisation really exists is to link to other websites that reference you. Any website willing to mention your organisation is in effect providing a reference for you. Just 52.8% of web users believe online information to have credibility (source: http://ccp.ucla.edu/pdf/UCLA-Internet-Report-Year-Three.pdf) and four in five users say that being able to trust the information on a site is very important to them in deciding to visit a website (source: http://www.consumerwebwatch.org/news/1_TOC.htm).

Links about your organisation can include:

• Press articles
• Affiliation listings
• Professional association membership details
• Awards your organisation has won
• Articles published by a member of your organisation
• Directory listings (such as Yahoo! or the Open directory)

Anyone can put up a website making whatever kind of claims they want to. Have a look at the fantastic Christian women's wrestling website at http://www.jesus21.com/poppydixon/sports/cww.html. It's got quite a lot of information about them and lots of photos. And it's 100% fake.

Backs up your arguments
Ensure that all statements about your organisation are backed up by third party websites. For example, if you sell toys it's very easy to make a statement such as, "We're the number one online toy seller in the country!" Anyone can make this statement, so prove that it is true by linking to an external website showing a list of the top online toy sellers last year.

Most of the time your site visitors probably won't follow these links, but that doesn't matter - the important thing is that you've shown evidence to back up the claims you're making.

Benefit to your site visitors
The Internet is designed for users to flow through it from one website to the next - don't make your website the last one in the flow. If you know of websites that you find really useful, and you think your site visitors might too, be sure to link to them. By offering a range of useful links you may even come across as an industry expert and someone who really knows their stuff.

When providing links make sure you do so at appropriate times. Don't relegate external links to a links page - site visitors aren't so likely to visit this page as a links page doesn't immediately address their needs. Instead, provide links as and when they're appropriate to the content of each page.

For example, if you run an accountancy firm you may wish to link to a website that has an up-to-date reference guide about new tax laws in the field of accounting. You don't have the time to provide that kind of regularly updated information on your website but your site visitors would find it really useful. Help out your site visitors and they'll hold your organisation in a positive light.

Search engine benefits
One of the ways search engines try to work out what your website is about is by analysing its inbound and outbound links. The more confidence a search engine has of what your website's about, all other things being equal, the higher search engine ranking you'll achieve. By providing outbound links to related sites you actually help the search engines analyse your site and therefore help your search ranking.

Jon Ricerca did a mini-analysis to see if outbound links affect search engine rankings and his results were pretty conclusive: web pages with more outbound links generally achieved higher search rankings (see http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/search-engine-optimisation/number-links.shtml). Be warned though, an inbound link is worth far more than an outbound link so do not link to your competitor's websites!

Conclusion
Don't be afraid to link out. Your site visitors will appreciate you introducing them to useful websites, you can increase your credibility and you can achieve a higher search engine ranking. So check your favourites folder and if you think your site visitors would benefit from any of the websites there be sure to include them in an appropriate place on your site.

About The Author
This article was written by Trenton Moss. He's crazy about web usability and accessibility - so crazy that he went and started his own web usability and accessibility consultancy (Webcredible - http://www.webcredible.co.uk) to help make the Internet a better place for everyone.

Optimal Website Design

by: Elizabeth McGee

The idea behind good website design is to offer your viewer a logical flow while making it interesting and easy to navigate.

Lead your viewers to the starting point and then direct them through your site without confusing them.

Here are some excellent tips that can help you develop a user friendly site and please your visitors senses. Give yourself a chance before they get away.

1. Use lots of white space.
Don't feel that because you have a whole screen that you need to fill it up with stuff. Your page should follow a clean outline. Include your site name at the very top. Below that list the subject of your page and below that expand on your topic. Leave adequate space between each section. Don't cram a lot of pictures and ads. If you have an ad keep it off to the side or subtly intersperse it between your text. The idea is not to overwhelm your reader.

2. Don't use animation and flashing objects.
As advertisers we feel the need to get our viewers attention. This is important but we need to do it gracefully. Flashing objects and scrolling images distract your visitor and take away from the content. If your product is better demonstrated with animation or some other multi-media, allow your viewer to select the option. Don't force it on them.

3. Every page of your site should contain an 'about' link.
The internet can be a rather cold and quiet environment. If someone can come to your site and find out about who you are and what you are about, they can feel a little better about doing business with you or taking advice from you. Always include your business address and phone number and email address as well. This lets viewers know that you are serious about your business and that you welcome contact.

4. Include a 'Privacy' Link
Viewers like the reassurance that you have a policy that follows privacy guidelines. They want to know that you will not sell or give away their information. In these days of rampant spam, your privacy policy needs to be prominently displayed. Many viewers and business partners won't do business with you unless you have it.

5. Always keep your links in blue.
Why does that matter you might say? It's an expectation that viewers have along with the links being underlined. There's certainly no law that says they need to be as such but people spend a lot of time on the internet and it's good practice to keep your navigation consistent and recognizable. If it's not you may lose out on clicks.

6. Keep navigation consistent
Keep your site's navigation consistent. What you do on your index page should be done the same way on the rest of your site's pages. Keep the colors consistent as well. Don't force your viewers to relearn each page of your site. Keep your navigation bars and links the same for each page.

7. Understandable buttons and links.
Title your links appropriately. Don't use cute or misleading names. For example, if you have a link to sports equipment don't label the link 'Great Outdoors', call it 'sports equipment'. If you have a link to 'cameras' don't label the link 'hotshots', label it 'cameras'. Your viewers don't want to waste time figuring out what things are. Be clear with your labeling.

8. Focus on the 'YOU', not the 'ME'.
Make it obviously clear to your readers that you are there for them. What can you do for your reader? What benefits are there for your viewer? How can you make their life or business better or more profitable? Request feedback on their success. Find out what they want to know or how you can offer them what they need.

9. Make sure your page loads fast.
If viewers have to wait for a page to load they will click elsewhere. Here's a site that will help you determine how well your page loads. If a page doesn't load in 8 seconds you lose 1/3 of your visitors. Here's a great free tool to help you check your website's load time:

http://www.1-hit.com/all-in-one/tool.loading-time-checker.htm

10. Use a site map.
A site map will give visitors a "guide" on viewing your site and also eliminate confusion, especially with larger sites. It's a road map for your visitors to follow while they are on your site. Sitemaps will also increase rankings and placement within the Search Engines.

About The Author
Elizabeth McGee has spent 20 years in the service and support industry. She has moved her expertise to the world wide web helping businesses find trusted tools, enhance customer service, build confidence and increase sales. You can contact Elizabeth at mail@pro-marketing-online.com or visit her website at http://www.pro-marketing-online.com

Copyright © 2004 Adlite Enterprises
http://www.pro-marketing-online.com All Rights Reserved.

webmaster@pro-marketing-online.com

How to Sell your Blog

by: Matt Dobinson

There are hundreds and thousands of websites on the internet today being bought and sold and there are many places you can sell your website such as ebay and website brokers. Though this article we will explore each of these possibilities in greater details.

Ebay - Selling a website on ebay can perfect for some and completely useless for others. As most people know ebay, it gets millions of hits every minute from people looking for everything from hair nets to race cars. For starters this is a great way to get word out that your website is for sale. It has lots of people viewing your ads but keep in mind your competition is feirce as so many people post sites for sale on ebay. To sell your website on ebay it has to stand out from the rest.

Forums - Forums tend to be a great place to sell websites. They tend to ask alot more questions about statistics and revenue than most other places but if you have a quality site you can sometimes get alot more for it buy selling your website in forums. Good forums for this include sitepoint.com, geekvillage.com and webhostingtalk.com.

Website Brokers - Website brokers normally go out and try to get you the best possible price for your website. They tend to have contacts in the industry and will get into contact with people you can't or dont even know exist. They generally charge a fee of around 10%-15%. There are a few websites around where you can post your website up to brokers - kind of like a cross between ebay and a brokers firm.

Sell to your visitors - A commonly used technique to get a good profit from the sale of your website is to post a 'site for sale' link or image on the frontpage of the site for sale. This targets the audience to people interested in the topic of the site. But be warned not all of these people are or want to be webmasters.

Personal Contact - If you have a low budget, selling your website though your personal contact can be very rewarding. This takes everyone else out of the equation and you pay no broker fees or ad fees. If you plan on selling your website this way make sure you know enough people who would be intrested in the site.

Website Checklist
Before you get to putting up website for sale ads and hiring a site broker, there are a few things you will need. Firstly, find out in detail your statistics. This including unique visitors per day or month, bandwidth used per month and current and past revenue for the website. Most people who are in the industry will ask for the pagerank of the website too. You can find out your page rank by downloading the google toolbar and re-visiting your website. A pagerank is considered by most webmasters as being a large factor.

About The Author
Matt Dobinson is the owner of PageBrokers.com - A website dedicated to buying and selling websites online for the best possible price.. He also runs WebmasterFreebie.com - an online community for webmasters.

6 Power Packed Tips For Article Writers

by: Ken Hill

1. Offer an email course, multipart report or a free subscription to your ezine in your resource box.
Have your readers come to your site to get your report, course or subscription to your ezine so that they'll be able to see what your site has to offer them.

If you use your resource box to promote your ezine, provide a sample issue or an archive of your past issues on your site to get more of your visitors to subscribe.

2. Participate in article swaps.
You could run another publishers f~ree to reprint article in your ezine in exchange for the same.

You could also write a new article to run exclusively in the other publisher's ezine in exchange for her writing a new original article to be published in your ezine.

In addition, you could post other article writers' articles on your site in exchange for them posting your articles on their sites.

This will help you to get more reciprocal links and also help you to increase your repeat traffic by keeping your site updated with new content.

3. Make your articles available for your affiliates to publish with their affiliate URLs in your resource box.
Letting your affiliates publish your articles in their ezines or on their web sites with their affiliate URLs in your resource box will give them an easy way to effectively promote your business.

It will also help you to attract more people to your affiliate program because you'll be providing your affiliates with a valuable marketing tool.

When using your articles in this way, link only to your site in your resource box to ensure that your affiliates will earn commissions on all their referrals.

4. Create a mailing list that tells people when you've written a new article or articles.
Your list can help you to get your articles published on a regular basis by ezine publishers and webmasters who enjoy your writing.

Your list can also help you to keep your affiliates up to date on new articles they can use to earn commissions and help you to successfully get more people to join your affiliate program.

5. Use your articles to create a free ebook.
You could create an ebook compilation of your articles and use it as a bonus for joining your ezine or purchasing your product.

You could also offer your ebook as a freebie to get more people to visit your site.

To increase the profit you get from your ebook you could let people rebrand your ebook with a link to their website, business or affiliate program.

If you run an affiliate program, you could also let your affiliates rebrand your ebook with their affiliate URLs and use your ebook to earn more commissions.

6. Use your articles to create an ebook you can sell.
If you've written lots of articles you could put together a best of compilation of your articles and sell it to your visitors.

To increase your sales you could give people the resell rights to your ebook along with their purchases.

This will increase your ebook's perceived value because you'll be giving your customers a way to make money with your ebook.

About The Author
Article by writer, Ken Hill. Tired Of Promoting Your Articles By Hand? Save tons of time with your article submissions with this powerful tool for article writers and ezine publishers. Find out more now at: http://www.scstats.com/r.cfm?i=4604'
Read more at ArticleCity.com - 6 Power Packed Tips For Article Writers

Top Ten Tips For New Writers

by: Elaine Currie, BA (Hons).

Golden Rules For Writers - Things you need to know before you begin.
Rules govern everything we do in life; even if those rules are of the unwritten kind we abide by them and expect other people to do the same. Why should writing be any different? It shouldn’t be and it isn’t. The following rules are the basis for good writing. If anyone tries to tell you that rules are made to be broken, remember that you have to learn those rules before you try to bend them or break them otherwise you are just being sloppy, not radical.

The following rules are essential if you want people to take you seriously.
Be yourself
Know your subject
Be interested
Punctuate proudly
Respect the apostrophe
Get great grammar
Spell well
Keep to the point
Read and revise
Sleep on it
Pay attention to detail

Be yourself
Write from the heart or the head or the gut, depending upon the type of writing you are doing. You can let your heart pour passion into a love letter but your head is better for the contents of a business letter and the gut feeling should never be ignored. Never try to imitate somebody else’s style, no matter how much you might admire it, you will always appear fake. Find your own unique style, your own voice.

Know Your Subject
Write on topics you know about. Although that sounds obvious you don’t have to look very far to find masses of people publishing articles when it is clear that they have very little idea about their subject matter. This type of writing appears thin, limp and unconvincing even to the untrained eye. You should aim for writing which has substance; a rounded, healthy thing with a life of its own. If, for some reason, you are obliged to write about a topic which is alien to you, make the effort to research it. If you can’t get to the library, there is always the internet. There is no excuse for ignorance. There is no excuse for trying to foist a poorly researched article on your readers. Do you want your readers to point you out as someone who does not know what s/he is talking about?

Be interested
Write about things which interest you. If you are not interested in your subject matter, you have little hope of catching the interest of your reader. If you are in a situation where you simply have to write about a subject which holds no real interest for you, try at least to find an original angle; this could stimulate you as well as your reader. If you cannot spark even faint interest in your subject, your writing will be flat and boring.

Punctuate proudly
Don’t be one of those people who pretend they don’t think punctuation matters: it does. Ask your self this: if these people really believe that, why do they bother to punctuate at all? Why don’t they just write on and on without any dots or commas? That, surely, is more logical than putting in dots and commas in the wrong places. The truth is, they are too lazy to learn the rules of punctuation and think they can get away with this by brushing punctuation off as unimportant. Punctuation has had a very bad time over the last forty years or so but I believe it is about to undergo a revival. These things go in cycles and it seems that punctuation is about to have its day at last. Correct punctuation could be the new black. If you don’t believe this, how do you explain why so many thousands of people bought "Eats, Shoots & Leaves"? Even if you have no interest in creating elegant prose, you should learn about punctuation . Without it your writing will at best be difficult to read and at worst not make sense. You will be left wondering why people are laughing at your serious work.

Respect the apostrophe
I know, I know, this is part of punctuation. I happen to think that apostrophes have spent so long being either ignored or abused they now deserve a mention of their own. I can cope quite well with commas and full stops appearing in the wrong place but an incorrectly inserted apostrophe makes me see red. Why do so many people insist on using the apostrophe when they clearly have no idea of its function? Beats me. An improperly placed apostrophe is to writing what a huge, ugly wart is to the nose on a beautiful face. Cruel people will point and laugh at you. You think I am exaggerating? If I am part of a minority on this point, why did so many people buy "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" that it became Book of the Year? Perhaps they thought it was a story about a panda.

Get great grammar
The rules of grammar are not difficult. In the olden days even little kids were taught grammar at school. Like mathematical tables, grammar is no longer treated as an important subject. Most people can get through life without missing the tables which were once memorised by every child who ever went to school. People now have electronic calculators to do their mathematical thinking for them but nothing has replaced the need to understand basic grammar. Please don’t make the mistake of relying on the "grammar check" on your word processor: I am not saying that this tool is entirely without merit but, if you do not know the rules yourself, you can create hilarious results by going along with the recommendations of your word processing package. Another good thing about the rules of grammar is that they don’t keep changing so, once you learn the rules, they will stand you in good stead for the whole of your writing career. Along with punctuation, it is grammar which determines whether or not your writing makes sense. If you don’t know the rules, you will not know if your writing makes sense but other people will, believe me. (Back to pointing and laughing again.)

Spell well
You need to be able to spell in order to write properly. If punctuation is the putty in your windows, spelling is the bricks out of which your house is built. If you don’t have bricks, you cannot build yourself a house. You will probably find this hard to believe but spelling used to be taught in schools in the olden days. Nowadays most people who write do so on a word processor with a spell check function. It is apparent that many of these people do not bother to use their spell checker. This sort of laziness cannot be excused. At the same time, you should not rely entirely on the spell checker: it is only a machine trying to guess what word you have scrambled. If you are not sure about a word, look it up in a dictionary: it never hurts to know the correct meaning of words as well as the correct spelling. Never forget that spell check will take your words out of context: if you type "He sold his soul to Santa", you can’t blame the spell checker for not knowing your really meant "Satan". People would snigger cruelly if you failed to correct this.

Keep to the point
Never make the mistake of padding out your writing with unnecessary or irrelevant details. Keep to the subject announced in your title, after all, the title is probably what attracted the reader in the first place. If the body of your work does not relate to the expectation aroused by the title, the reader will feel tricked and nobody likes that feeling - your reader will move on to read somebody s/he can trust. Do not attempt to pad out your writing with unnecessary words: inserting a few adverbs or adjectives to boost the word-count never works and makes the article difficult to read. Keep it simple, whether people are reading for pleasure or enlightenment, they will not appreciate lumpy prose and they are not reading your work to marvel at your cleverness or your vocabulary. If you run out of things to say before your work is the length you wish to achieve, you are writing on the wrong subject or from the wrong angle.

Read and revise
Boring but essential. However much we enjoy the writing process, reading the end product over and over and making changes is not what we want to be doing. We would rather be starting the next article which is bubbling up in our brains but we have to read, re-read, revise and revise again. It is easy to make mistakes particularly if you have written something over a long period . If you do not correct your mistakes before publication, you will lose the trust of your audience. (I never got over the fact that one of my favourite authors accidentally changed the date of birth of a main character half way through a novel. How could I ever believe in his people if they had moveable birthdays?) If you were a carpenter, you would not offer your customer an unfinished piece of furniture. If you were a tailor you would not offer your customer an unpressed garment. The author should not dream of offering the reader an unpolished piece of writing.

Sleep on it
Don’t be in a rush to publish your work the minute it is finished. Let it rest. If it is ready for publication, it will still be ready tomorrow but, if it is not quite ready, you will have given yourself a chance to make a final amendment. This is particularly relevant when you are writing shorter things. If you have spent months redrafting a novel, you are likely to know if you have satisfactorily completed the final draft but it is easy to knock out and send off short items such as articles or letters and then regret our haste. There is always scope for improvement and what looks like a work of art in the evening glow, might not appear so well in the cold morning light.

Pay attention to detail
If you do not pay attention to detail, you will not discover your errors and there will be plenty of people out there who will be delighted to pick out and highlight the smallest error. Some people just can’t help themselves: it is the way they are made (the way I react when a menu offers me a choice of "Salad’s" - salad’s what?). Other people are just waiting to see you trip yourself up. Don’t give them the satisfaction: get things right before they start pointing and you will have the last laugh. If you have realised that this paragraph is number eleven of my top ten and are already laughing - Well Done! If you did not notice - see what I mean?

About The Author
This is one of a series of articles about working from home and writing published by the author, Elaine Currie, BA(Hons) at http://www.huntingvenus.com/
livesupport@huntingvenus.com

Source ArticleCity.com - Top Ten Tips For New Writers

Writing Articles

by: William C. Wilson Sr.

You say, I can’t write an article, I have no knowledge of writing. Let me tell you yes you can!

Why write an article?
It can help you build your business! Yes, writing articles can help build your business. You say how can this help? First, imagine if you will, you have posted your article in an online publication, it has been accepted to be posted online (we will cover how to submit your article latter). Now all of a sudden you have 100 people reading your article, think of what could happen if out of that 100, 10 visit your website or email you for more information about what you are doing.

What has just happened? You have created some potential affiliates or buyers for your products.

If you have a website this can help your rankings in the search engines.

How to start:
1. Think of a subject that you have knowledge of! It can be from cooking to website marketing anything you know is good! You can even ask you favorite relative, friends, whoever for some help, by using their knowledge on a certain subject.

2. Keep notes of what you want to write, the notes should be kept in the order you want to write. This may take you a while to organize but it is well worth the time. This way when you start writing you will not get confused on what you wanted to start with and the order you want to write it.

3. Use a good word processor that can help you with your grammar. I use Microsoft Word; it allows me to set it up to write formal letters it will even give you definitions of why you should change the grammar.

4. Start your writing! Simple isn’t it?

5. At the end add a recourse box, with you name, email or website, for example; Joe Smith is an Independent SFI Marketing Group Representative. You may contact him here then post your website or email.

6. Also, include that is free for reprint as long as the resource box stays intact.

Where to place your articles:
Now that you have written your first article, what’s next?

1. Find a group to join that welcomes articles.

2. Submit your article to free enzines (on line magazines, on line publications) Do searches for free article submissions sites submit your article. If they like it they will post it, and instantly you are an author!

3. Email me your article and I will post it on my website. I will give you some constructive criticism if there is something I feel you can do better on.

Pretty simple, and you thought you couldn’t be an author! Congratulations you are!

About The Author

William C. Wilson Sr.
Is an Independent SFI Marketing Group Representative http://www.great-homebusiness.com
Source ArticleCity.com - Writing Articles

Graphic Design Using Color

by: Kelly Paal

Color is everywhere and conveys a message even if we don’t realize it. While this message can vary by culture it pays to know what colors “say” in your own corner of the universe, and even what color means to your target market.

If you don’t think that color speaks just complete this sentence, “red means ---- and green means –“ even a child will know what red means stop and green means go. If such simple ideas work for all of a given culture or market what could it mean to the graphic design of your website, brochure, or product if you know some of this information.

First let’s start with the basics. The color wheel. We’ve all seen it. The color wheel shows the basic colors, each wheel is different in how many shades of each color is shown, but they are essentially the same.

Color harmony, colors that go together well. These will be colors that are next door to each other on the color wheel. Such as blue and green. In reference to clothes these colors match each other. Instinctively most of us know which colors go together when we dress ourselves every morning.

Color complements, colors that set each other off, they complement each other. These are colors that are opposite on the color wheel. Such as blue and orange.

Color depth, colors can recede or jump forward. Remember that some colors seem to fall back such as blue, black, dark green, and brown. Other colors will seem to step forward such as white, yellow, red, and orange. This is why if you have a bright orange background it may seem to fight with any text or images that you place on it. The orange will always seem to move forward.

Now you have the basics so let’s go further. Just because to colors go together or complement each other doesn’t mean that yo necessarily want to use them on your project. I opened this article with the meaning of colors now here is an example, keep in mind this is one example from western culture.

Color Survey: what respondents said colors mean to them.
Happy = Yellow
Pure = White
Good Luck = green
Good tasting = Red (tomato)
Dignity = Purple
Technology = Silver
Sexiness = Red (tomato)
Mourning = Black
Expensive = Gold
Inexpensive = Brown
Powerful = Red (tomato)
Dependable = Blue
High Quality = Black
Nausea = Green
Deity = White
Bad Luck = Black
Favorite color = Blue
Least favorite color = Orange

So in designing your project it’s important to know what colors mean. You can now see why a black back ground with green type would be bad, beyond being nearly impossible to read, if your target market thinks that black represents mourning and green makes them sick. There are exceptions to every rule of course.

So you may want to include some research in what colors mean to your target market. Colors that would get the attention of a teen would probably annoy an older person and the colors that appeal to the older person wouldn’t get a second look from a young person.

Color may be one of the most overlooked aspects of design.

About The Author
Copyright 2004 Kelly Paal

Kelly Paal is a Freelance Nature and Landscape Photographer, exhibiting nationally and internationally. Recently she started her own business Kelly Paal Photography (www.kellypaalphotography.com). She has an educational background in photography, business, and commercial art. She enjoys applying graphic design and photography principles to her web design.

Top Five Most Profitable Color Combinations Used In Blog Design!

by: Ovi Dogar

"Two days ago, an old man stopped me on the street and asked me who my stylist is.

I was surprised at first by the situation. But after a couple of seconds, my answer was:

- ""I don’t have a stylist. I dress myself!""

That's when it occurred to me that there are many people that match their clothes colors in a bad way. And guess what: the same thing is happening with many blogs that are on the internet today.

I know you don't want to end up with a blog like that so here is the Absolute Top Five Most Profitable Color Combinations.

5. Red - black - white

Red and black combined with white create a nice impact to the eye. These blogs usually jump into the visitor's eyes through their simplicity. Gradients of red and grey can turn out pretty profitable also.

4. Black - white - gold

This is another killer combination. The simplicity of black combined with the richness of gold helps you create a blog that makes people turn their heads just to see it. Usually these colors are ideal for conservatory institutions that deal a lot with money.

3. Red - white - blue

You should take good care not to have red-blue bordering areas, or - if you do, one of the colors should be really dark while the other is lighten. Blue and white is another good combination that derives from this one. It is used more and more in the internet marketing - new technologies field because of the trustiness the blue color implies.

2. Red - orange - green

Orange seems to be a color preferred by the customers. Psychologically speaking, orange gives a sense of affordability and combined with red, which is a strong motivator, subconsciously influence your leads to act. The green color brings in a little freshness into the picture so it fits well for ecological and sport projects.

1. Red - orange - blue

Based on numerous split tests and feedback from my customers, the absolute combination was formed from red, orange and blue - or, to be more specific: dark blue. :) The blue color adds the touch of confidence - needed by each of us before we make the buying decision - to the red-orange combination.

This being said, I wish you much success with your venture and be aware next time you hire a blog designer."

About The Author
Ovi Dogar is specialized in the creation of professionally custom made covers that really sell. You can view some recent samples of his work at http://www.AbsoluteCovers.com/
articles@aesea.com

Are You Losing The Battle For Search Engine Traffic?

by: Norbert Orlewicz

Search engine traffic should be a priority for any online business and some level of optimization is apart of every effective marketing strategy.

On the plus side, search engine traffic is the cream of the crop. There is very low cost involved and the conversion rates are typically quite high. The people that are clicking on your link are searching specifically for what you have to offer.

On the negative side, actually achieving a high rank on the top search engines AND maintaining a high rank is close to impossible for the majority of webmasters. You could spend thousands of dollars and weeks of your life just trying to compete. And in the end, this will undoubtedly lead to frustration and wasted time.

The best option for the majority of webmasters is to not become obsessed with your fluctuating results, but simply to focus on the basics with long term success in mind.

1. Basic search engine optimization.
This is the first step and really quite simple. I read recently that close to 90% of all websites are not search engine friendly. That truly amazed me, because the process is rather simple and takes barely any time at all.

If you don't know how to build your own website than read my article on getting it done for you.
http://www.homebizproz.com/getitdone.htm

You should make sure that all of your site pages are search engine friendly. Not just your homepage, although it is most important. A search engine friendly webpage contains a keyword-rich Title, Description and Keywords.

Your Title should contain your best keywords or keyphrases. It should describe exactly what your website is all about, and it shouldn’t exceed 80 characters, about 5 to 7 words is best.

Your Description should also contain some of your best keywords or keyphrases. It should be one or two sentences that expands on the description of your company and website.

Your Keywords should be separated by a comma and a space, and should not exceed 70 words. Keep it simple and don’t double up on the same word. Many search engines don’t place any relevancy on your keywords anymore so don’t waste too much time here.

When deciding what words to use, think like the person that is doing the search. What words would they put into a search, to find what you have to offer? Make a list of these words and then go try them out to see what you get! You may also want to think about key phrases. These would be a few words used together that someone may enter to find what you have.

You can analyze your Meta Tags at these websites

• http://www.scrubtheweb.com/abs/meta-check.html
• http://www.siteowner.com.
• http://www.submitawebsite.com/free_tools.html .

In addition to these three basics, you should also try to include your keywords and phrases within the body of your page. Ideally you want a 3% ratio of keywords to total words.

You can use your keywords in your page link names in your navigation bar. Also, any links throughout the content of your page should also be keywords.

2. Search Engine Submissions
Right off the bat I will say don’t waste your time and money with all those websites that advertise submissions to a million search engines. Honestly, there aren’t that many search engines, and only a handful are worth your time anyways. Your focus should be on the primary search engines and directories, specifically Google, Yahoo, MSN, and a few others. Make sure to go to these directories and submit by hand.

• Google http://www.google.com/addurl.html
• Open Directory Project http://www.dmoz.com/add.html
• AltaVista http://addurl.altavista.com/addurl/new
• MSN http://submitit.bcentral.com/msnsubmit.htm

And also give these free submission sites a try:

• http://www.submitawebsite.com
• http://www.ineedhits.com/
• http://www.addme.com/

3. Reciprocal Links
Reciprocal Linking should be one of your major strategies for search engine placement and generating traffic. You need highly ranked relevant websites to link to your site to gain top positions on search engines. You should focus on quality and relevancy. It is much more beneficial for you to have 100 links from highly ranked relevant websites, rather than 1000 links from any and all websites.

You can search the internet for relevant websites and then simply send them an email with a request to swap links. This strategy can be quite tedious but is sometimes necessary when starting out.

You should setup a Link Directory using something like Reciprocal Manager or Links Manager. I would recommend doing this right from the beginning. This will allow your site visitors to quickly and easily add their own links, and automate the whole process for you.

Check out http://www.LinkPartners.com to find sites to trade links with.

4. Content
There is no substitute for a website with quality content. The internet is founded on information. If you can provide, relevant, substantial, quality content on your website you will have a much greater potential for getting lots of links and lots of traffic.

The benefits of writing your own articles are tremendous. Not only do you separate yourself as an expert in your field, you will garner higher search engine rankings through content as well as links. You can share your articles, submit them to directories and give them to webmasters to fill their content. At the bottom of each article you include a small resource box with a link back to your site and there you have lots of high quality content and links.

Write one article every week and in a year from now you will have 52 content rich pages on your site, and 52 articles floating around the World Wide Web proclaiming you as an expert.

In conclusion, by following these four proven steps you will generate an endless stream of free, quality traffic to your website. Yes, they actually take effort and work on your part, and guess what, so does any real business. Look at the top internet marketers online today and you will see that they live by these four principles. Start working on one of these strategies everyday. The key here is continual, persistent work. I wish you the best of success with your business!

About The Author
Norbert Orlewicz offers only the most effective strategies for promoting your online business at his website http://www.homebizproz.com. Use the FREE online guide and discover the best tips, tricks and methods for your online business.
webmaster@homebizproz.com

Affiliate Program Mastery: Learn How To Build Internet Capital Goods for Free

by: Isaiah Hull

As I mention in almost all of my articles, 97% of Internet marketers never make a cent online. I mention this simple fact because it has a lot of power--it has the power to completely discourage people who are not succeeding, and it also has the power to encourage those same people who are failing to learn, so that they can succeed.

In this article, I will teach you exactly what it means to build Internet capital goods--and how it relates to entering that top 3%. When you finish reading this, you will have complete faith that you can succeed and you will understand exactly what it will take to do so.

So what are capital goods? You know that regular businesses purchase capital goods to increase production. You know that industrial businesses operate some of these capital goods to produce goods that they can then resell for profit. You know that capital goods can be land. They can be factories. They can be machinery. They can be people. . .

So how does this relate to marketing your affiliate program? It's quite simple--in order to succeed, you must build a large pile of Internet capital goods and then use them to pull in customers and retain them.

Most affiliates do not understand this concept. They start out with a boilerplate gateway webpage--that everyone else who sells the same product also uses--and then they use that page in conjunction with paid advertisement and hope for success. In almost every single case, they never make more than a couple sales, give up after 3 months at the absolute most, and then move on to the next opportunity.

If you do a simple analysis of successful affiliate program marketers (which, for practical reasons, will be easiest if you do it through websites), you will find that they either a) have purchased Internet capital goods and advertisement with a lot of money or b) have an enormous amount of Internet capital goods. (You can test this yourself by checking the top listings in search engines for any keyword combination).

What does this mean for you? It means that you either a) are already rich and can purchase that land, factory, machinery, and workers immediately (website, product rights, advertisement, etc) or b) you need to start building these Internet capital goods or you are definitely going to fail within 3 months.

So how do you know what is and isn't an Internet capital good? An Internet capital good is an item that, once you build or purchase it, will constantly add or create value for your business. This includes links, content, dynamic scripts, free tools that your targeted audience can use, and mailing lists that you can consistently offer your products to.

If you are not making an effort to build these Internet capital goods, you are the Internet equivalent of real life business that purchases frozen pizzas from the supermarket next door, heats them up in a microwave, and then tries to sell them. On top of that, your store has no napkins or condiments or tables or chairs or pizza boxes. Everyone must sit on and eat off of the floor.

Would you want to purchase pizza there? No, you would get it at the supermarket frozen at a cheaper price, or you would go next door, where they make it and then bake it in an oven, where you could sit down at a table in a chair.

Take the time to understand this point: If you want to succeed, you absolutely must either have money to buy your land, store, table, chairs, and oven--or you must build them yourself.

Fortunately for Internet marketers, you have a huge advantage over regular businesses--you can build all of these Internet capital goods; you do not need to pay for any of them.

You can build every Internet capital good I have mentioned above for no cost at all. And you will if you want to succeed on a limited budget. So setup your links. Make quotas; reach those quotas every week. Build content. Find legally reusable expert articles and add them to your website. Build pages that offer free tools to your customers. Use free advertising methods advertise this page as a useful stand-alone (which happens to be linked to your related website). Setup a free content ezine or marketing list that is related to your website. Register with free directories to get customers.

All of these Internet capital goods will not only draw customers to your business through a multitude of sources, but they will also retain customers that come to your website through free or paid advertisement by giving them the option to get free information or use free products.

As every marketing study has indicated, multiple impressions of a product increase a person's chance of buying it--and multiple contacts with a salesperson increases the conversion rate. By retaining customers you will both increase the impression of your product and expose them to your sale copy, which will dramatically increase your conversion rates.

If you get nothing else out of this article, please remember this fact: the only way to successfully build and expand an Internet business is by building Internet capital goods and staying around until you have enough to constantly draw and retain customers. If you do not have the money to purchase these capital goods, start building them today for free or you will probably be ready to give up in about 3 months.

Copyright 2004 Isaiah Hull

About The Author
Isaiah Hull makes money online teaching other people to build successful Internet businesses: http://www.workathomerightnow.net/pluginprofitsite.html.

Email him personally at mailto:Houolol@aol.com to receive free, personal, step-by-step instructions to build a home business online for an investment of $0 to $300 monthly.

Introduction to Paypal

Paypal Primer
by: Jakob Jelling

To conduct business on the Internet, whether informal, one-time only transactions between two friends, or a full-fledged business selling products or services, payment arrangements have to be made. Before 1998, this often meant either checks sent through snail-mail, or very expensive, and often hard-to-obtain, merchant accounts for online credit card processing. In 1998, PayPal was introduced to fill the payment processing gap.

PayPal now has about 50 million members, but was originally introduced to provide a payment processing service for online auction buyers and sellers, in particular, eBay. Since then, PayPal has grown into the premier third-party payment processing service. In fact, PayPal was so successful that eBay bought the company in 2002, replacing their own Billpoint service with the far superior PayPal service.

PayPal is free to join, although buyers are no longer required to join in order to pay for goods and services from seller members. Many people are still afraid to do business online, and won't provide their credit card information. Scams certainly abound in cyberspace, but PayPal is a solid, reputable company, and there is little to fear.

For sellers, PayPal offers much lower processing fees than many other third-party processors. PayPal rates are not much higher than those of merchant account processors, and there are no ongoing fees. You only pay PayPal fees when you make a sale. It is also much easier and faster to set up a PayPal account than a merchant account. Some sellers complain of unjustly frozen PayPal accounts, and as with most any service, there are plenty of horror stories surrounding other PayPal actions. However, many more buyers and sellers have used PayPal from the beginning with no problem at all.

PayPal offers transfer of funds to and from a PayPal account through e-checks, debit and credit cards, and instant transfer from other members' accounts. They offer debit cards to allow you to make purchases against your account balance, just as you would with a bank debit card, a money-market interest rate on the balances in some accounts, seller and buyer protection services, invoicing, recurring billing, shopping cart, and many other tools that online merchants may need.

By Jakob Jelling
http://www.sitetube.com

About The Author
Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.sitetube.com. Visit his website for the latest on planning, building, promoting and maintaining websites.

Writing Articles for Profit

by: Steve Shaw

Most Internet marketers worth their salt know how effective articles can be to generate promotion for their web sites. The major problem for many is simply writing the article.

This article shows you the exact steps I usually take to construct an article to achieve maximum publicity for my web site. By following this model you will be able to do the same quickly and easily.

1. The Big Idea
The very first stage is to get the basic theme of your article. The inspiration for my own articles often comes to me when I am 'switched off' and doing something completely different.

The theme for your article should be closely linked to the theme of your web site, in order to attract targeted prospects.

2. Write The Title And Introduction
At first this is only a rough introductory paragraph or two, and I do not worry too much about the exact wording at this stage. My introductory paragraph(s) simply tell the reader what the article is about. I usually write my first idea of a title for the article at this point too.

3. Sketch Out The Content
I brainstorm the major points I want to cover, and write them down, one after the other. I do not worry about their order, my major concern is getting the ideas in my head down on paper. I may even write down the odd sentence or paragraph to back up each point.

Once I've got the basic outline, I look at the order of the points I am making, switch them around if necessary, and make sure I have written down everything I want to cover.

4. Fill In the Content
This is when the real meat of the article is written.

Each of the points I have briefly written down before need filling in. I need to explain what I mean, and go into further depth.

You should not fill your article with affiliate links to sites you want to promote, nor link to your own web site unless absolutely necessary. Publishers do not like it and many will ignore your article. If you want to link to a quality in-context resource, link to the main web site URL instead. You get ample chance to link to your own web site via the resource box at the end of the article (more details below).

Also do not make any part of your article sound like an advert. Publishers are looking for quality articles that will be appreciated by their subscribers, not solo ads for your web site. You have plenty of room to link to your own web site in the resource box.

For the maximum chance of your article getting published, you are looking at an ideal length of around 800 words. I would also ensure it is not less than 600 words, or more than 1000 words - although I must admit I do occasionally write longer ones.

Remember at first this is just a draft. I never expect it to be perfect straight away - I just get my words down and my points across. Once I have got the main body of the article in place, I go back over it and revise as necessary until I am happy with the content.

5. Write Your Resource Box
Many authors struggle with this part, but there really is no need.

The resource box goes right at the end of your article, and provides some information about the author. Think about the reader of the article - they want to know more about who wrote the article.

I include a bit of information about myself, and provide a link to one of my web sites that has some relevance to the article. Ideally a resource box should be brief and contain just two or three sentences. For an example, see the resource box at the end of this article.

Some authors attempt to cram the resource box with more than one link. Rather than achieving more promotional power from their article, it actually has the reverse effect by turning off the publisher, who may have otherwise published your article, and confusing the reader.

6. Leave It Alone
In my experience, this is the most essential stage. I save my article and leave it completely alone for at least a couple of days. So many people are impatient and do not do this, but I find it to be essential in boosting my chances of publication.

The idea is that you come back to it with completely fresh, but critical, eyes. This works like magic for helping to transform a fairly mediocre article with low chances of publication, to a high quality article that is more likely to get picked up by a large number of publishers and reward you with a flood of publicity.

7. The Final Edit
I open up my article again and read it. I usually spot parts of my article that do not flow very well, paragraphs that can be improved or condensed, sentences with words missing, and typos. This is where I polish up my article and ensure it all flows really well.

I have seen many articles that have obviously never gone through this stage, and they will only have a very slim chance of publication. Some minor editing would have improved them immensely. It really is worth that extra bit of effort to get your article up to scratch, otherwise all your hard work in writing the article will be wasted.

Copyright 2004 Steve Shaw

About The Author
Steve Shaw works full time online, creating systems and software for effective e-marketing. His popular e-course provides a lot more information on how you can publish articles for profit, including how to submit them to potential publishers for a flood of publicity to your web site:
=> http://www.takanomi.com/publish-articles.php

The Affiliate Model – How To Make Money As An Affiliate

by: Rob Rawson

Affiliate programs are a very easy and effective way to make money on the Internet right? so how do they work?

Essentially, affiliate programs are a way that you can promote other people’s products and get paid a commission for promoting them. You can get paid to promote almost any type of product and service on the web.

Most of the top companies on the web have Affiliate Programs. Dell computers, Amazon, Expedia, AT&T, Chase bank, Delta airlines and Walmart are just a few examples - did you know that you can be paid a commission to sell products online for any one of these companies?

The best thing about affiliate programs is that it is so easy to set up a relationship with any one of these companies. Normally in business you would have to spend weeks or months of meetings, proving that you are a worthwhile partner to be able to do business with these sorts of companies. However, an affiliate program allows you to get commissions straight away as a little guy,without all the hassle of meetings and forming that relationship.

There are thousands of affiliate programs that you can promote on the web. You have so many choices that you could pursue. The key factors for success with affiliate programs are the following:

Choosing the right affiliate programs. If you choose certain affiliate programs you will likely only be able to earn a small income because their payouts are small. Other affiliate programs have very large payouts and high earning per click (EPC). If you don’t know what earning per click (EPC) is, it is the average amount that affiliates earn from each click to the site that they are sending money to. Some networks express it in earnings per one hundred clicks.

For example you could say an EPC of $57. This means you make $57 on average for every 100 visitors that you send to a site or 57 cents for sending one visitor to the site. Generally I am looking for affiliate programs with an EPC of $20 or more, which means I am making 20 cents per visitor. Usually, I focus on programs that have an EPC of $100 or $1 per visitor. When you are earning $1 per visitor you have potential for a lot more profit.

The second critical factor is getting the traffic to the affiliate program. We are going to talk about this more in other issues of the Ecourse.

The third factor is being able to pre-sell to the visitors of your site. Let’s say that you have a website where you discuss different products and services, a comparison type of site. You can recommend the product that you think is most beneficial and then when people click through to the site after your recommendation, they are much more likely to buy.

How do you find good affiliate programs?
One easy way is to go to all of the affiliate networks and sign up for affiliate programs there. The major affiliate networks like Commission Junction have thousands of affiliate programs that you can join in all sorts of categories. You can find a listing of the different affiliate networks at: http://www.profitpuppy.com/affiliate-networks.htm

It also depends on what type of strategy you are pursuing with affiliate

programs. There are many different strategies and we can’t go into all of them now, we’ll talk about them in detail in some later issues of the ecourse. However here are a few strategies to get your brain ticking over with ideas:

You can promote affiliate programs directly using Google Adwords. You simply promote the program by creating your own ads. This is the quickest way to make money on the Internet as you can get started and in 1-2 hours have some ads up that are making you money. However, it is getting more and more difficult to make money with this strategy as there are too many people doing it. As with anything in life, if something is too easy to make money, everyone will start doing it and it then becomes more difficult because there is more competition.

One strategy is to focus on a particular niche area … let’s say you decide to do a site on car rentals. You could then join all the affiliate programs to do with car rentals. You can find many of them through the major networks, but you might also need to search on Google for something like – ‘car rental affiliate program’.

Another strategy is to build lots of little mini sites on the Internet focusing on different keyword phrases that people are searching for and get free search engine listings in Google and other search engines. This is a great strategy because the traffic that you get is free. This is general called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is great and can make you a lot of money but it is also very tricky. It is not easy to get to the top of the search engines. It requires a lot of knowledge, and quite a bit of effort. Don’t think that you can just read a book and do it … normally it is going to take months of dedication to get there.

That’s a few ideas, but whatever area you are involved in on the Internet you should definitely be promoting affiliate programs. Even if you sell your own product online you should still look into affiliate programs as a back end profit centre for your business.

Affiliate programs are one of the quickest ways to make money on the Internet. Over the next few issues of the Ecourse we are going to talk about other strategies of using affiliate programs.

If you want a free email course on affiliate programs you can send a blank email to: tamsaffiliatemarketing@sitesell.net This email course is written by Ken Evoy and it is this course that actually got me started in marketing on the Internet.

http://www.profitpuppy.com

15 Website Elements That Attract Visitors

by: Catherine Franz

Here is a quick list of components that make a website attractive. They are listed in layers of attractiveness beginning with the "must" haves, to "nice to haves."

1. State the website's purpose up front and clearly of the site. Do this as quickly as possible. The visitor needs to know immediately if they have landed on the right site. They also need to know "what’s in it for me to stay here." If you don't provide this, they are gone. 90% of the sites on the Net don't do this.

2. Give visitors the ability to search for exactly what they are looking for, if they have something exact in mind. A "site search feature" satisfies this best. Allow the search feature to be prominently displayed and not hidden away somewhere. It is best place in the navigational system so that it shows up on every page. Sales letter only websites are an exception to this rule. Return visitors and visitors that have something specifically in mind, want the option and ability to find what they want fast. So give it to them.

3. Photos allow connection. Especially to people who process visually. Clip art gets them to pay attention, however, it doesn't create much of a connection. Personal photos connect within reason. Keep them less than three to a page. One photo always needs to be in the top portion of the screen on the first page. It doesn't need to be large, but attractive.

4. Ways to capture visitors information wherever possible.

5. Place items on the site that keep them lingering. Audio and video are one of these, yet there are other less time consuming and inexpensive ways to keep them entertained.

6. Articles. For solopreneur sites, your own written articles. For other sites, articles with various authors yet on focus.

7. Interactive elements. For example: response forms, quizzes

8. If you use a shopping cart, it must be fluid, no hiccups. PayPal is not a shopping cart, it’s a hiccup. All auto responders must be well written and positive. If someone purchased something, they need the energy of "thank you."

9. Give offers that are of value.

10. Clear path of where a newcomer can start if it is their first visit.

11. Newsletter that is consistent with the 80/20 rule. 80% value and 20% marketing.

12. E-courses of value.

13. Well-written e-books: 50-75 pages, plus valuable information (info not found anywhere else). Length doesn't do more than provide perceptive value. Once purchased and the vastness is only fluff, then your credibility is shot. Complimentary e-books meet the same requirements.

14. Give them other ways to receive more on...you if you are the focus...or the information if that is the focus.

15. Automated referral system. If you want referrals for your products or services, make it easy for you to get them. Set it up so it’s as automatic as possible, and clear and easy for someone to send you a referral. Be clear on what and how you want to give for that referral.

About The Author
Catherine Franz, a Business Coach, specialized in writing, marketing and product development.

Newsletters and additional articles: http://www.abundancecenter.com

blog: http://abundance.blogs.com

catherine@abundancecenter.com

How to Write Great Headlines

by: Dean Phillips

According to experts, just changing the headline of an ad or sales letter has been known to dramatically improve the effectiveness of an ad or sales letter by up to 1700 percent! Yes, headlines are that powerful--and that important!

An effective headline will do many things at once. It will attract the readers attention, convey benefits by appealing to the readers self-interest and it will set the stage for what is to come. It will also target the audience for which it was intended.

But the number one thing a headline should always do is answer the question, "What's in it for me?" Why? Because that's all most of us really care about.

So what are the characteristics of a good headline? First and foremost, an effective headline must be believable. I'm sure you've heard the saying, "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."

However, if your product really can make me: jump higher than Kobe Bryant, attract as many women as I want, or make me millions while I sleep; if you put it in your headline, you had better be able to effectively prove it in your copy.

Many experts believe the shorter the headline, the better. I don't necessarily agree with that. However, keeping your headlines to fifteen words or less is probably a good idea.

Make sure your headlines are easy to read. When typesetting your headlines don't use fancy fonts, reverse type, all caps or italics. I recommend you utilize a simple, easy to read type style such as Times Roman. You can see an example of this on my website.

Headlines that evoke some type of emotional response are the most effective and generally make more sales. Emotions motivate people into action. The stronger the emotion, the quicker the action. Therefore, headlines that make the reader afraid of losing something or excited about gaining something will invariably produce the best results.

Using the proper words and phrases is critical. Below I've listed just a few of the words and phrases that, over the years, have proven to be very effective at grabbing the readers attention:

Save... Amazing... Finally... Love... Secrets Of... Announcing... Free... Luxury... Security... At Last... New... Bargains... Obsession... Breakthrough... Protect... The Truth About... Discover... How To... Rewards... Yes... Sale... You... Are You... Sex... Win... Improve... Do You...

After grabbing your readers attention, this is where you want to answer the question, "What's in it for me?" To do this, you have to know a little about your target audience. What are they interested in? What are their priorities? What makes them respond?

Craft your headlines to use words and phrases that will pique your potential buyers interest. If you are targeting people interested in starting their own home business, try phrases such as "Stay Home And Make Money" or "Kiss Your Job Goodbye Forever". If your product happens to be diet pills, try "Lose 10 Pounds In 10 Days".

A word of caution here. This is the point where headlines tend to get unbelievable. Make sure that your claims are truthful and that your copy supports their truthfulness.

Once you have a firm grasp of the aforementioned basics, look around your house and select several different products, and write as many headlines as you can think of for each product.

Write variations of the same headline until you have exhausted all the ideas you can think of. This will be both frustrating and difficult at first, but it will become easier with practice. Remember, nothing worthwhile ever comes easy.

After you have your list of headlines, make sure each one passes the test for the following criteria for a good headline. 1. Does it grab the readers attention? 2. Does it answer the question, "What's in it for me?" 3. Is it truthful? If a potential headline does not meet these three criteria, rewrite it or eliminate it from your list altogether.

Continue using the process of elimination, one headline at a time, until you're left with what you feel are the three best and strongest headlines, based on the criteria presented in this article.

How will you know which headline is the best overall?

Unfortunately, there's no way to know for sure until you test them against each other. The headline that pulls the most sales or responses is your winner!

About The Author
Dean Phillips is an Internet marketing expert, writer, publisher and entrepreneur. Questions? Comments? Dean can be reached at mailto: dean@lets-make-money.net

Website: http://www.lets-make-money.net

Twelve Business Models for Blog Technologies

Online Business Networks Blog has an interesting post on Twelve Business Models for Blog Technologies They divide it into four categories: - Traditional Businesses Leveraging Blogs - including Individual virtual presence, Corporate virtual presence and Using blogs to improve existing processes. - Selling Blog Technology - including Technology sales to the enterprise and Technology sales focused on individuals . - Media Businesses Using Blogs - including Online communities, Premium Content and Blog-based media. - Peripheral Services - including Enabling advertising to blog audience, Data about the blogosphere, Consulting and Education. Its an interesting breakdown - where does your proBlogging fit into this framework? Most of mine to this point focusses upon 6. - Blog-based media.

Kanoodle BrightAds Challenges Google AdSense

'Kanoodle, provider of sponsored listings for search results and content pages, today announced the launch of BrightAds™, a self-service tool for small- to medium-sized content publishers that will enable them to run Kanoodle’s content-targeted sponsored links on their sites. With the launch of BrightAds, Kanoodle enters the market of competing against Google AdSense to secure small and medium sized publishers.

A unique benefit of BrightAds is that it maps ads by “topics” rather than keywords, which prevents core keyword mapping challenges and provides publishers with ads that are more relevant to their site’s content. This protects the editorial integrity of publishers’ sites, ensuring that the ads appearing on each page are directly related to the context of the reader and are not dependent on arbitrary keywords.'

Read More at Search Engine News Journal » Kanoodle BrightAds Challenges Google AdSense

Writing Articles - Inform First, Sell Later

By John M. Hanevy

Many people buy things without ever looking at the ingredients. When was the last time you read a detergent bottle for example? Even if you did read it, chances are you didn't understand it. You probably shop for many products based solely on the lowest price, because you see no benefits of buying a particular brand.

For example, not too many people care what brand of notepad paper they buy--they want the cheapest price. This is true of your customers also, if they don't understand the benefits of buying from you--they won't. They'll go with the cheapest price, or remain loyal to their current brand. You must fully understand the benefits of your products, or services, so you can inform your customers of them.

If you don't know why your products are better than your competitor's--then neither do your customers! Do some research on your products! What ingredients are in your products but not in your competitor's? Why is this significant to your customers? (Always focus on the customer!) What specific benefit(s) does each ingredient provide? What specific benefit does your service provide that your competitor does not?

Understanding the benefits of your products completely will make it easier for you to overcome common "objections" of the customer--"too expensive", "no different than anyone else's product", or "I don't need this". The best salespersons anticipate their prospects objections and have an answer ready for every one! They understand what makes their products and/or services different--and better--than the rest. Most importantly, they focus on the customer, not themselves or their company.

Use articles to explain the benefits of your product--without having them sound like ads. Inform first, sell later. You have to give the customer a reason to buy your product over somebody else's.

I know this sounds a bit obvious--but too many ads focus on how great the company is, and not on how the customer benefits from purchasing their products. Remember, the customer is always thinking "what's in it for me".

That's worth repeating--the customer is always thinking "what's in it for me". They don't care about where the manufacturing facility is located, how many cases where sold last year, or that "Joe Celebrity" loves it! Although testimonials should be utilized when possible, they shouldn't be the focal point of your ad/article.

The customer wants to know how will I benefit from this? Will it make me healthier? Financially independent (be careful here, don't make claims you can't back up with hard data!)? Will it make me feel cleaner, safer, younger, or sexier? Will I feel better about myself by using this product--will I be helping the environment, or a cause, both? What's in your product that provides benefits to ME! Your article should point out these benefits!

If you've read any articles from the marketing "gurus" you know that this is a common theme from all of them--sell the benefits. Learn the benefits of your products, then write articles that explain these benefits to your target audience.
**********************************************************
Learn from other marketers, and get free leads for your business! The IAHBE is focused on helping entrepreneurs become successful with their business. Free leads, audio training, written training, and much more--every month! Free trial available, no obligation. http://www.ezinfocenter.com/8386234/IAHBE

Gawker Targets Males with New Blogs

ProBlogger Nick Denton from Gawker has just announced three new blogs:
- Jalopnik a blog about Cars
- Kotaku a blog about Video Games
- Screehead a blog about "funny shit."

The blogs unashamedly are targeting a young male readership - a smart strategic move from Gawker who has obviously seen the same research about Young males using the net more and more that the rest of us have seen. The difference between Nick and the rest of us is that he's done something about it and is positioning himself very well for some successful and profitable blogging.

They've also signed a deal with Audi to sponser their Jalopnik blog - another smart move.

Business Blogging - Inc.com

Inc.com has a good article introducing the concept of Business Blogging. 'Blogging is not just a gadget for geeks but is a low cost tool that enhances the overall communication of your business, saves you time and money, improves online marketing and more. A blog provides dynamism and life that a static website often does not have. You should take the time to determine if a blog can benefit your business' website.' They list a number of reasons why a business might want to use blogs including: - More efficient communication - Easier distribution of your company's marketing message and content - Reduction in IT staff workload - Boost in search engine marketing efforts They cover a whole lot more ground in the article - well worth the read.

Write a review and win a $100 Amazon Gift Voucher

I'm running this competition on my other blogs and thought some of you might like to participate.

Do you own a digital camera, printer, scanner or camera phone? Would you like the chance to win a $100 (US) gift from Amazon simply by writing a short review of your experiences with it?

Digital Photography Blog, in conjunction with Camera Phone Zone and Printer Blog are giving you the chance to win a $100 gift voucher from Amazon for each review of a printer, scanner, digital camera, camera phone or photo editing software package. You get one chance in the draw for each review submitted in the next 30 days. Entries close on 5th November 2004. Please carefully read the following Conditions and Guidelines before submitting entries.

Entries should be submitted via email to Darren at:

darren at livingroom.org.au or by using this contact form (please ensure you leave a contact email address so that we can contact you regarding your prize if drawn on November 5).

Conditions of entry:

- Reviews will be published on one or more of the above mentioned blogs.
- Reviews must be at least 500 words in length and include a rating out of 10.
- Reviews must be your original work.
- We don't mind if your review has been previously published but we would like to know the URL of where it appears (we will publish a link to it).
- The prize is a $100 gift certificate from Amazon. You may spend it in any way you wish. We will purchase and forward the certificate via email within 14 days of the announcement of your winning the competition.
- If you would like to include a link back to your own blog in your review we would be happy to credit you in this way.
- You may submit as many reviews as you wish and will receive one entry into the competition for each entry. The more you submit the better your chances of winning the $100 gift.
- You may write the review in a format that suits you but we would strongly recommend that you include some or all of the following categories in your format.
- We reserve the right to reject any reviews that do not meet the above requirements or that we feel do not meet a reasonable standard - if we do this you will not receive an entry into the competition. Your reviews do not need to be super technical - but they do need to be reasonably written and show genuine knowledge of and experience with the product under review. We reserve the right to do some editing of the reviews for spelling, grammar and other reasons.

Suggested Review Format/Categories
- Introduction to the cameras features
- Your First Impressions
- Description/Comments on Layout and Design of Product
- Description/Comments on Quality of results (images, printing, scanning, phone) produced
- Description/Comments on Ease of Use/Usability
- Comments on Value for money
- General Comments/Recommendations
- Rating out of 10 and your reasoning for such a rating
- You may wish to provide 1 or two sample pictures with your review
- What you like/What you don't like
- Any relevant links/sources for your review

Once again - we're not after highly technical reviews (although if you're a techy person please submit them) - rather we want real comments about digital imaging products from real users. So be yourself - speak the truth about the product and send your reviews in.

Online Advertising Continues to Increase

In the finance segment on the ABC (Australian National) News tonight there was mention that the last quarter had seen advertising in Print and TV media have a down turn. Correspondingly there was an increase in Online advertising for the same period which has to be heartening news for those of us exploring online revenue streams.

Two Pillars of a Successful Web Site (or Blog)

NB - this article has been written for for general web design but the principles within it can just as easily be applied to good Blog design.

By Nick Usborne

For a web site to get close to fulfilling its potential, you need absolute clarity on two points.

First, achieve clarity on what your site’s core purpose is

Is to provide information? Is it to complete direct sales? Is it to drive prospects to pick up the phone and call you? Is it to start a free trial? To register?

The more companies I work with, especially larger ones, the more apparent it becomes to me that very few sites have absolute clarity of purpose.

All too often, too many different stakeholders impose a variety of different ‘purposes’. The result? A site that is not clearly focused. A site that appears disorganized and complicated to its visitors. A site that wanders, meanders and ultimately fails – because none of the writers or designers really know what they should be doing.

When and if you do achieve clarity as to the purpose of your site, everything becomes easier.

You can look at every page, every heading, every line of content, every link and image...and ask yourself this simple question: Is this content working hard enough to achieve our purpose?

If it isn’t, change it, or dump it. It’s as simple as that.

You may be thinking, “Nick you are so naïve. Our business is complex. We have more than one purpose.”

That may be. If you are selling high-end hospital equipment, for instance, your site may serve both to drive new sales and also to support existing customers.

That’s OK. But make it clear. Make it clear on your home page. Make it obvious to visitors that there are two distinct areas of the site – one for people who already have some of your equipment, and one for those who don’t.

Then apply the same discipline to every page in each area. Does the page drive your purpose?

Second, understand what your visitors are hoping to find

I’m written about this before. But without this second pillar in place, your site won’t work as hard as it should.

Put simply, you need to understand the expectations of your visitors. Understand why they are coming to your site, what they are hoping to find.

When someone arrives at your site, whatever the landing page, they have a ‘pain’ or problem they want solving.

If your site is doing its job, it will take that visitor only a couple of moments before they think, “Yes, I can find what I need right here.”

When that happens, they become filled with confidence.

It’s then your job to help that person achieve their task as quickly and as simply as possible.

Both pillars working together

When your own purpose is clear, and when you meet the expectations of your visitors, everything becomes golden. You both get what you want.

How do you get to this ‘golden’ place?

Just step back from your site for a while and do some thinking. Get clarity on the purpose of your site. And go back over your site’s history to figure out what it was people were hoping for when they arrived.

For sure, not everyone came to your site for exactly the same reason – but maybe 80% came for one of three reasons.

This isn’t about achieving perfection. It’s about getting as close as you can.

Nick Usborne is a copywriter, author, speaker and advocat of good writing online. You can access his complete archive of newsletter articles here.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

Search Engine News Weekly Report - Clusty, Yahoo, and MSN

The end of September and beginning of October has seen some changes in search engine news and the addition of a new search engine into the second tier search mix - Clusty. Additionally, MSN is planning on including search in their new Messenger update (in the same way Yahoo did) and the ability to build link popularity via java powered linking scripts. Yahoo has given My Yahoo a facelift while Google has been accused of cencorship within their new Google News China. One of the biggest changes in search which will effect search engine rankings is that Yahoo is apparently testing (and integrating) search result pages with 10 listings instead of the previous 20 which were listed on Yahoo search results pages. Here's a run down of this week's search engine news.

Clusty Search Engine Launches
Vivisimo this week unveiled Clusty.com, the first full-service search engine site powered completely by Vivismio's breakthrough clustering technology. Instead of simply presenting long lists of results, Clusty.com groups search results into folder topics, giving users a quick overview of the main themes in the results and letting them focus on topics of interest. Designed to relieve consumers of information overload and provide easy access to information that is usually overlooked with current search engines, Clusty changes how consumers do general Web searches as well as shopping, blogs, gossip, images, Wikipedia and people searches.

More on the Clusty Search Engine

MSN Messenger To Add Search Engine Feature
Microsoft is planning to limited beta release the latest version of Instant Messaging client MSN Messenger as early as next week. The screenshots of one of the early leaked release were available on tech sites earlier this week but were later removed on Microsoft's request.

The planned release date of the final version is expected to be in the early 2005.

Messenger users will also notice integration with MSN Services like the search engine and even blogging.

More on MSN Messenger and Search

Google and Chinese Censorship
Recently Google, in the own words, explained their position on operating in China and their censorship of certain news stories on the Chinese version of Google News. Google News has also been looked into in the United States because of political bias reports. Some people seem to think that the Google News algorithm is serving better political play and supportive articles for George W. Bush on searches for "Bush" than they do for John Kerry on searches for well, "Kerry."

While the US version of Google News is giving results from all sorts of different news services, Google News China is practicing true censorship by excluding non-Government approved (non PRC) news resources.

Read more on Google News and its expansion into China

My Yahoo's Facelift
Yahoo is now allowing My Yahoo users to test out the new My Yahoo layout. Yahoo! lists the new features to be found at the new My Yahoo here. Jeremy Zawodny has some great information on this in his entry named New My Yahoo Beta, Featuring RSS and Atom. Anyway, I was smart enough to compare the old with the new before switching directly to the new design. Here are my first impressions of the new my yahoo design.

See the difference in My Yahoo

Yahoo Dropping Results from 20 per page to 10.
WebMasterWorld has an interesting discussion on the effects of Yahoo's change from 20 results per page to 10 results and how this will effect those listed for rankings such as #8 or #9 (now bottom of first page) and those at rankings such as #11 or #12 (top of 2nd page).

Google Adwords Traffic Estimator Explained
Google added this great feature that helps AdWords customers figure out an estimated level of traffic that they should expect to see based on the CPC value and keyword phrase. But ad features are added, it adds an additional level of complexity for the end user. A thread at Search Engine Watch brought in a response from an official AdWords representative. I'll highlight some points in his post, that I hope will add more insight into how Traffic Estimator works.

Read up on the Google AdWords Traffic Estimator

Do Search Engine Spiders Pick Up Url's in a Javascript Menu?
This subject has been discussed before in length, but solutions have remained personal opinion. A thread over at Highrankings addresses some interesting issues regarding whether or not a search engine spider can extract links from a javascript menu. If the javascript is external, then it can not read past it, but what about a menu that is completely in the code? Will a [noscript] tag work well as a solution to a javascript menu? I have played around with the [noscript] tag when using a javascript menu, and as one member points out its may not be the most aesthetic solution in the serps. What you get is a long list of urls in the snippet instead of a description.

Can Javascript links hold the same value as HTML links for search engine optimization? Read more and share your ideas

Feedster's RSS Feed Job Search Engine
RSS is hot and RSS search engines continue to get hotter by taking advantage of all of the bandwidth draining RSS feeds that are literally running all over the web for all different types of content oriented sites. Recently RSS search engines have concentrated on the RSS feed innovators including blogs, news feeds, and political commentary sites by making indexes of such targeted content searchable. Now Feedster is taking a new step into condensing the feeds of job offerings into a searchable database which can even be read via a news aggregator.

More on RSS and Feedster's Job Search Engine

CopyScape - Keeping your Content Secure from Plagiarists

CopySafe is an internet infringement Protection tool that helps you to find out of people are stealing your blog's content. I've accidentally stumbled upon a number of sites recently that have copied and pasted articles that I'd written word for word (and link for link) from one of my blogs onto another blog. On every occasion so far it only took an email to the relevant blogmaster for them to remove it (with the threat of further action) but I've often wondered how many other articles I've written have been stolen. Now with CopySafe I can find out. All it takes is for you to add the URL of the post from your blog and it will suggest possible plagiarism infringements.

Found via Affiliate Tip

Blogs enter mainstream, eye revenue streams

This article in New York Business takes a look at two of the emerging Revenue Raising Blogging Organizations - Gawker and Weblogsinc.

“Shedding their outsider status, blogs are not only entering the political and cultural mainstream, but they are also looking to become moneymaking media businesses. Two of the most aggressive companies, Manhattan-based Weblogs Inc. and Gawker Media, are intent on building profitable, advertising-supported blog networks.

”In the last six months, advertisers have woken up to Web logs,“ says Nick Denton, a British transplant whose Gawker Media publishes three irreverent gossip sites, including Gawker.com for New York and Wonkette.com for Washington, D.C., as well as a porn site, and a blog devoted to technology gadgets. ”They've become interested because they see a young, hip demographic that is pretty elusive in other mediums,“ he says.”

Of course, it's far from certain that these current media darlings will be any more successful than the rash of Web-based magazines that sprouted during the dot-com era. However, these operations have learned an important lesson--keep expenditures to a minimum.

Read more at Blogs Enter Mainstream, Eye Revenue Streams

How Yahoo's Recent Facelift Can Mean More Traffic To Your Site

By Tinu AbayomiPaul

It even surprised me.

Yes, even though I have been pointing out the possibility since July, and was forced by demand to release my study findings before my book was even half finished, I was shocked when I heard the news as well.

You see, I was sure we were at least a year off from this glorious day.

The News

Yahoo has had a little facelift, which you've probably read about by now. The real news is more important for your site - the “My Yahoo!” page looks different too.

On September 28, 2004, surfers who logged in to their personalized Yahoo area saw an announcement explaining the RSS and Atom files that show updated information to a website as content feeds, effectively pushing news feeds into the mainstream.

The new look to this section of Yahoo was presented as a full page ad to every single account holder upon first log in that day, and even now, there remains a notice posted.

When I logged into my page in the "My Yahoo!" section, I saw a big difference in the number of feeds left to choose from, as well as in the way they were presented.

Currently, the RSS module boasts "150,000 sources". If your site isn't one of them, its crucial that you act now. If you have one and you’re not getting the results you’d like from your set-up, there are small changes you can implement that will make a huge difference in your listing.

Best results aren’t as easy as submitting your feed now, but you’re still within the window of opportunity - if you do it properly.

What the News Could Mean For Your Site If You Act Now

One of my clients recently called this "the back door into Yahoo". Whether that statement is accurate as far as getting included, or receiving an increase in rankings within Yahoo's search engine via your feed, depends on your site, and whether you create your feed correctly.

If you could use a daily stream of traffic from even a small portion of Yahoo's estimated 20 million users, this could be your final wake-up call. You’ll want to learn how to create a feed that gets well listed immediately.

Currently, the RSS module boasts "150,000 sources". Yahoo will still need hundreds, perhaps thousands more, even if it only intends to list the “creme de la creme” of the submissions it gets. Being in that group is as easy as submitting your feed.

Being at the top of the list isn’t. However, you’re still within the window of opportunity if you take the time to learn how to do this properly. You can get free details on how to do that at helpmerss.com .

“My Yahoo!” RSS Headline module Coming Out of Beta?

If I had to guess, I'd say all signs point to yes. When that happens, Yahoo's RSS/Atom directory will likely contain only those who added their feeds early. New feeds seeking to be included will probably face stricter standards.

If you don't have one yet don’t worry, because it’s never been easier to make one. If you can cut and paste, there are tools all over the Net that will show you how- some will even generate the file for you.

However, there are still certain guidelines you need to follow with your feed to get a good result out of Yahoo - it's not as simple as adding your feed now that there are more competing listings.

Yahoo is still accepting new sources for RSS feeds. Readers of my last book state that they are getting excellent results following my instructions, though initial inclusion no longer occurs at the same rate. Plenty of markets have few feeds available, or none at all. Your site could fill that void.

That means you still have a chance at a first page ranking. The traffic I get on a daily basis from My Yahoo readers alone sounds like I just like to brag.

And I do, but that's hardly the point.

The point is, there's no place you can even go to buy the caliber of exposure to the quality of audience that reads feeds. The typical audience that accesses information by feed are also blog readers. A study this summer estimated that the 69.3% of blog readers are aged 29-50, and that 40% of this audience are people who have household incomes greater than $90,000.

The type of surfer that would subscribe to your feed has pre-qualified themselves as a lead, with a certain level of understanding and interest in your topic, often on a professional level. And if you don't spend every post hitting them over the head with your sales pitch, they can be both loyal and interactive.

(If you do, they'll unsubscribe from your feed faster than you can spell s-p-a-m.)

And if you're in the business of providing information you can use, in a way that shows how you can solve their problem, it's like preaching to the converted. If your product solves their problem, and you show that you deserve the trust of this subscriber, you’ll also find the route to a sale an increasingly downward slope.

The bottom line - this is the power surfer's favorite toy. And if your content appeals to them, you need to learn how to play.

------------------------
Learn how Tinu saw a 75% increase in both traffic and sales from feeds at http://freetraffictip.com/rssbook.. For free reprint rights to her articles (and a potential $500 bribe) send a blank email to moneyarticles@freetraffictip.com .

Web Usage Figures - Digital Future Report

Digital Future Report 2004 (PDF) is a very useful report for anyone working online. Its full of useful research including the following tidbits: - In the past year of the study numbers of those accessing the web in the US continued to rise (now around 75%). - The average US web user is online 12.5 hours per week (up from 9.4% in 2000) - Over 75% of Net users are 55 years or under. - 66% (approx) have home internet access. - the number of adults who bought online increased slightly over the previous year; the annual number of purchases continues to increase, and the average dollars spent online by adult buyers dipped slightly.

Marketing Your Blog

Orangejack Blog is doing a series of instructional posts about blogging that might be useful for those just starting out in this whole blogging thing. Today they post one about Marketing... "Today we're going to talk about marketing your blog...or letting people know you have a blog and getting them to come read it. To be honest, this was one of the hurdles I wanted to cross early because I just wasn't sure how you'd get people to come. Any why would they? And if they aren't coming, then why invest the time into creating it?

Well, one answer is that some people blog just to do it and don't care if people come or not. That's fine. You've got enough for your Associates degree after taking Blogging 101, 102, 201, and 202. If you want your Bachelors of Blogging in the Orangejack School of Blogging, you're going to learn about marketing.
"
Read more at Orangejack Blog: Blogging 301: Marketing

New Sites Abandoned by Googlebot

Mike Banks Valentine writes this excellent piece on the plight of new websites in their quest to be ranked by Google.

"As a search engine optimization specialist I often optimize existing web pages for small business clients, upload them to the site and see pages re-indexed by Google within a week.

This only happens with existing business sites that have been online for a few years. Google seems to be updating their index as often as every other week at this point and older established sites that are already indexed seem to be re- crawled on that twice a month schedule on a fairly routine basis.

Two clients that hired me for recent work saw their rankings shoot to the top for a newly targeted search phrase in a weekend when I did optimization on a Thursday and they were ranked instantly by Saturday. Now keep in mind that this doesn't happen for everyone, only those that have been online for some period and already have significant content that simply needs tweaking and proper title and metatag information added. They usually have relatively good existing PageRank and do well for other RELEVANT search phrases already. I offer that warning only to avoid instilling false hopes in anyone hoping to achieve the same instant ranking boost overnight."
Read more at Sites Abandoned by Googlebot

The Future of Online Advertising

Free Webmoney has posted a great list of resources for people wanting to explore online advertising options. Its a good starting point on a variety of different topics.

How to Make Money from The Blogging Phenomenon

'Blogging is driven by personal brand: authority and trust. This cannot be manufactured, and cannot be imparted to newbies just by affixing a media brand to them.

Blogging will change everything it touches: classified, the blurring of oped and so-called factual journalism, and the duality between advertisers as content and context.

Blogging is technology driven, and we are not done yet. There are serious fortunes to be made by brining together the right tech mix into new products. In particular, the integration of social tools -- instant messaging, streaming content, and the like -- with blogging.

The media companies are losing their control of the media markets, and knowledgeable and erudite bloggers are being able to directly influence market behavior. This transition will accelerate, and then the media business will reformulate itself around the new paradigm.'
Read More at Business Blogs for Business Applications: How to Make Money from The Blogging Phenomenon

You Don't Have TIME to Sit and Wonder When The Traffic Will Come!

Copyright © 2004 Jack Humphrey



There is so incredibly MUCH you can do to successfully promote your website starting in just a few minutes. In fact, the steps I will give you below can be repeated DAILY for 30 days, an hour a day, for 30 hours of hard-core, tested, proven, traffic-nabbing, sales-producing, profit-driving, marketers' bliss.



It's work, but by now I am hoping you know that the successful people, including me, have worked VERY hard to get where we are today. Online doesn't mean automatic and there is no software that will promote your business hands-off. Lots of tools that help, but there's no way around having to work to succeed in any online business.

That said, let's get to work.



Links Man!



You could spend all 30 hours and much more this next month just getting reciprocal and, more importantly, NON-reciprocal links to your site.



I see so many people just spinning their wheels wondering where to start with their promotion. You don't have TIME to sit and wonder! I am telling you right now that the only promotion tactic that will never EVER change on the internet, no matter what, is getting traffic through links.



There are tens of thousands of places on the web to get good, traffic-driving links.



Go to forums in your niche and get involved. In a year's time you are going to have so many links from just being moderately involved with people in your industry through forums that you will wonder why you didn't sign up as a member of several forums sooner!



You will find so many free resources around the net just by surfing around the sites that your BEST customers are most likely to visit. You don't have TIME to sit and wonder! Get surfing and find out where your customers are and GET YOUR LINK THERE!



I have said a thousand times by now in forums, books, teleseminars, and conferences: If you are going to outlast and outwit your competition and really SUCCEED online, you must show up everywhere your best customers surf. You HAVE to, and that's it.



Given that fact, you have a LOT you can do, really, to get in front of your audience.



Articles



I don't care if you hate writing and have a hard time spelling your name. You have to write informative articles (like this one) to get yourself in front of tens of thousands of people every week or every month, depending on your niche.



If you absolutely refuse to write, hire a ghost writer. You can get an article "ten pack" here: http://webfoxmedia.com



Just don't let this treasure trove of traffic go to someone else when you simply have NOTHING holding you back in this promotion technique. It is one of the most important tools in the small online business owner's arsenal - USE IT!



Get free writing tools and article syndication tools and software here: http://equipmint.com



Blogging



Professional blog software, like Expression Engine, comes with the ability to "ping" the blog search engines. (Getting into those engines is a whole new way to brand your site and products/services and most people are totally clueless to this fact.)



After the presidential race got started, bloggers became very famous. If you don't know what a blog is or how to set one up, or even why it is beneficial to HAVE a weblog, check out this resource: http://expressionengine.com



See my blog here as example (and for way more traffic tools and resources than I can outline here):

http://www.webmastertraffictools.com/weblog/index.php



RSS

Want to learn how to get Yahoo to run your website content via RSS? (RSS is a relatively new trend picking up a huge amount of steam among lay-marketers as a killer tool to increase traffic through syndication of their content.)



Check out this report on how to turn content into RSS and having Yahoo run it for free!

http://webmastertraffictools.com/rssreport/yahoorss.pdf



Forums



Find your forum. Every interest online has one by now, unless you are really into something no one has ever heard about. Sign up today and start participating. Make sure you set up your signature file with your site link.



So many people skip the easy stuff because they think since it's easy it can't be effective. Don't be one of those fools. Take the time to do this right now, today.



There are 10,000 other reasons to get involved in your market arena than just getting a link back to your site by participating, but that set of reasons you will have to discover yourself. Like today! I mean it!



Participate in Blog Discussions



Most blogs have comment areas with lively debates and discussions going on. Another source of branding and "getting to know" people who could turn out to be joint venture partners.



Joint Venture Partners



Getting joint ventures with key people in related industries who have a large reach to YOUR perfect audience is about the easiest traffic in the world to get. If you know how. Here is a free guide to joint ventures you should sign up for:

http://www.jvAlert.com/jvcourse.aspx?id=13



Key-In On What Top Marketers Are Doing NOW



One of the best series of teleseminars which runs weekly is the Perpetual Learning Series by JVAlert. The people they attract to speak to members are nothing less than the best of the best in internet marketing. Learning from them is easy with recorded calls or live events they have for you to choose from with nothing but marketing tactics!



You can even find me there for one of the teleseminars on linking!

http://www.jvAlert.com/LearningSeries.aspx?id=13



Finally...



Get yourself pumped up and STAY pumped up for 30 days. In one month you could be seeing a huge turnaround in your marketing and the results of your efforts. I am pointing you in the right direction. YOU have to take this advice and either do something with it or not. That I cannot help you with.



But as of now, you have no excuse to sit around feeling bad about your marketing and lack of traffic. There are zillions of ways to get noticed. Hopefully the above wets your appetite. Come back to my blog for more every week!

http://www.webmastertraffictools.com/weblog/index.php

---

Jack Humphrey is the author of Power Linking and Power Linking 2: Evolution and is currently working on Power Linking 2005, due for release in December. For more information:

http://power-linking-profits.com

How to Build Massive Keyword Lists

By Rob Taylor

As keyword marketing becomes more and more expensive and competitive, it has become essential when building your lists to focus on the maximum number of phrases and their variations that a surfer might enter into the search engines.

Why?

Because according to Amit Singhal, principal scientist at Google, a guy who really should know what he's talking about, over 50% of the 200 million searches performed a day have never been searched before. He also said: "When performing a search most surfers give a 2-4 word query".

So here are my top 18 recommended ways to build massive keyword lists:

1. Visit your competitor's web pages and look in the title and meta tags.

2. Search for brand names in Google's Sandbox. This will return additional keywords that searchers entered when using the brand name. You can also enter regular keyword phrases and get related keyword phrases that have been searched on Google.

Link: http://www.megastep.com/buzz/GSB.php

3. Look over your past customer testimonials, and see if there are any keywords you can use. This strategy lets you get inside your customer's mind to produce more market centric keywords.

4. Consider synonyms. A synonym is a word having the same or nearly the same meaning as another word or other words in the language. Enter your keywords into Roget's Theasaurus for a list of related synonyms. Also visit LexFN. Links: http://www.megastep.com/buzz/RT.php & http://www.megastep.com/buzz/LFN.php.

5. Think of singular and plurals keywords.

6. What about verbs? Example: Ride, rode, ridden, ridding, rides.

7. Use hyphenation and variations. Example: off-shore, offshore, off shore

8. Consider domain names. Many people enter domain names into the search engines rather than their browser address bar. Example: cnn.com. In July 2004 cnn.com was searched 633677 times on Overture.

9. Get books on your subject and use the terms in the index and glossaries to grow your keyword lists.

10. Download a free copy of Weblog Expert Lite. Then ask your web host how to download your raw stats files. Run them through the software and you will then discover every possible keyword combination that surfers have used to find your website.

Link: http://www.megastep.com/buzz/WLE.php

11. Use Wordtracker. What does Wordtracker do? "…helps you find all keyword combinations that bear any relation to your business or service - many of which you might never have considered." Wordtracker is an essential tool to use.

Link: http://www.megastep.com/buzz/WT.php

12. Then go to the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool. Enter in a keyword and Overture returns all the prior month's searches that include your phrase. The problem with the Overture tool is that it doesn't give you the

exact way that the search was entered. This is why it is essential to use a tool like Keyword Tumbler (see #18) to generate the maximum possible number of keyword combinations that a user might enter a search phrase into the engines.

Link: http://www.megastep.com/buzz/OST.php

13. Use abbreviations and misspellings. A good misspelling tool is Search Spell. Search Spell uses actual misspellings entered into the search engines.

Link: http://www.megastep.com/buzz/SS.php

14. Use acronyms. An acronym is a word formed from the initial letters of a name. Example: due diligence becomes DD. A good acronym generator is Acronym Finder.

Link: http://www.megastep.com/buzz/ACF.php

15. Combine your keyword phrase into one word. Example:

strawbale houses => strawbalehouses.

16. Use "space" and "+" with keywords. Example:

- strawbale+houses

- strawbale +houses

17. Visit Crossword Compiler and download their demo software. Plug in your keywords and discover a multitude of additional words.

Link: http://www.megastep.com/buzz/CC.php

18. Once you have your list compiled visit Keyword Tumbler and download the free software. Put your keywords into a text file and then let Keyword Tumbler generate multiple variations of each keyword phrase you have… instantly!

Link: http://www.megastep.com/buzz/KWT.php

It does this simply by mixing the words in each phrase around. Example: "horses for sale" generates a list like this...

horses for sale

horses sale for

for horses sale

for sale horses

sale horses for

sale for horses

As Perry Marshall, author of the Definitive Guide to Google AdWords said at a recent seminar: "Every combination of keywords that somebody could conceivably type in on Google is a market."

Link: http://www.megastep.com/buzz/PM.php

I hope you have found this advice useful? It's the exact same procedure I use everyday when fighting the pay-per-click wars.

Rob Taylor has been marketing online since 1996. He's sold anything from books, debit cards, security products to art prints. Take advantage of his battle tested marketing strategies that could quietly make you five figure cash profits every single month. Free newsletter at http://www.megastep.com

Product Blogs

Peter Davidson has a post worth reading titled Thinking About Product Blogs. 'Many product blogs(PB) and small biz blogs(SBB) fail to define narrowly enough their audience and what they want to accomplish with their blog. Are you writing for existing customers or prospective customers? Both is the common answer. I would say this is a problem since the interests and information needs of these two groups are very different. For example: many SBBs and PBs post every media or prominent blogger mention they get. While this may be useful to people seeking additional information about your product it is not very useful to existing product owners. Do I really want to read all the press clippings about a product I already own. Press mentions should be compiled in a sidebar or miniblog.' Read more of Thinking About Product Blogs.

Blogging for Beginners

I've been asked to submit a very short piece into a magazine with some basic tips for beginner bloggers which I thought I'd share here. They are not Rocket Science - pretty basic - but a good starting point for someone starting out in Blogging.

- Keep it simple. Start with a free and easy to use blogging tool like Blogger. Pick a simple design and just start writing. You can tweak the design and make it look good later.

- Write for yourself. It takes time for others to find and read your blog so use it as a space to think out loud about the things that interest you. Pick topics that you are passionate about and you'll find people with similar interests will connect with you.

- Interact with your readers. Make sure your blog has a commenting feature - when someone leaves a comment email them or leave a reply comment. People will come back if you take the time to acknowledge and interact with them.

- Set boundaries and think about the purpose of your blog. Remember what you are writing is in a public domain so you might want to refrain from talking about your personal life - people WILL find it. Decide up front about what you will and won't write about and stick to it.

- Read other blogs and link to those that interest you. One of the best things about blogging is how it connects people thinking through similar issues. Link to them, add your own ideas, leave comments on their blog - blogging can bring about rich and wonderful conversations and lead to lasting friendships.

- Be patient, post regularly and have fun. It can take a long time to build up a readership. In the mean time just enjoy the writing process. Make it a daily exercise (it takes some discipline) and don't give up if it seems no-one is reading - just be yourself and have fun.

What tips would you add for a beginner?

Three kinds of blogs - Which are best Suited to Making Money?

Seth's Godin has an interesting post unpacking three types of blogs.

He classifies them as:

1. News Blogs - Chronicling the News of the day on a variety of topics from Politics to Gadgetry to Recipies.
2. Writers Blogs - Where a writer rants, raves, monologues, writes - generally original content inspired by life, readers questions, others thoughts.
3. Our Blogs - Community centred blogs where posts stimulate discussion - its less about one blogger's ideas but about a communal learning/discussion/discovery etc.

Of course some blogs attempt to sit between two of these categories - or emerge from one into another over time.

Thinking about Revenue Streams - how does this apply to commercial opportunities? -

News Blogs - most of the blogs out there that seem to be attempting to generate revenue directly seem to fit into the 'News Blog' type category. For example consider Gizmodo which points to and announces new technological gadgets. There are hundreds of other blogs doing similar things including most of my own ventures.

Some Writers blogs are big and popular enough to generate some income but in my experience it is pretty hard to do so as the advertising pool can be a little limited. Some of the blogs that I'd say fit into this cateogory who run ads include Instapundit and Andrew Sullivan.

'Our Blogs' I see as a bit of an untapped area in terms of the commercial nature. One of the things I've noticed about some 'Our Blogs' is that they generate ALOT of repeat traffic. People come back to them to interact, leave comments, lurk, debate - this is an idea situation for impression based ads programs like Fastclick. In my experience these community type blogs don't tend to do well on programs that rely on clicks as much because those using the blogs become a little blind to the ads - but impression based ads are another story. One of the blogs that I've seen that is very successful in its community focus work is Idol Blog.

Read more of Seth's thinking at Three kinds of blogs

FindWhat - AdRevenue Xpress

FindWhat has just started their own advertising system similar to that of Google's Adsense program. Clickz.com has the story and writes: 'FindWhat.com today debuted AdRevenue Xpress, an automated distribution partner program targeting small to mid-sized businesses. The distribution method is similar to Google's AdSense, but it uses category- or keyword-targeting, rather than contextual targeting. The program allows smaller partners, through a step-by-step set up process, to add a search box which returns ads from the FindWhat.com Network. Alternatively, publishers who want to display ads on their site directly, rather than via a search results page, can choose a FindWhat category and display ads from that category.' So the ads served by this system are not contextually based (so you might be able to run them along side Adsense ads if they look sufficiently different to Adsense format ads). The other difference in the program is that AdRevenue Xpress gives publishers the options to put their earnings back into the system to advertise their own sites - with a 10% discount! This is an attractive feature and something I've often wished I could do with Adsense. It will be an interesting system to watch and I'd be very interested to hear from anyone out there who decides to give the AdRevenue Xpress system a go.

Have Blog, Will Market - Business Blogs

Just found this interesting article on Business Blogging.

"Jonathan Schwartz is a blogging addict. He is also the president and chief operating officer of Sun Microsystems (SUNW) -- a company at the forefront of a new marketing and communications trend that mixes blogging with business. (For the rapidly shrinking minority who don't know what I'm talking about, a weblog -- or blog -- is a personal journal on the Web that's devoted to politics, science, product reviews, or just about anything else you can imagine.) In his corporate blog, Schwartz, naturally, covers the world of Sun. In his latest entry, which focuses on a trip he took last week to Wall Street, he juxtaposes snippets of his Manhattan dinner conversations with Sun's recent work on "radical form factor compression."

The Sun president's Web writing style -- open, honest, ever geeky -- is a hit. Schwartz's blog reaches more than 100,000 readers per month, a number that has grown exponentially during the blog's three-month existence. "I'm stunned by the breadth of it," he says. Surprise aside, it's easy to see why a busy bigwig like Schwartz might take the time to operate what some view as a nerdish hobby. "It is an efficient way for me to have a focused, one-on-one conversation with thousands of people -- shareholders, customers, employees, and the digerati that circle this industry," Schwartz explains....

In theory, at least, blogs are a marketer's dream. That's because -- unlike burning through millions of dollars on TV or print advertising campaigns -- they are a virtually cost-free way to communicate with customers. And not just any customers. These are self-selected hard-core fans of a particular trend, hobby, idea, or product. "Bloggers are an incredibly influential consumer segment," says Technorati CEO David Sifry. "These people are huge networkers. They get the word out quickly on products they like -- and don't like." Exploiting these chatty surfers is especially useful during a product launch. (To help create consumer buzz for its newest film, for example, Fox Searchlight is running a Garden State blog penned by actor/director/writer Zach Braff.) The chief blog marketing goal, then: Create a community of knowledgeable insiders. "Done right, consumers will do all the marketing for the company -- forwarding the information they found to their friend and encouraging others to visit," says Lydia Snape, Internet services director for New York agency Renegade Marketing."

Read more at Have Blog, Will Market:"