Make Money Online

100 Personal Branding Tactics Using Social Media

2009-12-07T07:28:00.000-08:00

Listening

* Build ego searches using Technorati and Google Blogsearch
* Comment frequently (and meaningfully) on blogs that write about you and your posts
* Don’t forget the conversations hiding in Twitter (use Summize.com) and Friendfeed. Be sure to stay aware of those.
* If you can afford it, buy professional listening tools, like Radian6 or others in that category.
* Use Google Reader to store your ego searches.
* Use Yahoo! Site Explorer to see who’s linking to your site.
* Use heat map tools like CrazyEgg to see how people relate to your site.
* Listen to others in your area of expertise. Learn from them.
* Listen to thought leaders in other areas, and see how their ideas apply to you.
* Don’t forget podcasts. Check out iTunes and see who’s talking about your area of interest.
* Track things like audience/community sentiment (positive/negative) if you want to map effort to results.

Home Base

* Home base is your blog/website. Not everyone needs a blog. But most people who want to develop a personal brand do.
* Buy an easy-to-remember, easy-to-spell, content-appropriate domain name if you can. Don’t be TOO clever.
* A really nice layout doesn’t have to cost a lot, but shows you’re more than a social media dabbler.
* Your “About” page should be about you AND your business, should the blog be professional in nature. At least, it should be about you.
* Make sure it’s easy to comment on your site.
* Make sure it’s easy for people to subscribe to your site’s content.
* Use easy to read fonts and colors.
* A site laden with ads is a site that doesn’t cherish its audience. Be thoughtful.
* Pay attention to which widgets you use in your sidebar. Don’t be frivolous.
* Load time is key. Test your blog when you make changes, and ensure your load times are reasonable.
* Register your site with all the top search engines.
* Claim your site on Technorati.com
* Use WebsiteGrader.com to make sure your site is well built in Google’s eyes.

Passports

* Passports are accounts on other social networks and social media platforms. It’s a good idea to build an account on some of these sites to further extend your personal branding.
* Twitter.com is a must if you have a social media audience. It also connects you to other practitioners.
* Facebook and/or MySpace are useful social networks where you can build outposts (see next list).
* Get a Flickr account for photo sharing.
* Get a YouTube account for video uploading.
* Get a StumbleUpon.com account for voting.
* Get a Digg.com account for voting, as well.
* Get an Upcoming.org account to promote events.
* Get a del.icio.us account for social bookmarking.
* Get a Wordpress.com account for its OpenID benefits.
* Get a LinkedIn account for your professional network.
* Take a second look at Plaxo. It’s changed for the better.
* Get a Gmail.com account for use with reader, calendar, docs, and more.

Outposts

* Build RSS outposts on Facebook. Add Flog Blog, and several other RSS tools.
* Build a similar outpost on MySpace, if your audience might be there.
* Make sure your social media is listed in your LinkedIn profile.
* Add a link to your blog to your email signature file (this is still an outpost).
* Be sure your social network profiles on all sites has your blog listed, no matter where you have to put it to list it.
* Make sure your passport accounts (above) point to your blog and sites.
* Use social networks respectfully to share the best of your content, in a community-appropriate setting.
* Don’t forget places like YahooGroups, Craigslist, and online forums.
* Email newsletters with some links to your blog makes for an effective outpost, especially if your audience isn’t especially blog savvy.
* Podcast content can have links to your URL and might draw awareness back to your content, too.

Content

* Create new content regularly. If not daily, then at least three times a week.
* The more others can use your content, the better they will adopt it.
* Write brief pieces with lots of visual breaks for people to absorb.
* Images draw people’s attention. Try to add a graphic per post. (Not sure why this works, but it seems to add some level of attention.)
* Mix up the kinds of pieces you put on your site. Interviews, how-to, newsish information, and more can help mix and draw more attention.
* Limit the number of “me too” posts you do in any given month to no more than three. Be original, in other words.
* The occasional ‘list’ post is usually very good for drawing attention.
* Write passionately, but be brief (unless you’re writing a list of 100 tips).
* Consider adding audio and video to the mix. The occasional YouTube video with you as the star adds to your personal branding immensely, especially if you can manage to look comfortable.
* Brevity rules.

Conversation

* Commenting on other people’s blogs builds awareness fast.
* The more valuable your comments, the more it reflects on your ability and your character.
* Use your listening tools to stay active in pertinent discussions.
* Try not to brag, ever. Be humble. Not falsely so, but truly, because a lot of what we do isn’t as important as saving lives.
* Ask questions with your blog posts. Defer to experts. Learn from the conversation.
* Be confident. Asking for external validation often is a sign of weakness.
* Good conversations can be across many blogs with links to show the way.
* Try never to be too defensive. Don’t be a pushover, but be aware of how you present yourself when defending.
* Disclose anything that might be questionable. Anything, and quickly!
* Don’t delete critical blog comments. Delete only spam, abrasive language posts, and offensive material. (Have a blog comments policy handy, if you get into the deleting mode.

Community

* Remember that community and marketplace are two different things.
* Make your site and your efforts heavily about other people. It comes back.
* Make it easy for your community to reach you.
* Contribute to your community’s blogs and projects.
* Thank people often for their time and attention.
* Celebrate important information in your community (like birthdays).
* Be human. Always.
* Your community knows more than you. Ask them questions often.
* Apologize when you mess up. Be very sincere.
* Treat your community like gold. Never subject them to a third party of any kind without their consent.
* Knowing more about your competitors’ communities is a useful thing, too. Learn who visits, why they visit, and how they interact.
* Measuring your efforts in building community grows out your brand as a natural extension.

Face to Face

* Have simple, useful, crisp business cards to share. Always.
* Be confident in person.
* Clothes and appearance DO matter. WIsh they didn’t, but they do.
* Have a very brief introduction / elevator pitch and practice it often.
* Ask questions of people you meet. Get to know them.
* Don’t seek business relationships right off. Instead, seek areas of shared interest.
* Know when to walk away politely.
* Don’t try to meet everyone in a room. Meet a half dozen or more great new people.
* Never doubt that you are worth it.
* If you’re terribly shy, consider finding a “wing man” for events.
* Doing homework ahead of time (finding people’s most recent blog posts, googling them, etc) helps one feel “in the know.”
* Make eye contact. It’s MUCH more powerful than you know.

Promotion

* Use Digg, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us and Google Reader to drive awareness.
* Promote others even more than you promote yourself
* Bragging isn’t useful to anyone besides your own ego
* Linking and promoting others is a nice way to show you care about people
* Don’t digg/stumble/link every single post. Save it for your very best
* Another promotional tool: guest blog on other sites
* Another promotion tool: make videos on YouTube with URL links
* Another promotion tool: use the status section of LinkedIn and Facebook
* Try hard not to send too many self-promotional emails. Wrap your self-promotion in something of value to others, instead.
* Sometimes, just doing really good work is worthy of others promoting you. Try it.

Google Jagger - good article to read

2009-11-13T11:38:00.000-08:00

First, let's discuss Jagger... Just like hurricanes, Google updates have names. (A Google update is a change to the way Google determines its rankings. Google makes these changes periodically, and they're universally feared because they can impact dramatically on a website's ranking.) The latest update is called Jagger, and it has search engine optimizers (SEOs) all around the world in a state of panic.

Why was Jagger such a fearful update? Simple... With Jagger, Google once again outsmarted huge numbers of SEOs. You see, many/most SEOs spend their time (and their clients' money) trying to trick Google into thinking that their websites are more relevant and important than they really are. They do this mostly by swapping links, buying cheap links, and placing links on free directories. While there's nothing wrong with these sorts of links (i.e. they're not considered 'black-hat'), they don't really show that the site is relevant or important. All they really show is that the site owner has made a deal with another site owner. In these deals, the incentive for the linking site owner is a reciprocal link, money, or increased link volume. Google much prefers it when the linking site adds the link simply to enhance the value of their content or to increase their own credibility and authority.

In other words, Google wants its search results to contain relevant, important sites, not sites that merely appear to be relevant and important. To this end, Google invests millions of dollars and employs the world's smartest mathematicians to create algorithms which identify sites that are trying to trick them. And that's exactly what Jagger did; and when it found those sites, it simply adjusted their ranking to more accurately reflect their true importance. (Unfortunately, it also demoted some sites which actually deserve a high ranking. It is hoped that these mistakes will be ironed out with future minor updates, but that's a topic for another article...)

rom a technical standpoint, Jagger was well described by Ken Webster in his article, Google's Jagger Update - Dust Begins To Settle?. To summarize, Jagger:

1. Increased importance placed on IBL (Inbound Links) Relevancy?
2. Increased importance placed on OBL (Outbound Links) Relevancy?
3. Promotion of relevant Niche Directories (related to #1 & #2)?
4. More weight thrown back to PR @ top domain
?
5. Increased importance on AdSense placement relevancy?
6. Possible introduction of CSS Spam filtering?
7. Overall Blog demotions?
8. New and unresolved "canonical" issues?

Some more interesting effects were reported by WG Moore in his Jagger article. Mr Moore runs a number of test sites for SEO purposes. By monitoring the links to his test sites as reported by Google, he established that:

"all reciprocal links had vanished. We think that this is because Google is down-grading or eliminating reciprocal links as a measure of popularity. This does make sense, actually. Reciprocal links are a method of falsifying popularity. Sort of a cheap method of buying a link, if you want to think of it that way... During the second week of the Jagger Update, a few of our reciprocal links did come back up. However, we also noticed that these were from places where we had highly relevant content. They came from articles where we discussed our area of expertise: Web Analytics, or from forums where we had relevant threads. So we feel that these links came back because of content, not linking.

source : article alley

Analytics Toolbox: 50+ More Ways to Track Website Traffic

2009-11-09T03:09:00.000-08:00

Most analytics packages are now focusing on real-time tracking and graphical representations of visitor data. Below are more than fifty analytics tools to help you monitor and analyze your web traffic.

1) VisiStat – Real-time tracking with graphical and intuitive reporting features.

2) Google Analytics (Google Analytics) – Mentioned in our first list, Google (Google) offers free analytics software. Includes tight integration with AdWords (see also: 27 Features that Make Google Analytics Best of Breed). Unlike some enterprise apps, the stats are usually on a delay of a few hours.

3) mviSPY – Real-time analytics that track conversions and visitor identities.

4) Webstats BASIC – A free analytics program that tracks visitors and trends and has exportable reports.

5) Webstats PRO – A full-featured analytics package that includes click path analysis, campaign tracking, and complete traffic monitoring capabilities.

6) LoadStats – Provides two different packages that include basic page view and visitor tracking along with geo-location, ad tracking, and more.

7) Opentracker.net – Real-time visitor monitoring and web statistics.

8) eWebAnalytics – Comprehensive, free package that tracks unique visitors, conversions, average click-paths, traffic history, bounce rates, and virtually everything else that you could want in an analytics solution.

9) MetaTraffic – Web analytics program that installs quickly and has the ability to track ad campaigns, downloads, and multimedia file traffic.

10) Shinystat - Web analytics with three available packages that range from a free package that is basically a souped-up hit counter to a full-featured business edition with conversion and campaign tracking.

11) Lyris HQ – Analytics that include campaign ROI tracking and the ability to segment your historical data in any way you want.

12) W3Counter – Analytics that include a real-time visitor map to show where your visitors are coming from as they arrive.

13) Blizzard Tracker – Intuitive web analytics that include web stats in real time.

14) StatsAdvisor – Web analytics that help you track both online and offline advertising efforts.

15) Clicky (Clicky) – Shows you every action a visitor makes and offers a dedicated iPhone version.

16) Logdy.com – A free and paid analytics program with real-time reporting.

17) Pagealizer – Web analytics that actually suggest changes and optimizations for your pages.

18) Sometrics – Analytics that measure your social advertising efforts.

19) Piwik – Open source web analytics that you put on your own server.

20) FireStats – A downloadable web analytics program that’s free for non-commercial use.

21) Snoop – Analytics that give you real-time notification of events that happen on your website (like orders, unique visitors, comments, and more).

22) Yahoo! Web Analytics – Formerly IndexTools, this package provides real-time enterprise site stats.

23) BBClone – A PHP (PHP) based stats package.

24) Woopra - Analytics suite that includes click-to-chat functionality and real-time notifications.

25) MochiBot.com – Flash content analytics.

26) Grape Web Statistics – A free and open source analytics package that includes the ability to query historical data and is compatible with both PHP 4 and 5.

27) tuffed Tracker – Track form submissions, downloads, and other visitor actions, calculate conversions and ROI, analyze landing page effectiveness and more.

28) GoingUp – Complete analytics package with comprehensive visitor and performance tracking.

29) PHP-Stats – A complete analytics program built in PHP.

30) Shortstat Beta 3 – A simple analytics program that includes search engine keyword tracking and more.

31) SlimStat – Based on Shortstat but includes a number of other features including the ability to filter out search engine crawlers and showing visits and unique IPs instead of just hits.

32) Jawstats - A free, open-source analytics package that displays your stats using charts, graphs, and tables.

33) Histats.com – Free web stats in real time that include referrer information, detailed visitor information and more.

34) StatCounter – A highly configurable stats program that’s free.

35) Brandgrow Website Analytics – Analytics that include website segmentation, competitor analysis, industry benchmarking, and more.

36) Sawmill 8 – Analytics with real-time alerts and clickstream analysis.

37) XPLG – Analytics package that lets you monitor and analyze any type of IT data.

38) FuseStats – Web statistics that include customizable heatmaps, ad campaign management, multiple site tracking and more.

39) Enquisite – A search analytics program that includes visual search analysis and helps you optimize your site’s longtail search referrals.

40) clickdensity – Heat maps with real-time visitor data to help you optimize your link and ad placement and enhance your site’s stickiness.

41) nextSTAT – Complete analytics package that includes graphical visitor detail path reports.

42) ClickTale – Watch movies of what your visitors do while on your site, view heatmaps and every interaction that a visitor has on your site including hovers, hesitations, and even which form fields are causing visitors to leave.

43) ClickHeat – A free click heatmap generator.

44) WASP - Web Analytics Solution Profiler is a Firefox (Firefox) extension that helps you understand how your web analytics solution is being implemented.

45) SiteScan – A Google Analytics diagnostic tool that audits your Analytics setup to make sure it’s properly configured.

46) Fire Analytics – A Firefox extension that lets you view your Google Analytics reports from Firefox.

47) Cownter App – Shows visitors to your site how many people are currently on each page.

Source : Mashable

Top Ten Ways to Use Twitter for Marketing

2009-11-03T08:27:00.000-08:00

1. Use it to promote new pieces of content you or your company create to drive traffic to your site. From online articles to blog posts or from videos to webinars, each time you add something to the Web that is of value, tweet about it and include a link. (Most people on Twitter use www.TinyURL.com to take a long URL and make it short.)

2. Use it for learning new marketing ideas, strategies and techniques. If you follow the right people, and you have to be picky about who you follow, you'll get pointed to a good amount of useful tutorials, videos, e-zines and other things that teach you about marketing.

3. Use it to get new customers. Use Twitter's search to find people who may be interested in your product or service. There are many ingenious ways to search for people on Twitter. For example, if you sell red widgets you could go to http://search.twitter.com and find people who have tweeted specifically looking for red widgets. To do this, type the following into the search box: red widgets?

• You'll notice a lot of the results will be of others selling red widgets. These ones will all obviously have links in them to direct people to the site they're selling red widgets on. To weed these people/tweets out, use the negative sign like this: -http red widgets?

• Since every link has 'http' in it, using the negative sign in front of it will cause your search results to not include any tweets with links in them.

4. Use it to build your email list. Use Twitter's search to find people who may be interested in the monthly newsletter you send out to your house email list. Invite these people to join.

5. Utilize Twitter plugins or add-ons such as TweetMyBlog or The Twitter Updater, which both automatically make tweets of every new blog post you publish. Also check out TwitThis. When visitors to your website click on the TwitThis button or link, it takes the URL of the Web page and creates a shorter URL using TinyURL. Then visitors can send this shortened URL and a description of the web page to all of their followers on Twitter. Finally, look at TweetLater, a service that allows you to write lots of tweets at once and then schedule them to go out over time.

6. Use it to build buzz about an upcoming product or website launch.
[Forget Expensive PPC Advertising - There is an Alternative!]

7. Use it to better brand yourself or your business. Remember, when someone wants to learn more about you or your company, they are increasingly using sites like Twitter for research. You could easily use Twitter to establish yourself as an authority in your field.

8. Use it to update followers on breaking news regarding your company. If your company is mentioned in a new article, tweet about it and include a link to the article. Or if you're at a conference or trade show, you could tweet what you're doing and invite people to visit you in person.

9. Use it for business networking, master-mind groups (see Napoleon Hill), and getting yourself seen by high-profile people in your industry.

10. Use it as an instant messaging system to keep you and your team on the same page during projects. This is especially useful for those who work with teams spread out in different cities or countries.

You should note that this top 10 list is not in order of importance or in any particular order. I suggest that you give Twitter a try if you haven't already. See if you can apply a few of these techniques and tactics to help you take advantage of Twitter as a marketing tool.

And one more important thing to remember is that there is no silver bullet in marketing. You should always be trying and implementing numerous tactics when marketing your business. Don't only rely on Twitter or any other one thing. Instead, use Twitter (or any other Web 2.0 site) as simply one more tool in your entire social media and marketing toolbox.

Source : Sitepro news

Great slide on - SEO Trends and Tips for 2009 and 2010

2009-10-29T09:51:00.000-07:00

SEO Trends and Tips for 2009 and 2010

View more presentations from Hillary Bressler.

List Search Engines

2009-10-28T09:52:00.000-07:00

Major Search Engines

* Yahoo!
* Google
* Msn
* AOL
* Overture
* Excite
* Lycos
* iWon
* HotBot
* DogPile
* Ask Jeeves
* WebCrawler
* MetaCrawler
* Overture
* InfoSpace
* Netscape Search
* Alltheweb
* About
* Alexa
* Go
* Looksmart
* NBCi
* Search King
* Search.com
* Espotting
* EarthLink
* ScrubTheWeb
* Mamma
* Teoma
* AltaVista

2nd Level Search Engines & Directories

* WhatUSeek
* WiseNut
* ICQ
* Euroseek
* Go2net
* Enhance
* GigaBlast
* Vivisimo
* ExactSeek
* Nation
* Wired
* Surfwax
* ixQuick
* Infonetware
* Fazzle
* infoGrid
* ZapMeta
* Finger
* MetaEureka
* EntireWeb
* Jayde
* 100hot.com

General Search Engines

* Turbo10
* QueryServer
* CurryGuide
* ithaki.net
* B Central
* API Links
* CanLinks
* 2KCity
* Aesop
* Allestra
* Beamed
* Coyotesearch
* CozyCabin
* Goto411
* Hidden Street
* IDoFind
* IMarvel
* Info Apex
* Intel Search
* JBlue
* MixCat
* NerdWorld
* NetSearch
* Newwebstuff
* PrimeFind
* RAging Banners Search
* Search Ave
* Search It
* SurfGopher Directory
* TrueSearch
* Try America
* TurnPike Emporium
* Voyager
* Web Trawler
* 1CokeMKG Link Page
* 1HighSchElect Link Page
* 1TennPuters Link Page
* AdWebZone
* classified2000
* Cognigen Telecom
* Emailpromoter
* F10
* MultiLinks
* Netrogenic
* Submit One
* Super P
* The Rail Links
* Traffic Wave
* TrueMoney4u
* 911Hits
* FFA Farm
* Links2U

Country Specific Search Engines
Canada

* Yahoo Canada
* Google Canada
* Canada.com
* AOL Canada
* Msn Canada
* Canada One Directory
* Canadien eh
* Montreal Plus Search Engine
* Sympatico

United Kingdom

* Yahoo UK
* Google UK
* Msn Uk
* Netscape UK
* AOL Uk
* Mirago
* Abacho UK
* Freeserve
* global.net.uk
* BBC WebGuide
* Doras
* FindOnce
* Excite UK
* Foundya
* Hotbot UK
* Official Site Register
* Search UK
* Spark Search
* SearchEngine UK
* Selu
* UkDirectory

Australia & New Zealand

* Yahoo Australia
* Google Australia
* Anzwers
* AOL Australia
* Web Search
* WebWombat
* NzExplorer
* xtraMsn.co.nz
* Optusnet
* NineMsn
* Looksmart nz
* Looksmart au
* Goeureka.com.au

France

* Yahoo France
* Google France
* Abacho France
* Msn France
* AOL France
* HotBot France
* Caloweb FR
* Voila
* TeleFrance
* Lien Utiles

Italy

* Yahoo Italia
* Arianna
* Google Italia
* Virgilio
* Msn Italia
* Hotbot Italia
* Motore
* Tiscali
* Skipper
* TGCOM
* ABCItaly
* Lycos Italia
* BmWeb
* Cerca In Lombardia
* Cercain Lazio
* Clarence
* Curiosare
* DominItaliani
* e-Shoper
* Libero
* ShinySeek
* Simpatico
* Sussidiario
* Supereva
* Zibaldone

Germany

* Yahoo Germany
* Google Germany
* Msn Germany
* Abacho Germany
* AOL Germany
* T-Online
* Web.de
* Bellnet
* Freenet DE
* Hotbot Germany
* BlueWin
* Caloweb DE
* City-fux Germany
* German Fireball Directory
* SpeedFind
* Dino-Online.de
* TigerSuche
* Web Wizard
* Search.ch
* AllesFinder
* Ameta
* BlitzZuche
* CompuWeb
* Dasi
* Fixx
* Flix
* GratisWorld
* Hamburg-web
* Hit Net
* Ripley
* Schaufenster
* Sharelook
* Suchmaschine
* Witch

Russia

* Baklanov
* Aport
* FindMe
* GoldenUrl
* List Mail
* Lupa
* Lycos RU
* Pdv
* Punto
* Rambler
* Refer
* Susanin
* Top One
* Userline
* Yandex
* Zabor

Austria

* City-fux Austria
* Msn Austria

Scandinavia

* Yahoo Norway
* Google Norway
* Msn Norway
* Msn Finland
* Google Finland
* Soneraplaza Finland
* Google Denmark
* Msn Denmark
* Google Sweden
* Msn se

Netherlands

* Vindex
* DeBeste
* Msn NL

Switzerland

* City-fux Switzerland
* Swiss Search
* Msn Switzerland

Poland

* Google Poland
*

* Szukaj

S. Africa

* Google Poland
* Szukaj

Latin

* YupiMsn
* Google Spain
* Iguana
* Mexico Web
* AOL Argentina
* AOL Mexico
* Brujula
* AOL Puerto Rico
* t1Msn.com.mx
* HotBot ES

Brazil

* Yahoo Brazil
* Google Brazil
* Exploora
* Msn Brazil
* AOL Brazil
* NCanal
* Sisbi

Asia

* Yahoo Asia
* Yahoo korea
* Msn Korea
* Google Korea
* Msn Taiwan
* Yahoo Taiwan
* Yahoo Hong Kong
* Msn Hong Kong
* Yahoo Singapore
* Google Singapore
* Msn Singapore
* Msn Malaysia
* WhatSite

Japan

* Yahoo Japan
* Google Japan
* Goo.ne.jp
* AOL Japan
* Goo
* Infoseek Japan
* Japan-Guide
* Kansai
* Lycos Japan
* Webgate
* Msn Japan

Chinese

* Yahoo China
* Google China
* Asiaco
* Search1608

India

* Yahoo India
* Google india
* Msn India
* Khoj

42 Million U.S. Women Use Social Media: Blogs Most Influential

2009-08-29T06:39:00.000-07:00

Is the jury still out in your mind as to whether social media matters in business? If so, a recent survey might make you change your mind. In fact, it may cause you to re-think your entire marketing outreach, especially if you market to women.

The study found that 42 million women in the United States (roughly 53% of the 79 million adult women in the United States who use the Internet) participate in social media at least weekly. As they spend more time with social media, women are spending correspondingly less time with traditional media: 39% less on newspapers, 36% less time reading magazines, and 30% less time watching TV.

That’s according to a recent social media survey by BlogHer, the women’s blog network, along with iVillage and Compass Partners.

Of course, the flight from traditional media to social media has been reported before and may not be startlingly new to you. But this particular survey digs much deeper. There are 3 interesting findings that I would like to point out, that are worth spending time considering:

Interesting Finding #1: Social Networks Like Facebook Get the Most Usage

More women use social networks like Facebook and MySpace than anything else, with blogs their second choice. Forums and discussion boards come next, with Twitter bringing up the rear (remember that the next time you’re tempted to think Twitter is THE be all and end all of your marketing). Here’s a slide (slide 8 ) from the research study that shows usage:

Social media participation by women

If you were looking solely at raw numbers, you’d conclude the most important place your brand needs to be seen is over at Facebook or MySpace, right? Well … not necessarily.

Interesting Finding #2: Blogs Wield the Widest Influence

It’s not just about how much time is spent in an activity, it’s what women do in that activity and how much that activity plays into their purchasing habits. This slide (slide 10) from the survey shows the difference between reach and influence.

Influence versus reach of social media

The way I interpret this slide is that you would get the maximum reach in sheer numbers from social networks like Facebook (narrow point of the inverted pyramid), but you would achieve the widest influence from blogs (widest part of the inverted pyramid).

The women who post to blogs are the most actively engaged. They spend the most time online. Over 80% also participate in social networks like Facebook, and over one third of bloggers also participate in Twitter. But more to the point, those who blog are more likely to be tech savvy, on the leading edge of trends, and invest time searching for new products online. Those who participate in social networking sites like Facebook are motivated to spend time there more as a matter of staying in touch with family and friends.

Interesting Finding #3: Women Look to Blogs for Business, Politics, Cars and Technology

The slide below (slide 20) tells the tale of the difference in type of advice and information sought, and how the different types of social media come into play. Women are more likely to go to social networks for beauty, entertainment and dating advice. But for the majority of other categories they look to blogs.

Most likely source of information by topic in social media
Depending on the nature of your business, it might be worth it to focus on Facebook or MySpace — if, for instance, you are in the entertainment business. But for most things, such as if you are in a B2B business or selling technology, blogs could give you more influence.

For graphical information read the article here 42-million-women-use-social-media-blogs

Top 30 Pligg Based Social Media Sites That Are Worth Your Visit

2009-08-18T04:08:00.000-07:00

Internet Marketing:

1. Sphinn.com – Sphinn is a social networking community for Search and Internet Marketing Professionals. Sphinn allows you to share your SEO/SEM articles and others vote for it, obviously if they like it.

2. PlugIM.com – PlugIM is a yet another social networking site for Internet Marketers allowing you to share and bookmark the articles you find useful.

3. PPCAd.com – Looking for a website to learn more about PPC, PPC Ad is just the site you were looking for. Here people share the links to all the top articles on PPC.

Web Professionals:

4. CSSreboot.com – The CSS Reboot is a community event for web professionals. Ever wanted to see all the top CSS article at one place, this is the place it is.

5. phpTut.li – php Tut is a community for php masters. Find all the information, tips, tricks and tutorials on php here.

6. Ajax-Source.com – Ajax-Source.com provides web developers and webmasters an easy way to search, bookmark and share links to hot Ajax Scripts, Tools, Tutorials and Articles.

7. SomeHostHere.com – Some Host Here is a community for web hosting companies, if you are looking for hosting deals then this is the best place to look out.

IT/Tech Professionals:

8. InformedNetworker.com – Informed Networker is a social news site for Information Technology Professionals. It offers you to
share links to various websites.

9. P2Pvine.com – P2P Vine is a news site dedicated to technology of file sharing and P2P.

10. MobilityBeat.com – MobilityBeat is a social networking community about mobile devices and technology. If you are looking for tips and tricks or how to make your mobile device work better then this is the right place.

11. vIndianz.com – vIndianz is a citizen social networking community for students and professionals from around the world. Ever wanted to learn and have fun at the same time, vIndianz is just the place you were looking for.

12. Macintoshr.com – Macintoshr is a social networking community for Mac enthusiasts. Share and vote for your favorites Mac articles and news.

Hobby/Science Loving Professionals:

13. Hugg.com – This green social networking site dedicated to environment and earth. If you are a supporter of environment and feel pity for the situation we’re going in, then this is the place to say about it.

14. BioWizard.com – Bio Wizard is a social networking site for medical and science enthusiasts. Share and vote for you favorite articles.

15. FunniestVideo.net – Funniest Video is a social network community which allows you to share that funny video which makes you laugh when ever you watch it.

16. Gcurious.com – A social networking community where you could share links of celebrity and of course their gossip.

17. DogSniff.com – Dog Sniff is an incredible way to share your story about a courageous dog or a great recipe for doggie treats, share it with the world on Dog Sniff.

18. DigMyHonda.com – Dig My Honda is a Web 2.0 community for the automotive enthusiast. Vote and share your favorite Honda rides, Videos, DIYs and articles.

19. KieFit.com – Kie Fit is a fitness social networking community. Find the best fitness resources here.

20. PlaygroundBaby.com – PlaygroundBaby is a social networking community dedicated to finding the best things in life for your baby.

21. PrayAble.com – If you are looking for some insights on spiritualism then this is the best social network site for you.

Hot Deals:

22. Dealigg.com – Dealigg is a social network for people who are looking for hot deals, coupons and discount.

23. IwantTo.us – What do you want give today? I Want To is a social networking site that offers you to give away your stuffs.

24. MemeOrLame.com – Meme or Lame is a citizen media platform targeting to bring editors and readers close.

Country Specific Communities:

25. Linka.co.nz – Linka is a portal to news, information and interesting stories on the web from New Zealand.

26. eBenTa.com – eBenTa is a Philippines social networking community for every filipino to post, share, discover, bookmark, and promote stuff that’s important.

27. IndianPad.com – Indian Pad is a social networking community for Indians, which allows you to share and bookmark your own links.

28. BabbleStorm.co.uk – Babble Storm is a social networking community for British, to share, bookmark and vote for the important links.

29. Chinamemes.com – Chinamemes is a social networking community for China Technology News.

30. Myplanetz.com - Myplanetz is a social networking community for every geographic on interesting categories.

General Bookmarking:

30. AddYourFavorites.com – Add Your Favorites is a social bookmarking website that offers you to save your links online.

Types of Affiliates

2009-06-04T01:32:00.000-07:00

Most merchants find it useful to divide prospective and current affiliates into major categories, which usually have different performance characteristics and concerns.

1. "All-Joiners": These affiliates generally seek to join all available affiliate programs (either generally, or within a specific product niche), in order to provide the most comprehensive information on their sites.

* Price comparison sites: Dozens of "price comparison" sites are founded on affiliate links from merchants, while some use a "pay-per-click fee model."

o Most price comparison sites exclude merchants who don't compensate affiliates in some way, but often accept very low commission rates rather than exclude well-known merchants. A few price-comparison sites, such as Froogle, are completely free (which may explain why Google has removed Froogle from public visibility).

o Many price comparison sites usually participate only in a merchant's affiliate program if the merchant provides a "datafeed" or other automated method to access information about the merchant's products and pricing.

o Because of the many variables and complexities of certain types of products and services, price-comparison sites are often misleading and unhelpful for these industries, but some may still draw meaningful traffic and could potentially drive sales.

* Coupon and Deals sites: These sites generally join all available affiliate programs, in order to have information in a wide range of product categories and for the widest possible range of merchants.

o Some "coupon and deals" sites seek to create a community of bargain-hunters, often emphasizing products and product categories. These affiliates can draw new customers to visit merchant sites; any differential treatment for coupon affiliates must include some special consideration for these sites.

o Unfortunately, most coupon sites rely almost exclusively on obtaining favorable search-engine placement adjacent to consumer searches for merchant-specific keywords (such as "Amazon coupon"), and present a page with results for that merchant - often listing no genuine coupons at all. Some will even list "fake" coupons in order to persuade consumers to click on their affiliate links. Arguably, this group of coupon sites add little value, and some will have a negative impact by upsetting consumers with fake offers.

+ In reviewing one merchant's log files, I determined that almost 50% of the sales attributed to affiliates were actually to consumers who had arrived at the merchant's site from some other source, chose items, and began the checkout process - but then saw a "coupon prompt" and exited the site to search for a coupon code, returning through a coupon affiliate's link. This merchant had no active coupon codes, so these sales were credited only to affiliates who had expired or fabricated coupon information. It is likely that many sales were actually lost after customers were disappointed that these coupons weren't honored.

* Incentive Sites: A number of internet companies promise consumers either "rebates" or "charitable donations" based on a share of affiliate commissions, if the consumer uses the "right" affiliate link before making a purchase at a merchant site.

o Such affiliates generally do not bring new customers to a merchant, but instead "poach" a transaction that should properly be attributed to some other source (which increases the merchants' costs, reduces the accuracy of other reporting methods, and alienates affiliates whose commissions are poached).

o Some "incentive affiliates" are actually "fronts" for "parasites," who use the "incentive" business model as a pretext for the lack of referring URLs in most of their affiliate links, and for their unusual (high or low) conversion rates.

o On some affiliate networks, these sites are flagged or assigned separate categories so that merchants can allow or exclude them; some unethical incentive affiliates actively circumvent such methods.

o I recommend that merchants exclude "incentive" sites from affiliate programs. Such an exclusion will add compliance costs.

2. "Many-Joiners": Some sites join "many but not all" affiliate programs, for a variety of reasons.

* Shopping Mall Sites: Some sites attempt to create a "mall" or "shopping resource" site, with links to several (or several dozen) merchants in each product category. Most of these sites carry little information other than an organized map of affiliate links, but some do provide meaningful information about products, shopping and gifting strategies, or other topics.

* Banner Farms: Probably the most annoying affiliate applications come from individuals who simply create a single web page with dozens of merchant banners and buttons. These "banner farms" contain no original content, and as a result they draw almost no traffic whatsoever. Sometimes, these sites are created by individuals who are duped into "buying a web site" on eBay or through a promotional package, with assurances that vast wealth will result. While these sites are pathetic and have little value, they also have little or no impact on an affiliate program (since there is little traffic, there is no impact on EPC, for example). My recommendation is that if such affiliates apply, then unless there is something objectionable on their site, they can be accepted; there is always a remote possibility that one in 1,000 of these affiliates will later build a "real" web site that generates traffic and sales. However, these sites should generally be excluded from many special offers or follow-up communications that might waste affiliate-management time.

3. Content and Directory Sites: I use this term to web sites which provide some benefit to consumers, usually by providing relevant editorial content (articles, blogs, or discussion forums) or by maintaining a relevant directory of information and resources sought by consumers. These are the "affiliates" that first come to mind for most consumers and merchants, when the word "affiliate" is used.

4. Portals and Mega-Sites: Sites like Yahoo, MSN, and About.com provide vast amounts of information on a wide range of subjects, sometimes organized in a consistent way, and sometimes organized in a variety of different ways. While most of these companies claim that they do not participate in affiliate programs, most of them actually do so.

* The Good News is that these sites draw vast amounts of traffic (many millions or even hundreds of millions of pageviews per month). If affiliate links are shown on relevant pages, they can sometimes draw good clickthrough rates and often strong conversion rates also.

* The Bad News is that many of these sites run affiliate ads (especially banners) indiscriminately, on pages that are not relevant. One result is a very low clickthrough rate (which generally doesn't affect the merchant unless there is a cost for serving banner ads). Unfortunately, the clicks that do occur often have a dreadful conversion rate, in part because when clickthrough rates are very low, a substantial number of the clicks received are "accidental" or are generated by automated tools. Low conversion rates will push down the merchant's EPC (earnings per 100 clicks), which may make the merchant's affiliate program seem less attractive to new prospective affiliates.

o Some affiliate networks actually recommend "removal" of high-traffic, low-performance affiliates; I think this is ludicrous. Instead, the affiliate manager may need to spend some time working with the affiliate to optimize their affiliate campaigns.

5. Directory Sites: In some industries and product categories, consumers may rely extensively on "directory sites," to help them identify and compare available resources. Over the past 12 years, I've frequently bought services that I've discovered through directories. (I've also created and sold two successful directory sites.)

* Industry-Specific Directories: There may be hundreds (even thousands) of web sites that offer directories of companies in your industry. While a few of these are maintained with editorial independence, the vast majority include only pay-per-click or affiliate links. Offering an affiliate program should allow access to more of these directories.

* Business Directories: There are also thousands of different "business directory" sites, each with a slightly different focus. Some will provide free listings, and others may seek monthly or per-click fees -- but many dozens of these sites focus on merchants with affiliate programs.

6. Product Comparison sites: There are a number of "product comparison sites," which seek to identify and compare the features, benefits and drawbacks of various products. There is some overlap with "price-comparison sites" and "directory sites," and some sites can't be assigned to just one category or the other. Like most price-comparison sites, many product comparison sites rely on the availability of a "datafeed" as the source of product information. Given the many "variables" in xyz-service and xyz-services, both "product comparison" and "price comparison" is quite difficult and often meaningless - but some sites should deliver traffic and sales.

7. Information, Advice, and Forum Sites: These are "primary content sites" which specifically focus on a narrow topic, drawing visitors who are extremely likely to be interested in the products and services being offered by MerchantName.com. Sites with article or advice formats (excluding forums) are highly likely to participate as affiliates. Forum sites usually prohibit posting of affiliate links in posts (messages), but forum owners sometimes promote merchants with affiliate programs; they may use advertising space, post affiliate URLs in messages, or sometimes even edit URLs in other posts to append affiliate tags. (Forum sites often produce extremely low clickthrough rates, since most forum users "tune out" standard advertising placements while viewing dozens of pages at a site each day.)

8. Complementary Content Sites: I use this category (which clearly overlaps with the prior category) to describe sites whose topic or focus is something "other than" your industry or products. These would be sites that attract the kind of visitors you want as customers.

9. Complementary Merchants (Non-Competing Competitors)

Source : Affiliate program

INSTANT MESSAGING TOOLBOX: 90+ IM Tools

2009-05-26T02:50:00.000-07:00

Instant messaging is said to be one of the most popular forms of Internet communication for teens today, beating out email thanks to the lack of spam and instant feedback. With SweetIM adding support for AIM today, we thought we’d take a look at how the IM market is shaping up.

And for those who think 90+ IM clients are too many for anyone to handle, we wholly agree: that’s why a good number of these are actually tools to aggregate all your IM buddies in one place.

Google talk - use GTalk for your voice calls, voice messages, file transfer and Gmail (Gmail reviews) notifications

Skype - high quality calls to anyone, anywhere in the world

Yahoo! Messenger - an official messenger for Yahoo! users, free to use but advertising-supported

AOL Instant Messenger - communicate with AOL registered users via text, voice, and video

Windows Live Messenger - connect and share instantly on the world’s most popular IM network

ICQ - the world’s first instant messaging program

mICQ - a free text-based ICQ client that runs on a wide variety of platforms

Licq - a free clone of the ICQ client for Linux other Unix systems

aMSN - a free and open source MSN Messenger clone for Linux users

JMSN - a pure Java MSN Messenger clone, with many interesting features that MSN doesn’t have

CSpace - secure and peer-to-peer communication to chat or transfer files

Coccinella - a free Jabber/XMPP client with a built-in white board for improved collaboration with other people

Emesene - a MSN Messenger client with a simpler GUI and a nice look

Gajim - a full-featured and easy to use XMPP client for gnome users

GOIM - allows users to chat within DirectX games

mcabber - a small console-based Jabber client that runs on Linux and Mac OS X

Gadu-Gadu - the most popular IM in Poland

Exodus - a Jabber client which is small, fast, easy to use, and looks good

Retroshare - communicate and download files from friends of friends

naim - a console based multi-protocol client with features like peer to peer encryption and module support

Gossip - an instant messaging client for Gnome users, with chat history search

MessageMate - commercial IM platform that provides end-to-end security; interoperable with AIM, ICQ, Yahoo and MSN

Papla Instant - use it on your PC and mobile phone

Mercury Messenger - a full featured Windows Live Messenger client, offers several extra features which are not implemented in MSN

Psi - small, fast Jabber client

Spark - free and open source IM with built-in support for group chat, telephony integration and strong security

Jabbin - free Jabber client that enables free calls using VoIP

YSM - full-featured console-based ICQ client

MySpaceIM - the official instant messaging client for MySpace (MySpace reviews)

OneTeam - IM client is XUL based, so requires Firefox (Firefox reviews) 2

Microsoft Messenger for Mac - the official Mac client for MSN Messenger, but the feature list is limited

Xfire - chat with contacts inside the game, without the need to minimize the game windows

Pandion - Jabber client which supports plugins to extend its features

BitWise IM - a secure, cross-platform client that encrypts all data sent between users

Multi-network IM Clients

Pidgin - most popular, free, multi-platform IM client that supports most of the IM protocols

Miranda IM - lightweight, resource efficient and easy to use client with powerful plugin support

Ayttm - in case of a service failure, this will automatically fall back to other service protocols of the same person you are chatting to.

Trillian - a Windows application that can connect to multiple IM services, with nice features like Metacontact, Instant lookup, and Emotiblips

meetro - find and chat with people nearby, i.e. location-aware client

IMVU - 3D chat which enables you chat in 3D scenes with your own avatars

Kopete - KDE application, provides users with a single, easy-to-use way to access all of their instant messaging systems

MECA - connect to all of your friends on AIM, MSN, Yahoo! and ICQ from just one list

Centericq - text based multi protocols IM client

Proteus - popular client for Mac OS X that supports multiple protocols

Instan-t - Windows client that allows users to communicate with MSN, AIM, Y!Messenger, ICQ and its IM networks

iChat - IM Client from Apple for Mac OSX

Universal Messenger Plus - a single convenient interface that allows you to easily communicate over different protocols.

Qnext - share your music, photos, and files with anyone, instantly while talking via IM

Adium - free client for Mac users that can connect to most of the popular messaging services

BitlBee - IRC clients with support of IM protocols

Web based IM
meebo - the most popular third party web based instant messaging service

eBuddy - chat with your buddies using web and mobile versions

KoolIM - web-based IM that allows you to connect to your email inbox as well as popular IM networks

ILoveIM - another web based IM service with advertisements

IMhaha - supports Yahoo, MSN and AIM but not Google Talk

Goowy - more than just an IM client; offers e-mail, calendar, news, RSS, file storage and more

IMunitive - an alternative to meebo, but doesn’t support Jabber i.e. Google Talk

RadiusIM - web-based IM service with Google Maps (Google Maps reviews) integration, which means you can see where your friends are

MessengerFX - unofficial web based IM client for MSN Messenger

ICQ2Go! - web-based installation-free version of ICQ

SNIMMER - chat on MSN, Yahoo, AOL, ICQ and GTalk and make new friends by creating a profile with pictures

IMO - allows you to log in to all chat networks at the same time

Communicationtube - separate login for ICQ, MSN Messenger, IRC and Google Talk contacts

Express Instan-t - simple IM which works with ICQ, MSN and Yahoo

easymessenger - free instant messenger service with built-in RSS support that works with MSN, ICQ, AIM, Yahoo! and Jabber.

mabber - use it on your phone or put it on your website

MSN2Go - Java applet that enables you connect to MSN messenger service

Yafumato Web Messenger - free and open source web-based IM client that allows you to connect to AIM, GTalk, MSN, and Yahoo

MSN Web Messenger - the web-based version of MSN Messenger, without file sharing or video calls

Yahoo! Web Messenger - access to your Yahoo! messenger, chat with your friends and get notified when new email is received.

AIM Express - official web-based instant messenger for AIM

Google Talk via Gmail - chat with your GTalk contacts from Google (Google reviews) mail

Mobile IM

Agile Messenger - user friendly all-in-one application for your mobile phone

Eqo - save up to 95% on calls, 70% on text messaging, integrates all of MSN, Yahoo!, GTalk, AIM, ICQ, and Jabber.

fring - use it as an IM client, but also for free calls over Wi-Fi, GPRS or EDGE

IM+ - All-in-One Mobile Messenger that works on any mobile device

OctroTalk - keeps you connected with your buddies, and works seamlessly over GPRS/EDGE/CDMA/Wifi/Bluetooth data connections

QuickIM - connect to public MSN networks using your cell phone with one time license fee

JiveTalk - connect simultaneously to AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, Google Talk, ICQ, and Jabber

Causerie - an easily configurable chat tool with simple-to-use user interface that work on Palm, Blackberry, Pocket PC, Symbian and J2ME enabled phones.

TipicME - J2ME-based Jabber client that is really well done and absolutely free

iSkoot - mobile application that allows you to connect by GPRS, 3G or Wifi and to speak or chat with all your contacts on Skype

MovaMessenger - a free mobile IM client, works with MSN, Yahoo, AIM, ICQ, and GTalk

Turbo MSN - a mobile MSN client for Nokia and Panasonic

Nimbuzz - call your IM buddies on their mobile or on their PC, chat with your IM buddies for free and send text messages for free.

Heysan - web based mobile messenger, compatible with most of the mobile phones including iPhone.

YehBA Mobile IM - allows you chat with your friends anywhere in the world, meet new friends across the globe through chat rooms, and have access to an unlimited number of fun services.

Palringo Vocal IM - transforms your mobile device into a walkie-talkie: communicate with a contact or a group at the touch of a button

MT Messenger - exchange messages using the most popular IM applications from MSN, Yahoo! and AOL

EpyxMobile - call all over the world from your mobile phone for SkypeOut tariffs

GoTalkMobile - Java application for J2ME enabled phones, allows you connect to Google Talk and Jabber

MSN Mobile - take MSN with you

Mundu - conference with your contacts across IM services in a single chat session

source : Mashable

5 Reasons Why Most Internet Marketers Fail

2009-05-20T02:02:00.000-07:00

When it comes to starting any endeavor, whether it be learning a new hobby or starting an online business, we all have to start at ground zero. We all have to start at the very beginning from the very same place. Granted, we each bring different skills and backgrounds into the mix, but for the most part we are all on equal footing at the starting line.

If this is the case, then we really have to ponder why is it only a choice few go on to succeed, while most people don't. Just what are the reasons why most online marketers fail? This is the core question that has to be answered if you want to fully understand Internet marketing and how it works.

What are these basic reasons?

What are the causes or stumbling blocks that hold many marketers and webmasters from reaching their full online potential? If we know these factors, we can learn how to avoid them and even overcome them in our own online marketing. These reasons can be a solid reference point or even a source of inspiration for any online marketer just starting out.

Speaking from the viewpoint of someone who has started from the very beginning with little to no knowledge of computers or even marketing for that matter, I can honestly relate to the beginning marketer. I even had to learn HTML from scratch in order to construct my own webpages. Probably my only advantage, I did have a background in art but designing webpages was completely different from anything I had done previously to starting in online marketíng.

But from my own experiences I have drawn some general conclusions about Internet marketing and why some people succeed while most people fail. So here in my honest opinion, are some of the main reasons why many online marketers fail:

1. Overwhelmed With Information

Perhaps, one of the biggest obstacles I faced when I first started my website - I was bombarded with so much information on how to proceed I didn't have a clue which direction to take or who to believe. Thousands of different info products telling you to do this, not to do that... so much marketing information to absorb that you end up scratching your head and looking like someone auditioning for a zombie movie.

Completely overwhelmed with so much information, many marketers or webmasters enter a state of paralysis where nothing gets done. You go from one course to another or from one method to another, without any real understanding of how to proceed or how to get a detailed blueprint to follow.

Information overflow can effectively crush all that novice enthusiasm and literally kill even the most eager of entrepreneurs. Anyone starting out must be aware of this obvious but insidious pitfall you have to avoid at all costs. One of the best remedies, simply try concentrating on just one or two marketing plans/marketers for all your information. Try to eliminate the clutter by just working on one marketing system. Just have a few key marketing resources you go to for information, not a hundred! And do your homework, only pick marketers who can back up their claims with observable results on the web. One obvious checkmark - just see if those marketers have top rankings for their sites for popular profitable keywords associated with their sites or products.

2. Lack Of Key Marketing Basics

There are some key marketing basics or fundamentals you must learn about marketing online. Internet marketing has some key elements you must get right or you will have a difficult task in succeeding on the web. Just simple factors you must get right or it's game over before you even get started.

Most marketers fail to realize the web is "information driven" and you must supply quality information or content in order to truly succeed. You must provide a valuable service or function to your visitors. You must help solve their problem. You must give them a solid reason to use your site or product. Quality content is and always will be King on the web.

You must also understand much of the web is "keyword driven" and you must construct your webpages to take full advantage of these keywords. You must have at least a rudimentary understanding of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and how you can use it to get top rankings for your keyword phrases.

3. Lack Of Time And Resources

Another major reason why many marketers fail is because they simply can't afford the time to learn and build their online business. Most people just can't stop everything and work full time online because they have bills to pay and families to support. It may take months, probably years, before you can build up a successful online business that gives you a comfortable living. The average person just doesn't have the time or the resources to spend months learning how all this works.

Keep in mind, getting a business or website going is probably the most inexpensive way to start your business. Domains are cheap. Web hosting is cheap. Web design is cheap if you can do it yourself... Compared to starting a business in the "real" world, creating an online business will only cost a faction of the normal expenses connected with starting a business. But the main problem is having the resources to pay your living expenses until your online business is profitable. Many beginning online marketers don't have these resources and the main complaint from these marketers: "I Simply can't afford the time to work at this online stuff."

One solution is to work at your online marketíng in your spare time and gradually build up your business until you can afford to do it full time. It will obviously take longer but you can still get to the same end goal.

4. Lack Of Necessary Skills

Actually, you don't need many skills to succeed online. However, one of the major skills you must have or you must learn is communication. You must learn how to communicate. The web is all about communicating your points to your visitors or viewers so you must acquire good communication skills.

It really helps your marketing if you are a good writer because you can easily get your points across with written text or copy on your site. Writing skills can be learned but many beginning marketers don't fully understand how important their writing skills will be to their success. You must be able to communicate on your site, in your newsletters, with your customers... might sound a bit obvious but you would be surprised at how many marketers lack this simple, yet necessary skill.

But don't fret, because once upon a time, the written word was king online - but not any more. Videos are rapidly taking the place of the printed word so anyone with a camera can now be a success online. Of course, you still need good communication skills even using videos, but many marketers have found this is a much easier way to communicate information about their site or product.

5. Lack Of Persistence

For me, one the most significant reasons most online marketers/webmasters fail, is because of a lack of persistence. They simply give up too soon. They try something for a few weeks, even for a few months and then they conclude this is not working and they give up.

Building a solid online business or viable website takes time, a lot of time. Just because your business is online, doesn't mean everything will fall into place overnight, it takes time to establish a customer base. It takes time to build your business relationships with others in your field.

Sometimes, it may take years before you see some solid returns. It was three years before I saw any significant revenue coming from my online ventures, and another year before I could summon enough courage to do this online marketing full time. If I had given up and not persisted at this web stuff, I would not be writing this article right now.

Building top rankings for your keywords in the search engines (especially Google) can take months, even years before you see any results. The real key is to be persistent and keep at it, day after day, until you get those top rankings. You simply must be persistent or you will fail.

In conclusion, having said all that, you must also realize there are plenty of exceptions to all of the above. There have been countless success stories on the web where someone has come up with a novel idea or product and become successful overnight. The web can provide immediate success for some, but for most of us, it will take some time and hard effort on our part to build a successful online business. Just try to avoid many of the pitfalls or reasons listed above and you will have a better chance of placing yourself in the success column.

Source : SitePro News

Great presentation on Google analytics

2009-04-28T03:31:00.000-07:00

An introduction to Google Analytics

View more presentations from Joris Roebben.

Just go thru Video Website SEO - Step wise step Tips...

2009-04-14T03:29:00.000-07:00

Video Seo Tips for Websites

View more presentations from Grant Crowell.

Are you newbie in Internet Marketing - No worries ...chek this ppt

2009-04-14T03:27:00.000-07:00

How to market your web site using Internet Marketing

View more presentations from Michael Robinson.

Indian affiliate program, get paid for survey, Earn money online - which works??

2009-04-06T12:47:00.000-07:00

Any idea on Indian affiliate programs OR paid for survey tool which really works. While surfing I came across few affiliate sites but its difficult for me to decide on to join them or not. Can anyone can guide on this???

moneycosmos
Money Cosmos is a venture of Karmath Infotech Private Limited. I tried to join but new registration is closed.
Goto affiliate page affiliates

earnextrarupees what about this???

Best Paid Online Surveys

1. Global Test Market: Global Test Market is one of the largest marketing research firms which conduct online market research and paid surveys. Most surveys take less than 15 minutes to complete. Take free paid surveys and earn 50-150 points that can be redeemed for cash. Sometimes these surveys may lead to a chance to test a product or service, or participate in a online focus group with bigger rewards. You will get 5 points(0.25$) for each survey you do not qualify, so it is worth to join. Minimum payment is 50$. Payments are sent by check in your local currency. Members can join GTM International panel.

2. Lightspeed Panel: When you take paid surveys from lightspeed, you will earn Lightspeed Points, which can be redeemed for cash, prizes, or online gift certificates. Lightspeed pays by Paypal, Amazon gift certificates etc.Minimum payout is 5$. If you are from USA or Canada join Lightspeed panel. Hispanic people from any country can join Lightspeed Hispanic Panel.

3. American Consumer Opinion: Join ACOP survey panel take paid surveys and earn Amazon gift certificates. Register with ACOP Panel. Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, United States members only.

4. Myview Surveys: Myview is an invitation only survey panel. Myview is currently recruiting US hispanic people. Myview pays by Paypal. They send a lot of surveys. The surveys are usually 2-3 $. Join Myview Surveys

5. Take paid surveys and earn cash.Complete paid online surveys and earn money online. Join GiveUsYour2Cents Survey Panel.

Top social networking sites - for promotion and making money online

2009-03-20T01:37:00.000-07:00

Social networking websites have been around since the mid-90's, but in recent years, social networking has exploded across the web. The Web 2.0 initiative has made modern social networking sites increasingly popular and easier to use than the initial wave of sites that launched in the 90's.

The top social networking websites is divided into three categories: General purpose, niche sites with a specific theme, and international sites.

General Interests::::

* MySpace: Started in 2003, MySpace was a driving force in popularizing social networking and still maintains a large userbase.

* Facebook: Founded by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook was designed as a social networking site for Harvard students. After spreading from Harvard through the university ranks and down into high school, Facebook was opened to the public in 2006.

* Hi5: A fast-growing social network with a strong base in Central America, Hi5 has over fifty million users worldwide.

* Ning: A social network for creating social networks, Ning takes the idea of groups to a whole new level.

* Twitter : One part social networking, one part worldwide chat, Twitter is one of the fastest growing phenomenons in the world. A mini-blogging service that lets you update your friends on what you are doing at that moment, Twitter was launched in late 2006 and had explosive growth in 2007.

* Frienster : Launched in 2002, Friendster helped vitalize the Web 2.0 revolution of social networks, and was the source of inspiration for MySpace. One of the most popular social networks of its time, Friendster was overtaken by MySpace in 2004.

* Imeem :Combining social networking and social media, Imeem focuses on sharing music, pictures, video and blog posts. Originally more of a peer-to-peer network with social networking features, Imeem has grown into a full-fledged social network.

* Tagged : A general social networking site, Wikipedia reports that Tagged may be inflating its numbers to attract more users. The seeming lack of moderation for inappropriate material makes this social network unfit for kids.

Niche Sites

* Flixster: With a tagline of "stop watching bad movies," Flixster combines social networking with movie reviews.

* Last.fm: Billing itself as a social music site, Last.fm allows members to create their own radio station that learns what the person likes and suggests new music based on those interests. In addition to this, you can listen to the radio stations of friends and other Last.fm members.

* LinkedIn: A business-oriented social network, members invite people to be "connections" instead of "friends." Linkedin is a contact management system as well as a social network, and has a question-and-answer section similar to Yahoo! Answers.

* Xanga: A social blogging site that combines social networking elements with blogging. Members earn credits for participating in the site and can spend credits on various things such as buying mini-pictures to post in the comments of a friend's blog.

* 43 Things : A social networking site that targets goal-setting, members are interlinked by the goals they are going after and the goals they have completed.

* BlackPlanet : One of the oldest social networks, and the most popular special interest social networking site, BlackPlanet caters to African-Americans.

* Broadcaster : A social network centered around video allowing people to upload their own video clips. engage in video chats with other members, and send video e-mail.

* Care2 : Green living beyond just social networking, Care2 offers email, blogging, shopping, and more, all catered to those wishing to live a green life.

* Classmates : Founded in 1995, Classmates was one of the first social networks on the web and still caters primarily to schools and colleges. Classmates charges a fee for advanced services that are usually free on other social networking sites. The website also uses questionable marketing practices by emailing non-paying users and inviting them to pay for the premium service under the pretense that someone was searching for them.

* Dodgeball : A social networking site aimed at mobile users, Dodgeball interacts with mobile devices to send text messages to your friends alerting them to your status online.

* eCrush : A social network targeting teens, eCrush is the 21st century's answer to writing "Do you like me?" on a piece of paper with a boxes for yes and no and a request to check the one that applies. Teens tell eCrush who they have a crush on, and then eCrush asks those people who they have crushes on. If there is a match, eCrush lets both know, otherwise, the person is none the wiser.

* Flixter : With a tagline of "stop watching bad movies," Flixter combines social networking with movie reviews.

* Gaia Online : A social network with virtual world elements, Gaia Online has an anime, comics, and gaming theme. Members can create their own avatar, earn gold by participating in the network, purchase items in virtual shops, visit virtual towns, and more.

* Meetup : A social network with an event organization theme, Meetup allows members to organize anything from political rallies to spontaneous bar hopping.

* Mog : A music-oriented social networking site, Mog allows members to upload their playlists and keeps track of what members are listening to on their computer.

* Multiply : A social network targeted at a person's real world social network, Multiply offers blogging, photo sharing, book and movie reviews, with an emphasis on sharing these not with the public at large, but with your friends and family.

* Myfamily : Launched in 1998, MyFamily focuses on the family unit as a social network and helps families that are spread out all over the country and the world keep in touch. A very Web 1.0 feel to the network, MyFamily is entering beta on a new Web 2.0 look and feel.

* Reunion : Targeted at finding lost friends, family, and old classmates, Reunion is one of the few social networks that require payment for premium features usually found for free on other social networks. According to the wiki entry for Reunion, they once had an F rating with the Better Business Bureau for misleading business practices.

* Soundpedia : Concentrating on social music, Soundpedia allows users to upload their playlists, search for new music, and view the playlists of their friends.

* Take Part : A social network dedicated to social activism, Take Part was established by Participant Media, the company behind such films as An Inconvenient Truth and Syriana.

* WAYN : An acronym for "Where Are You Now?", WAYN is a social networking site aimed at travelers around the world.

* Xing : A business-oriented social networking website similar to LinkedIn, most of Xing's users are located in Germany.

International Sites

* Badoo: Based in London, Badoo is one of the top social networking sites in Europe.

* Migente: A social networking site targeted at Latin America.

* Orkut: Originally created by Google to compete with MySpace and Facebook, it has mainly caught hold in Brazil.

* Studivz: A German version of Facebook with a strong audience in students.

* Bebo: Based in California, Bebo has gained popularity across the world, especially Ireland and the UK.

* Cyworld: A South Korean social networking site similar to MySpace.

* Faceparty: A United Kingdom social networking site founded in 2000, it differs from the norm by charging a fee for features normally found for free in other social networking sites.

* Piczo: A social networking site aimed at teens with a strong following in Canada and the United Kingdom.

* Studivz: A German version of Facebook with a strong audience in students.

* Passado: A European social networking site with strong audiences in France, Spain and Germany.

Source : social networking sites

2009 Resolution -- Give Your Site a Legal Checkup - sitepronews

2009-01-16T01:55:00.000-08:00

Use This Checklist If You Already Have The Basic Site Documents In Place

1. Copyright Notice. Check Your Copyright Notice. Your copyright notice consists of the following elements: the word "copyright" or copyright symbol (c in a circle) followed by the year of first publication followed by the name of the copyright owner. It's also a good idea to add "All rights reserved worldwide". Example: Copyright 1996-09 Digital Contracts, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. Note that if you update your site from time to time, you should add a date range reflecting the fact that the site has been updated each year within the date range. If you haven't updated yet for 2009, do it now.

2. Blogs, etc. Have you recently added a blog or any other functionality that permits visitors to post text or digital files to your site? Or, do you plan to do so as part of your marketing plans for 2009? If so, you need to have a DMCA notice in your Terms of Use and you also need to file a DMCA Registration form with the U.S. Copyright Office. These steps will create a "safe harbor" from strict liability for copyright infringement if a site visitor posts infringing material to your site.

3. Personal Information. Do you collect personal information from site visitors? If so, review your Privacy Policy to make sure that you identify all of the categories of personal information you collect and the way in which you share this personal information. If you've changed these policies since you posted your Privacy Policy, amend it now... without delay.

4. Data Security. Check your data security measures. If you collect personal information, you are required to implement "reasonable and appropriate" data security measures. These measures are essentially moving targets since data security technology evolves at a relatively rapid pace. What may have been "reasonable and appropriate" a couple of years ago may not pass muster today. Update your security procedures, if necessary.

5. Future Sale of Your Business? If your online business is starting to be successful and generate positive revenue, have you ever considered that you might want to sell it for a profit in the future? If so, be sure that your Privacy Policy specifies that personal information collected may be transferred and shared in the event of a sale. If you don't do this prior to collecting personal information, you won't be able to pass it on to your purchaser. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) stipulated in recent settlements that personal information collected prior to posting this notice in your Privacy Policy will not be transferable in the event of a sale. And this personal information (your opt-in lists and customer lists) are the real value of your online business.
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6. Service Providers. Do you use service providers to provide hosting, site maintenance, SEO services, or other site functions where they have access to your server? If you don't collect personal information, your answer to this question is immaterial, but if you do (and only an email address will suffice), you need to enter into privacy and security agreements with your service providers. The FTC stipulated in a couple of recent settlements that you would be liable if you don't.

7. Registration Agreement. Does your site require site visitors to register for certain benefits such as a membership or subscription rights? If so, you need an electronic agreement (a so-called "click-wrapped" agreement where the user clicks on "I ACCEPT"). Your agreement should be presented conspicuously in the registration process and it should require an affirmative act (clicking on "I ACCEPT") to complete the registration. You also need to be sure that all of your warranty disclaimers and limitations of liability pass muster.

8. Collect Birth Dates? Do you collect the date of birth as part of your registration process? If so, and if this date indicates that children under 13 are registering, you will be liable for substantial damages under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) if you do not comply with COPPA's stringent requirements. You should either modify your information collection practices or comply with COPPA, or both.

9. Creditor Under FACTA? Do your registered users make periodic payments payable as monthly or quarterly installments, or do you extend credít so that payment is made after receipt of the product or service? If so, you fall within the statutory requirements of the Fair and Accurate Credít Transactions Act of 2003 (FACTA). FACTA requires that you adopt a "Red Flag" Identity Theft Policy before May 1, 2009, or face substantial liability.

10. Sales Intermediaries? Do you use affiliates or resellers? If so, a recent New York case illustrates that you may be liable for their actions if they violate certain laws acting on your behalf. For example, are your affiliates engaged in illegal spamming activities? If they are offering their own end user license agreements, do they properly disclose certain activities such as the use of pop up ads? You should check your affiliate and reseller agreements and modify them, if required.
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Use This Checklist If You Don't Have Your Site Documents In Place

You may be just starting your online business, or you may have procrastinated a little with your website legal compliance. If you fall into this group, you should get started without delay.

I've developed a procedure that will help you determine the correct mix of legal compliance documents for your site. Part of it is set out below.

First, if your site does not collect personal information, you should consider these documents:

* a Legal page for your intellectual property notices; and

* Terms of Use.

* And if you allow site visitors to post text or digital files to your site (for example via a blog, forum, or chat room), you'll need a DMCA Registration Form (see No. 2 above).

Second, if your site collects personal information, but does not require registration to open an account or to use or purchase a product or service, you should consider these additional documents:

* Privacy Policy.

* And if you have service providers that have possession of your server or have access rights to it, you'll need a privacy-security agreement for these service providers (see No. 6 above).

Third, if your site requires registration to open an account or to use or purchase a product or service, you should consider in addition to the foregoing documents, a customer agreement such as:

* a software as a service (SaaS) agreement; and/or

* a Software License Agreement (for software downloads).

* And if you are regulated by FACTA (see No. 9 above), you'll need a Red Flag Identity Theft Policy -- before the May 1, 2009 deadline.

Conclusion

The checklists provided above are not exhaustive. However, they should point you in the right direction as you give your site a new year's legal compliance check-up.

A simple check-up -- and remedial action if necessary -- is one of the best investments you can make in your online business.

Nice article from Chip Cooper is a leading intellectual property, software, and Internet attorney who's advised software and online businesses nationwide for 25+ years. Visit Chip's DigiContracts.com site and download his FREE newsletter and Special Reports

15 Innovative Uses for Twitter - SiteProNews

2009-01-02T02:41:00.000-08:00

Those of us who are daily Twitter users already grok the power of the application and it's potential. But there are still a lot of Twitter critics out there, as well as those people who just don't understand how to use it.

I recently saw this comment on a blog: "I've been tweeting but... from what I've seen in the last couple of weeks, it's either a 'look at me' or a 'look at this' arena."

Sure Twitter is a great communication channel and as such, you do find a lot of self-promotion and name dropping. But there is so much more to Twitter. The comment got me thinking, would the critics feel the same if they could see more innovative ways to use it?
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So I decided to put together a líst of some of the more unique and inventive uses for Twitter. Some already exist while others are my own ideas. Here goes:

1) Community Help Desk - I've already used Twitter several times to investigate an issue I've been having with my computer, or a problem one of my clients has come across. Just yesterday I was able to pinpoint the source of a domain redirect issue because my followers in other countries could reach the site even though I was being redirected.

2) Write a Collaborative Book - you and a bunch of your favorite Tweeps could write a novel, one sentence (tweet) at a time. The results could range from hilarious to Shakespearean. I thought of this while reading about the popularity of Japanese novels composed via mobile text messages, but it turns out that some attempts have been made at this already e.g. 140 Novel and Good Captain. You could do a similar thing with song lyrics.

3) Live Webinars/Tutorials - you could create a new Twitter account with protected updates and ask invitation-only participants to follow you. Then you could hold a *closed* webinar at a pre-arranged time using Twitter for delivery instead of expensive webinar solutions. Twitter allows you to live chat, post links, photos, videos, audio files and text so there is no need for any plug-ins. You could even use a Twitter buffer like Twuffer to space out the content of the webinar via tweets over a specific timeframe.

4) Free Market Research - Who needs to pay expensive market research companies to learn stuff about your latest product? Just send a link, a free sample or a short survey to your followers and watch the feedback flow in.

5) Online Reputation Management - Twitter is ideal for tracking what people are saying about you, your company or your product. You can use Twitter Search to enter keywords or hash tags. Or you can use purpose-built widgets such as TweetBeep which work just like Google Alerts and send you regular emails containing any discussions involving your chosen Twitter accounts or hash tags. These work well for competitor tracking too.
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6) Laugh a Day / Therapy - I'm consistently amazed how many long-term Twitter users fail to use the favorites option to bookmark tweets that they like. Whenever I read a tweet that makes me laugh out loud, I favorite it immediately. Then, whenever I am feeling a bit flat, stressed or sense a bad mood coming on, I turn to my favorites líst knowing I will be giggling in no time. You can also rely on your followers to sense when you're down and cheer you up.

7) Competitions - Companies like Zappos and Hand Bag Heaven have been holding competitions on Twitter for a while now. You basically elicit a response from your followers in exchange for the chance to win something. You could ask a question about one of your products or ask followers to find something on your site to win a gíft certificate. But with a bit of ingenuity, you can be even more inventive.

DVDQuotes posts questions starting with WMITF, (which stands for Which Movie Is This From?) and gives away random DVDs to the Twitter user with the first correct tweet. Actor and Comedian Stephen Fry declared December 1 to be Oscar Wilde Day and asked his 30,000 plus followers to post Wildesque tweets using the hash tag #oscarwildeday for a chance to win downloads of his audio book. The competition took on a viral quality and earned the comedian at least 2,000 new followers within 48 hours.

8) Virtual Alarm Clock - Did you know you can use Twitter to set appointment reminders for yourself or others? You can use tools such as the Retweet Timer and Twittercal to tweet events from your Google Calendar as @replies to your Twitter profile at pre-set dates and times.

9) Idea Sharing / Community Mind Mapping - So this great business idea comes to you in the shower and you are busting to make it happen. But you want to be sure that your stroke of brilliance is fabulous and not folly. This is where your Twitter followers come in. Whether you tweet publicly or DM only your most trusted followers to keep it under wraps, you'll get unbiased and practically instantaneous feedback on your big plans. Would you use it? Could it work? How much would you pay for it? What features should it have? Tapping into the combined brain power of your Twitter community is a great way to flesh out a business plan.
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10) Competitor Tracking - You can use Twitter to monitor the activities of your enemi... er competitors without alerting them. Simply create an anonymous Twitter account and start following them. If they bad-mouth your company, or tweet about a product that may threaten your market share, you'll know immediately.

11) Bug Testing - Along the same lines as 4), you can use your Twitter followers as live BETA testers when you roll out a new product or software version. Your followers will often report bugs faster than paid customers because they *know* you and want you to succeed.

12) Become Your Favorite Character - Ever idolize a particular movie star or TV character? Why not create an account for them and tweet in character? A few tweeps have done this already, with hilarious results e.g. Laura Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie and wheelchair-bound Andy from Little Britain. Just make sure you don't step on the toes of the official sites representing the character in question.

13) Sport / Treasure Hunt Aid - With it's 140 character limit, Twitter is the perfect medium to deliver clues for online and offline scavenger hunts and popular sports such as geocaching .

14) Live Presentation Aid - Presenting at a conference or other event with Internet access from your laptop? You can tweet on the big screen to a) make a point b) elicit a response from Tweeps in the audience c) conduct live research d) gain instant feedback on a topic or question. I've used Twitter this way in the past and not only is it entertaining for the audience, but it's also a great way to overcome stage fright.

15) Build a Twitter Application - Despite not being monetized yet, Twitter's phenomenal growth has spurred the development of hundreds of applications that make money from Twitter either via advertising or donations. Why not build an application around Twitter and make your fortune?

Power of Social Media Optimization

2008-11-17T00:58:00.000-08:00

Why should I care about Social Media Optimization?

You should care about Social Media Optimization (SMO), because you care about your company's image. There's an old saying that goes something like, "A happy customer will tell one other person about his good experience. A disgruntled customer will tell ten people about his bad experience." Good or bad, that's powerful marketing. Social Media Optimization gives you the power to take an active role in managing your brand by interacting with your current and potential clients by discussing your products, their comments and concerns and continually promoting your brand.
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Social Media Optimization Defined

In its most basic form, Social media optimization is any method used to raise your website's online visibility through meaningful communication. SMO opens a dialogue between you and your clients, using the power of popular opinion to fuel your marketing campaign. The open format strengthens your search engine optimization efforts by fostering a mutual connection with your clients through the myriad of online communities, also called social media sites. Current examples of SMO include:

* Creating profiles in social media communities such as MySpace, Facebook, and VIRB.
* Participating in and/or creating blogs.
* Disseminating your blogs or articles using RSS feeds.
* Creating and sharing content through community based sites like Flickr, YouTube, and more.

Not to incorporate unnecessary buzz words, but SMO is a very Web 2.0 approach to Search Engine Optimization. Of course, Web 2.0 merely refers to the perceived second generation of Web-based communities and hosted services - the social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies, which facilitate collaboration and sharing between users. SMO allows you to become an active member of your online community, quite an important aspect of marketing your brand. Through participation, you establish yourself or your company as an industry leader and improve your online visibility.

As you can imagine, Social Media Optimization is most effective when the viral nature of the technique and its communities are utilized in a positive manner. Creating legitimate content, building relationships and instilling trust in your community is the very backbone of SMO. You may initiate the process, but effective SMO will take on a life all its own. A true forum is bred through the act of continual communication between your company and your online audience.

Of course, not everyone plays by the rules. In every aspect of life, you will find those who would cheat the system to receive short term gains. Like most schemes, the underbelly of SMO may seem attractive to anyone looking for a quick fix, but don't make that mistake. Just as it's true with SEO, erroneous SMO will backfire. Using questionable techniques will very likely yield the exact opposite results you were hoping to see.
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SMO Etiquette

Legitimate SMO techniques are centered on sharing information and exposing your community to your interests. As such, you want to focus on promoting proper SMO etiquette. The MySpace super fríend, the guy or gal who adds anyone and everyone, would be a good example of improper Social Media Optimization. The whole concept behind Social Media is to create a community with similar interests for meaningful discussion and let the power of popular opinion grow your online visibility. Of course, you may belong to several different communities and you may even have some of the same friends in those different communities. That's perfectly fine. The idea is to remain active in your communities by adding friends and contributing relevant content. Adding friends in bulk, for no reason, is no way to optimize.

Communal sites like MySpace and Facebook, or even YouTube and Flickr to some extent, are indeed popularity contests. However, simply trying to catalog massive amounts of unrelated, uninterested "friends" is totally counterproductive. Let the high school kids worry about who's got the most friends. For the purpose of SMO, you should concern yourself with quality, not quantity.

Using unsavory SMO techniques is the Web 2.0 equivalent to spam. Unfortunately, we're all far too familiar with spam. Unsolicited bulk messaging and link heavy advertisements instead of useful comments are two of the more prevalent methods of Social Media spamming. However, Social Media spamming is even more atrocious than email spam, because the offending text is visible to everyone on the site. It doesn't hide in your inbox, so it can really dilute the appeal of the site. Your kindergarten teacher was on the right track. If you don't have something relevant to say, don't say anything at all.

Is SMO right for my firm?

There are many different types of Social Media sites currently available. To put it in perspective, think about all the different interests you have in life. Now, consider the possibility that there's at least one Social Media site for each of your interests. Of course, you're not the only person on the Internet, so it's a safe bet there are literally millíons of sites dedicated to countless interests around the globe. Believe it or not, there's a group out there looking for your company, product or service. You just have to make it available. Therefore, understanding how to submit to and maintain your content on each community is absolutely crucial when developing a successful SMO strategy.

A few examples of the different Social Media genres include:

• News - These sites allow users to submit news articles. Once an article is published, users can submit their comments and vote to promote the story and/or author.

Examples include: Digg, Propeller, Newsvine

• Media - These sites allow users to upload and share a variety of different media files. The overwhelming majority of these sites are dedicated mainly to photo and video files.

Examples include: YouTube, Flickr

• Wiki - These sites allow users to add and edit informational articles as determined by the individual users.

Examples include: Wikipedia, WikiHow, Million Dollar Wiki

• Networking - These sites allow users to create profiles and network with others according to similar traits, tastes, and interests.

Examples include: MySpace, Facebook, Virb

• Bookmarking - These sites allow users to compile public bookmark collections of sites they find interesting, informative, or helpful. The more a site is bookmarked, the higher the ranking.

Examples include: Stumble Upon, Technorat, Del.icio.us

When executed properly, Social Media Optimization can be quite a beneficial marketing tool. However, SMO may simply not be the right fít for your organization. Some questions you might like to consider before launching your SMO campaign are:

* Most SMO sites share very specific information. Would your products benefit from this type of content specific market?

* The audience for most Social Media sites is more of a young, tech savvy group. Would your company, product or service appeal to their fickle nature?

* Does your web site contain a blog, or similar media outlet, you can regularly update with relevant content?

* Given the fact that community based sites focus on individual profiles and commentary, are you comfortable with developing unique profiles across multiple sites?

In summary

Social Media Optimization has become a successful marketing tool for one simple reason. It works. The gap between old media and new has gotten smaller and smaller with the majority of the prominent television and print media outlets finally embracing the Internet by launching sites of their own. The different Social Media sites, like MySpace and Facebook, have exploded with profiles for everything from 8th graders discussing their favorite bands to full scale ad campaigns for Blockbuster movies.

If done correctly, SMO can expose your brand to markets you didn't think possible. Whether it's used alone to drive a campaign or in conjunction with your current interactive marketing strategy, Social Media Optimization offers you a significant advantage.

Source : Sitepronews

Avoid these Spam techniques

2008-11-07T04:10:00.000-08:00

The most common spamming techniques being used right now -- tactics that should be avoided.

The complex code above was even loaded with keywords (using asp code). These keywords signaled to the Web server at the spam target site the type of dynamically generated page that should be served in response to the query. These tactics are not approved of if they're done deliberately to manipulate search rankings. Visitors to this site were totally oblivious to the devious intent of the site owner, and search engines were fooled as well.

Publishing Empires

When a publisher builds a vast array of interlinked Websites, it can generate high PageRank and subsequent rankings. This form of spam is difficult for a search engine to penalize, since the links are legitimate. Any single business entity has the right to interlink its own Websites. The company can create further overlap between the sites' content themes so that the links are truly valued by search engines.

This kind of activity is exemplified by one of the Internet's largest publishers. The business has 120+ Web properties, all of which are carefully linked to the others. Perform a search on one of these sites, and you're virtually guaranteed to see one of the company's other Web properties in the search results.

Many among the most successfully ranked sites use this system -- this form of spamming is extremely widespread. Perpetrators basically collect PageRank and link reputation within their network, then use it creatively to dominate the best keyword phrases. Search engines haven't found a way to stop this technique, but they'll have to. This form of spamming is a major threat to the quality of search results.

Wikis

Wikis are Web repositories to which anyone can post content. They can be a great way to present and edit ideas without close censorship, and have proven extremely successful for the creation, management, and maintenance of projects that require input from users around the globe.

However, despite their considerable advantages, the often un-scrutinized nature of wikis makes them ripe for abuse. Like a link farm, a wiki's links are free for all. Ironically, the value of wikis is consistent with popularity-based search engines. Some of these wikis boast a very high pagerank, which can make the wiki an attractive place from which to gain a link to your site. But without close human control, users may simply add their links as a means to take advantage of the wiki's PR. Until another user of the wiki removes the link, the linked site enjoys the benefits of this unscrupulous activity. The search engine spammers have control.

Networked Blogs

Blogs can be a source of precise, up-to-date and technically detailed information, presented by specialists and experts. Blogs are thus very valuable to info-hungry searchers, and are extremely popular.

However, some spammers start a blog, plug it full of garbage content such as comments on what they thought at 5:15, along with a link or two and some keyword rich text. Keyword rich musings don't present real value to deceived searchers. Worse still, blogs often operate in a free-for-all link structure that further validates the linked sites in search engine indexes.

Forums

Like blogs, forums can be a rich source of relevant information.

Unfortunately, some forum participants make comments in forums only in an effort to publish links back to their own sites. This may be acceptable if the user provides help or assistance to another forum member. Indeed, they should gain credit for that information, which they may have worked hard to discover.

However, when the posts become excessive and are comprised solely of glib or irrelevant comments, then value of the link, or indeed, the whole forum, can be put into question. Some forum owners only start forums in the hope that they will raise search engine rankings.

Domain Spam

Probably the most popular spam technique today involves creating and hosting a number of Websites. These sites rarely have any intrinsic value other than providing ranking support for the owner's main Website.

I've had several former clients who had used this technique -- and had been penalized for it. After I got them to get rid of the duplicates completely, their rankings were repaired.

Duplicate Domains

Why can't Google detect two exact duplicate Websites that only differ on domain names? Why would Google give these same sites first and second rank for the very same phrase? This happens all too frequently and is due to Google's preoccupation with linking between topically related sites.

Domain spam is usually the result of a corporation's attempt to have Web sites for each of its company departments or subsidiaries. Those with many subsidiaries get a big boost from these domains. Realizing this, spammers are increasingly encouraging clients to have sites hosted on different IP addresses and even in different geographical locations.

The link pattern detection used by Google has difficulty dealing with this practice, and is currently failing to cope with it. Google's new emphasis on authority sites actually makes this matter worse, as the authority can gain trust it really doesn't deserve.

Links Inside No Script Tags

One top publishing site I recently discovered secretly interlinked its sites using the no script tag. Although I can't name the site, I can show you how the technique worked.

Used legitimately, the no script tag provides spiderable links when a user's browser (or a search engine robot), has its javascript turned off. Anything that appears inside the no script tags is not visible on the Web page itself.

To be used authentically, the no script tag must contain links that replicate those used within JavaScript code in the actual page.

But in this case, the links went to sites that strategically collected PageRank. They were basically hidden, acting as underground network of links to support the publisher's rankings. This code appeared in almost all of the site's many domains -- and perhaps exists in the Websites of others, who may not even know it's there! Some of the pages only used a closing tag, which could also confuse search engines.

Please check source link for code demo..

The complex code above was even loaded with keywords (using asp code). These keywords signaled to the Web server at the spam target site the type of dynamically generated page that should be served in response to the query. These tactics are not approved of if they're done deliberately to manipulate search rankings. Visitors to this site were totally oblivious to the devious intent of the site owner, and search engines were fooled as well.

Non-Robot JavaScript Detectable Redirects

The use of mouseover code like that shown below is quietly spreading across the Web:

Please check source link for code demo..

There have been rumors that Google is taking action against this tactic. In the cases I discovered, the JavaScript code automatically redirected the visitor to another page, but only upon the cursor being moved over the page itself. It was almost impossible for the user to avoid setting this code off.

I found the code on a site ranked number one on Google for its primary keyword phrase. As search engine robots don't use a mouse, they're blind to the spamming activity. In this case, the tactic was combined with a server side redirect to another page, which was relevant only in some cases. The purpose of the redirect may have been part of bigger ploy to support another ranking strategy.

Dynamic Real Time Page Generation

It is possible for a Web server to produce and serve different, optimized pages according to the referrer of any page request.

In theory, there is nothing wrong with serving a page that's customized to the circumstance in which it was requested -- indeed, many ad campaigns serve up different ads based on the type of banner that was clicked. Customized ads are seen as being far more effective and useful for users.

With dynamic page spam, however, the site is loaded with hundreds of these phantom pages (dynamic urls) that act as affiliate links to some other site. Search engines don't want affiliate links. In the case I found, all the links were credited to the site's backlink count.

I don't think this is what search engines had in mind when they began to spider dynamic urls -- they certainly don't want to allow affiliate link spam.

Here's what the links typically look like:

`Please check source link for code demo..`

DHTML Layering and Hidden Text

Using DHTML layering, spammers can hide layers of keywords beneath graphics. One layer covers the other visually, yet the text hidden on the lowers layer is readable by the search engine robot -- another highly illegal technique.

HTML Hidden Table Cells

The combined powers of CSS and html and the loose dtd allow the unscrupulous site owner to hide the content of table cells loaded with keywords and heading tags.

CSS permits the flexible positioning of Web page elements; it's a flexible coding language that search engines do not fully understand at present. In short, the search engine doesn't really know what's being displayed. This trickery can be specified in a separate CSS sheet (.css file), which a search engine may or may not index. This CSS style sheet file, however, does affect the display of content on the page.

In this example, the CSS affects the display of the body of the Web page, which is set to 97%:

`Please check source link for code demo..`

Within the regular code, .gif files can be placed in the page at a width of 150%, ensuring that part of the page is not seen. That extra 50% provides plenty of room for keywords stuffed .

Enormous Machine-Generated Websites

Those Webmasters who are not adept to html, dhtml or css tricks may try something simpler. When there's not enough content to go around, they often try to stretch a minimal amount of content across thousands of pages. The pages are built with templates and the sentences within them are basically shuffled from one page to the next. Unique title tags are plugged into each page that's generated.

This technique basically sees the same page repeated hundreds to thousands of times. It can even be done using a computer program that systematically stuffs the text sentences, paragraphs and headings, including keywords, into pages.

This technique is most often used with ecommerce sites that have a limited range of products for sale. Often, the products are simply re-organized, or shuffled to create another page that appears to be unique. It's actually the same selection of products presented countless different ways.

Link Spam

To maximize Pagerank distribution throughout a Website, some spammers will fill a page with links to the point where it is just a links page, and every page links to every other page.

Why do this? Well, by maximizing the number of links, the spammer more equally spreads PageRank throughout his or her site. When links from all those pages point to a single page on a keyword topic, the site can gain higher rankings for that phrase.

Link exchanges are also considered link spam. The links are fabricated -- not a real reflection of personal choice. Most link exchanges are now being filtered out of search results; however, some links in link exchanges are still being recognized.

This system allows the server to give the robot different content than that which is delivered to human visitors. And that means the search engine could be deceived.

Invisible Text

Invisible text is invisible because the font color is the same as the color of the background or background image.

In one example I saw, a site used the font color "snow" to make the text white on a white background. The author also used this font tag in a way that caused it to overlap another tag, thereby confusing the search engine robot further.

The example below uses a black color .gif as the background to hide black text. It also has a dhtml layer directly above it, to further hide the text.

`Please check source link for code demo..`

A robot can't detect whether text in a dhtml layer is the same as the background used in a layer below it. The layer can even be set off-screen so it is never visible to a person.

Link Farms

Link farms are still prevalent on the Web, even though search engines can detect their presence through link pattern recognition. Since link spamming is being done at a macro level, so search engines must be able to view a large sophisticated network of links and delete those that are machine-generated and not true, human-chosen links.

The hilltop algorithm is one filter that minimizes the advantage gained by hundreds of useless links.

Spamming Penalties

Each search engine has its own distinct prohibitions and related penalties. Each penalty is a response to the degree of threat the search engine that a given spamming technique represents.

Spammers may receive demerits, through which the ranking of their sites on a particular phrase might drop significantly. Alternatively, a zero PageRank penalty may be awarded to a particular page, or whole sites may be banned if the search engine so chooses.

Now that these techniques are widely known, I strongly advise you not to try them. The search engine engineers may be embarrassed that these tricks really do work, and will move swiftly to take action against spammers.

Source : Spam Techniques

Web Analytics: New Year - New Opportunities

2008-10-13T12:35:00.000-07:00

Many of you may be looking back at last year and asking yourself what you accomplished On the personal side, you hopefully had a great year. But looking back 12 months, did you accomplish the goals tied to your business, job function, and specifically, your Web site?

As this is a common time to reflect on the past and plan for the future, I wanted to examine a few common frustrations. If you're like others in the space, you probably entered the year thinking one or more of the issues below.

They'll sound familiar to many of you All are probably things we'd have loved to have solved back in 2005. Unfortunately, most people are waking up on the first business day of 2007 and realizing they still face the same issues they did last January. Now hopefully, if you've been reading ClickZ and over the past year you've made some progress on some of these, In any case, let's look at these top five issues and try to understand the underlying problem.

Analysis of Five Issues

1. I know there's a ton of value in Web analytics, but we aren't doing anything with it now. Where do we start?

Have you considered how you might want to use this data? How it can help you do a better job? Have you allocated the responsibility of Web analytics to someone? This wouldn't be someone within IT, it would be someone with a strong Web strategy marketing background. Do they need to be an expert statistician? Not at all. This is a major misconception about Web analytics. It shouldn't be an IT person, it doesn't need to be a stats pro, but it does need to be someone who understands Web strategy, the business, and how to use data. Think MBA rather than IT pro.

2. It seems we have a mountain of data, reports, and scorecards, but we really aren't getting any insight from all that data. Why not?

Typically this happens when people are not focusing in on the right data. Do you feel the Web channel goals have been correctly defined and agreed upon? Has someone taken the initiative to formulate KPIs (key performance indicators) and the metrics that support those KPIs which can help interpret fluctuations? If you company is still struggling with number one, make sure you focus in on what matters, get that nailed in Q1, and come this time next year you'll be in much better shape. Once you have the important behaviors nailed, through out 98 percent of the other data coming from your Web analytics tools and just focusing on understanding the data that drives those behaviors. We will look back at the other 98 percent, but not until we get the basics nailed.

3. We identify all these great opportunities, but we just can't get others to act on them and improve the site through testing or otherwise, how can we get others excited about the opportunities?

This is most commonly related to a lack of others understanding what they can get out of Web analytics. It's imperative they understand how it can help them do their job better. In many cases, it takes a small win by someone on the team to understand. Find the most receptive person on the Web team, ideally one of the leaders. Help them get a win leveraging data and improving the site, then share that story throughout the team. Once you get this under your belt you can move onto bigger things and into systemized testing. Executive support is key for taking it to the next level and investing in an optimization tool (i.e. Offermatica, Optimost, etc.) and the related support for testing. More on executive support to come in the future, by the way.

4. Wouldn't the Web analytics and other data like attitudinal, competitive and call center data be much more valuable if I could use them together?

Three different people or groups within a company own these three or four different data types. Typically, none understand the other data types, how they could be of value, or how their data could be valuable to others. Add to this another common under-estimatation: the power of all of this data together is much greater than the sum of all the parts. Yes, this takes executive support as well.

5. Culture of analysis: How do we get our company to start basing decisions on data?

This is without a doubt the biggest transition of all. Becoming a data-driven organization shifts the way all decisions are made. Instead of making decisions based on gut feelings or "past experience," we strive to build a culture where all decisions are made based on a combination of data insight and educated decisions. In order to get your company willing to make the investment to transition the way they look at the Web channel and make decisions, there must be a proven track record. Executive support isn't optional, but an absolute must. Things won't get done without this level of support. Source

Promoting your new website - By Scott Van Achte

2008-10-10T01:06:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I wrote about building your website from the ground up. This article did not dive into great detail on any specific topics, but rather touched on the key points you will want to address. In this article I will place most of the focus on the promotíon aspect of this previous article. Image of bullhorn saying 'Promoting Your New Website'

While at times new websites can experience organic search rankings in a matter of months, for the most part, it can take well over a year before you start to see any progress, and that is if you start promoting right away!
Get the Number One Position on Google

SEO
If your new website has not been properly optimized for the search engines, then this is a necessary first step you must take. Ensure that your new site has integrated the appropriate keywords into all the fundamental areas of the site. Without this critical step of optimizing your site, in many cases no level of promotíon will help you get those search rankings.

Note: Extreme numbers of inbound links can sometimes cause an un-optimized site to rank, but an optimized website will seriously reduce the number of links needed, and its associated cost. This varies from industry to industry, but is true as a general rule.

Ideally the optimization of your site occurred during the planning and building stages, but if it did not be sure to get this completed as soon as possible.

Press Releases
The first thing you should do when your site goes live is issue a press release. Be sure to include a link back to your website, preferably with your target phrase hyperlinked as well. Submit this press release to an aggregator such as PRWeb. This will help get the word out that your site is live, draw some attention from the public, and also get you that first valuable link to your website.

Search Engine Submission
These days search engines will find your site on their own, and submitting to them is not necessary. If you feel you must submit your site to the engines, submit it only once and shortly after the site goes live.

In order to help the search engines fully spider your new site, the best thing you can do in terms of submissions, is to create and submit an XML sitemap. Submit this sitemap to your Google Webmaster Tools account, and also be sure to include a call to it within your robots.txt file by adding the following line including a complete path to your sitemap:

Sitemap: http://www.domain.com/sitemap.xml

There are many tools out there to help you build your xml sitemap. Google has placed a líst of some of these tools on their "Third Party Programs" page.
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Directory Submission
Back in August I wrote about using Directory Submission to help build links. The general gist of it is to be sure that there is a high level of relevance in the directories you submit your site to, especially if it is a paid directory. Currently DMOZ still has a high level of value as it is seen as a strong authority at Google. Make the attempt to have your site listed here in the most relevant category possible.

Link Building
There are a number of ways you can work to grow your back links. In July I wrote about 13 ways to help build links. Links are one of those strategic tools that won't ever be a bad investment. Today they play a significant role in search rankings for most industries, especially in Google. While the future will almost undoubtedly still see search value in links, even if that value declines, or disappears entirely, quality links can still help drive traffic as well, and a strong base of inbound links can deliver you customers well into the future.

Explore the different ways to build links to your site. A steady progressive rise in inbound links will help Google look positively in your direction. Do not be afraid of reciprocal links either. If you are trading with highly relevant websites to your industry, then you should have nothing to be afraid of.

Social Media
Promotíon largely consists of building links and becoming recognized by the search engines, but in order to help you build those links, getting your name and brand out there can really do wonders. By increasing awareness of your site and product, the public will often help create the buzz you need, and often, this can result in fresh links to your website.

To help get your site in the eyes of as many people as possible, take a look into Social Media and consider creating profiles on some of the popular platforms. This can include creating a YouTube account and uploading instructional, informational, or interesting product videos. You can set up a Facebook page, and work to build a community around your product. Create a profile page on Squidoo, MySpace, and Flickr, amongst many others.

These pages often act as backlinks to your site, and also help spread awareness. Be sure to keep your social endeavors updated regularly or any viewership you have will dwindle as people lose interest. If you are able to build a strong following, this can result in many individuals linking to your site and spreading the word, resulting in long term benefits for you and your site.

Your use of social media does not have to be exactly about your company. For instance, let's say you sell cars. Your use of the social platform, while it may note your business, can focus on other car info including trivia, news, photos, etc. The key is to keep it relevant, not identical - you are not looking to create a mirror of your site.

Article Writing
Write articles about the subject of your website and submit them to various services such as EzineArticles. Consider also writing for your blog to help grow your site content. By writing and distributing relevant articles you can create a nice cushion of relevant incoming links. By writing articles that closely match the topic of your site, and including a link back to relevant content within your site, you can help out not only with search engine rankings, but by creating an extra traffic stream for your site.

Pay Per Click
While Pay Per Click (PPC) will not give you many long standing benefits, it can help you to start making sales immediately which in turn can give you the funds needed to promote your site via other means. If you need that immediate traffic, this is one way to get it, but at a cost, and as soon as you stop paying, your traffic stops, so it is far from a reliable long term means. In some industries however, it can pay off, so it is definitely worth considering.

Summary
In general, reference your website everywhere possible. Get links from every relevant source you can think of, issue a press release, and get your site lísted in the key directories for your industry. The more eyes you can put your URL in front of and the more relevant sites you can get to link back to yours, the sooner you will start to see progress in the search engines.

For many industries it can literally take years to get those coveted first page results - in some industries it may be near impossible, but if you want a chance, you need to start promoting that new site of yours immediately.

Source Sitepronews

Outsource Using oDesk - Build a business

2008-10-09T12:10:00.000-07:00

Source : Making money online blogging

About three months ago I was directed to a service called oDesk.com by my friend Jerry West but I have to admit that I paid little attention to it for the simple reason that it looked pretty much like all the other outsourcing systems (Elance, Rent a Coder, etc).

Well last week I finally gave it a shot and tested it out and I have to admit I am impressed.

Now the results are still in the early stages, but this is what I did.

Step1: I created a list of jobs that I feel the average person could complete in 8 hours. I put the list into a detailed step by step process for the person to be able to follow along with.

Step 2: I created a detailed job description that mentioned what I was looking for but at the same time I did not go into specifics. I have found through past experiences that if you get too detailed then it intimidates some people from applying.

Step 3: I waited 24 hours and then started to filter through the applicants. As I came across potential candidates I requested interviews. The interviews can be done via chat, phone or email and the interview was simply to ensure that they could dedicate the time to the job that I required and to also get more samples of work that they may have done (if there was any).

If I was happy with the interview I then sent them an offer of a trial job. What this means is they would be hired and given the initial job but this would be a test that would be used in deciding on the best candidates. I made it very clear that they were competing against others.

The cool thing about oDesk is that you do not have to agree on a price for the entire project… you can choose to pay per hour and then you only pay for the time they are logged into the system. It takes screenshots and shows you exactly what they are doing, so you can see if they are being honest or not.

Step 4: I have now given the tasks to four people and have received three of the four back. The fourth person has until tomorrow morning and I will then cross check the cost per hour, quality and time to come up with my best candidate.

$/hour + Quality + Time to Complete Task

By using this formula I am able to ensure I get the best ROI. The winner may not be the cheapest or fastest but instead they will be the person that has the best balance of all three.

The other cool thing is I am able to keep the project open to new applicants while I am interviewing. This way I can continue testing new people and if I am not satisfied with any of the current four, then I have more to choose from.

Next week I will update you with who I selected, how we arranged to move forward with scheduling hours and what the results are so far.

So far I am loving oDesk… but it is too early to be certain. Click Here to check it out for yourself!

The On Demand Global Workforce - oDesk

So what are your thoughts of oDesk… have you used or will you try it?

Methods to Drive Web Site Traffic

2008-10-07T01:44:00.000-07:00

1. Ads on free classified ads sites, such as Backpages, Craigslist, and Kijiji.

2. Posting articles on article directory sites, such as EzineArticles.

3. Creating educational YouTube videos and putting URL in the video and link in the description text.

4. Posting content to industry hubs and networking sites. For example, ActiveRain is a very popular blogging and online networking community for real estate brokers, in much the same way that Facebook is for college students. Networking with other people expands your sphere, also.

5. Discussion board participation. Pick forums related to your industry and site, and put links in your signature line so it appears in all your posts. These can be stand-alone sites, or "groups" on sites like MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

6. Comment on related blogs, leaving a link behind.

7. Automatically submit your content to aggregators. The easiest way to do this is to burn your feed to FeedBurner and enable the feature to distribute your feed to blog aggregators.

8. Place links in your blog posts to allow readers to submit them to Digg, Delicious, Stumble Upon, Fark, and other such "best of blogging" sites.

source : FREE REAL TRAFFIC TO YOUR BLOG OR WEBSITE

How to Make Money From Your Blog

2008-09-22T03:10:00.000-07:00

These days, most people who spend a lot of time online manage at least one blog. Blogs are the new web sites and they’re cheaper, faster and easier to build than ever before.

With all the free blog services available now, such as WordPress, Blogger and LiveJournal, you can set up a new blog in about 10 minutes and the only investment required is time and commitment.

But how exactly do you make money with a blog?

Take a look at Technorati’s Top 100 blogs and you’ll see blogging rockstars like:

* Jeremy Schoemaker (ShoeMoney)
* John Chow
* Duncan Riley
* Maki (Dosh Dosh)
* Darren Rowse (ProBlogger)

Look at their sites and you’ll see the secret formula is made up of just 2 ingredients: traffic and advertising.

So how can you apply this to your own blog? How do you get the traffic to justify selling advertising space?

Let’s take a close look at these tactics:

Traffic Tactics

The blogging heavyweights spend a LOT of time building up their subscriber base and attracting more and more eyeballs to their blogs.

You too can do this in several ways:

1) Generate valuable timely content on a daily basis

This is the time consuming part. You need to make regular posts on your blog (daily if possible) that people want to read. You can either do this yourself, hire some writers, find guest bloggers, or syndicate content from other sites, either free or purchased.

2) Make your blog appealing enough to entice visitors to return

This is an obvious one. Your blog needs to provide value or generate enough interest in your readers that they will come back regularly.

3) Encourage visitors to subscribe to your blog feed

Anyone can do this but it is surprising how often it’s overlooked. ASK your blog readers to subscribe to your feed!

4) Make it EASY for visitors to subscribe

Another easy one. Make your feed button large and stick it in an obvious place on EVERY page of your blog. Use a feed format that is readable by a wide range of readers. Services like FeedReader convert your feed into a reader-friendly format.

5) Remind visitors to bookmark your blog

Another no-brainer. ASK your readers to bookmark the blog and come back!

6) Aggressively participate in social networking and post-sharing

Apart from content, the other time-consuming part of blogging is social networking. When you write a new post on your blog, don’t just let it sit there and hope for traffic. Submit it to your favorite social networking haunts like Digg, Sphinn, StumbleUpon etc. Send a link to your friends and colleagues and ask them to send it on.

Create a profile in the major social media sites, participate in the community and support other bloggers by submitting and sharing their posts if you like them. You’ll be amazed at the amount of support and traffic this can generate. Such is the power of social networking.

7) Encourage readers to share your posts with others

Make it easy for your blog readers to promote your content by placing icons to the most popular social media sites underneath each post. Encourage them to share the posts that they like via email. Provide the ability for your readers to comment on your posts. If you receive comments, reply in a timely and helpful fashion, making sure you thank visitors who make the effort.

8) Push marketing to your subscriber base via newsletters and email

Once you’ve got a subscriber list, make sure you keep in touch with them regularly. Send them links to useful articles. Ask them to comment on your latest post. Seek advice about your blog design. Offer them something for nothing. Or simply thank them for subscribing. The key here is not to overdo the contact and to remember why they subscribed in the first place.

9) Give stuff away

Shoemoney works this angle well. Got an e-book you think your readers would like? Offer it to your readers as a bonus for subscribing to your feed. Run a competition and give away Amazon vouchers or other prizes. Better still, find advertisers who are willing to donate prizes so there is no cost to you at all.

10) Have an attractive design

Another no-brainer. The lovely anime images on DoshDosh are a major factor in the blog’s appeal. People tend not to hang around places that hurt their eyes. Make your blog a pleasant visual experience and use a soothing color scheme and design.

11) Create a sense of community

Like-minded people tend to congregate in the same places. If your blog is attracting a certain niche crowd and you are interacting with them, you’ll find that word of mouth will spread. They will tell their friends and so on and so forth. Your readers will start to “hang out” at your blog for the sense of community it provides.

12) Create some controversy

Another thing that Shoemoney is good at. Jeremy likes to drop a bomb and watch the fallout. It’s a risky tactic, but a very good traffic generator.

Advertising Tactics

The most successful bloggers gain advertisers like a magnet. How can you imitate this?

1) Attract a high level of traffic

Traffic generation is your key to getting advertisers to hand over cash to you. Once you have followed the traffic tips above and your blog is pulling high numbers of subscribers and visitors, advertisers will start knocking on your door almost immediately.

2) Focus on a niche market

The most successful blogs are verticals - those that specialize in a specific vertical market e.g. SEO, politics, humor and so on. Make sure your blog is targeted at a specific niche market and feed that niche with only relevant, related content. Advertisers will pay good money for access to a highly qualified audience in their target markets. This is because you are providing access to a market that advertisers can’t get anywhere else.

3) Have an attractive, professional looking site

As mentioned already, people like soothing color schemes and professional looking web sites. This means no obvious spelling errors or tasteless graphics. Advertisers know this and would be more likely to advertise on a blog that follows these rules.

4) Provide appealing ad options

Many blogs only provide a single advertising option, usually the 125 x 125 pixel banner ad, surrounded by 3 or more ads from other advertisers. But the blog rockstars know that advertisers like to have other options such as exclusivity, text ads, peel-back ads and skyscraper banners.

You should also think about whether you want to charge for advertising based on time frame, cost per impression (CPM) or cost per click (CPC). Providing a wide range of advertising options will increase the potential number of advertisers your blog can attract.

5) Promote your advertising programs on your blog

This one sounds obvious, but take a look at 10 blogs and you’ll see that only a couple will be actively promoting their advertising programs. What a waste! Be in the minority and promote your blog advertising by sticking a big link or button marked ADVERTISE HERE which links through to your contact form or to details about advertising rates.

6) Provide value for money to advertisers

Obviously advertisers are going to expect value for their advertising dollar. Keep your ad rates low until your subscriber base reaches a reasonable level. Provide discounts for long-term advertisers. Give them something for nothing e.g. buy 2 months, get 1 month free.

7) Respond quickly to potential advertisers

Once you receive an advertising enquiry, respond quickly and get them booked in. If you have no slots available for the current month, offer them a discount to book into a future time-slot. Be willing to negotiate with advertisers and encourage loyalty.

8) Use the scarcity principle

The scarcity principle is a well-researched phenomenon. Scarcity indicates the lack of something. When we realize that we do not have something, we desire it. Telling someone that something is not available only makes it more desirable.

Rockstar bloggers use the scarcity principle all the time to hype up readers and advertisers with the “you don’t want to miss out” factor. You can imitate this by promoting a limited no. of advertising opportunities, promoting a time-limited offer or talking about how your ad slots sell out quickly.

9) Make it easy for advertisers to pay you

Provide a range of payment options for advertisers. Allow payments via PayPal, credit card, check or bank transfer. The more options you provide, the wider range of advertisers you are likely to attract. Remember, you can’t make money unless you give people a way to pay you.

You may not become a blogging rockstar overnight, but if you implement these tactics you’ll be well on your way!

source

10 Ways to Drive Massive traffic to your blog or website

2008-09-22T03:02:00.000-07:00

Targeted traffíc is the lifeblood of any successful business. In this article, I'm going to show you how to get laser targeted traffíc in just a few simple steps.

1. Article Marketing - One of the best ways to drive targeted traffíc to your website is through the use of article marketing. This is one of the oldest techniques for generating traffic, but it's still one of the best.
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Once you have written your article, you can then submít it to some of the top article directories like EzineArticles, GoArticles, Buzzle, the American Chronicle, ArticlesBase, and SearchWarp. For a listing of the top article directories online, go to...

MasonWorld.com

You can also publish your website to Web 2.0 sites like Squidoo, HubPages, Zimbio, and Gather.com.

For a complete listing of Web 2.0 sites, go to...

Web 2.0 Directory : eConsultant

Article marketing is even more powerful when you submit exclusive articles to bloggers and owners of newsletters. This technique has sent me thousands of visitors with a single article. The key is to find the right distribution outlets.

Just imagine if you spend just one hour each day writing and distributing one article. In three months you would have 100 articles all sending you traffic on a daily basis.

So get out there and start syndicating your articles, submitting guests posts, and writing for online newsletters.

2. Viral Ebooks - Why not bundle your articles together and create a viral ebook? Giving away free ebooks is one of the best ways to generate traffic online. It's also one of the best ways to build your mailing líst.

You can submit your PDF ebooks to:

Scribd
eSnips
DocStoc
Calameo
Issuu
Yudu
FreeIQ , and
ButterflyReports

For a complete líst of ebook directories you can submit to, go to Free Ebook Directories .
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Quick Tip: You can also convert your ebooks to exe files and submít them to all the different software directories online. You can convert your ebooks using a free piece of software called WebsiteZip Packer .

3. Blogging - Blogging is one of the best things you can do for your business. Blogging is a great way to get to know your readers. Plus, blogging can play a major role in getting valuable search engine traffic from Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

4. Submit your articles to Blog Carnivals. A blog carnival is a collection of blog posts on a particular subject. They are then posted together on on blog - called a host. The host (who is also a blogger), publishes the carnival on their blog, with links to each blog post that has been submitted.

This creates an excellent opportuníty to get your blog posts shared on other blogs.

There are a number of benefits to participating in blog carnivals. Not only will you generate extra traffic, but it also provides you with quality backlinks and an excellent opportuníty to connect with other bloggers.

To submit your article to a blog carnival, go to Blog Carnival - Blog Communities Publishing Magazines . For extra exposure, submit to multiple blog carnivals. Just make sure they're all relevant to your topic.

This is one of the easiest ways to create one-way backlinks coming into your site, which is one of the biggest factors when it comes to ranking high in Google.

5. Submit your blog posts to social bookmarking sites.

Social Bookmarking is one of the easiest ways to get extra traffic and links coming into your blog. Social bookmarking allows Internet users to save and organize bookmarks to a public website, tag them with keywords, share them with others, and browse what others have bookmarked.

Digg, Delicious, Mixx, and Digg are just a few of the social bookmarking sites you can use to maximize your exposure.

You can do a semi-automated submission to over 50 social bookmarking sites at AutoPoster.com .
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You can also encourage your blog readers to bookmark your posts as well with a Wordpress plugin called ShareThis.

6. Ustream.tv - Ustream allows you to create your very own tv station on the Web. However, it's better than TV because it's a live, interactive experience. While you're broadcasting the video, you're also getting feedback from the live chatroom.

Ustream gives your business a human face and a real personality. This is extremely valuable, because people like to buy and interact with people, not impersonal companies.

Live video allows you to reach entirely new audiences and develop a much greater level of engagement. A deeper level of engagement almost equates to a higher conversion rate when done correctly.

It's also an excellent way to get feedback from your audience.

7. Forum Marketing - Forums are another way to drive targeted visitors to your website. The key to getting quality traffic from forums is to find a forum that is highly targeted to your website, become involved in the community, and create a benefit-laden signature.

You can put a link back to your website in your signature. It's critical that you use your signature to provide something of extreme value along with a good call-to-action. Otherwise, why would anybody click?

The biggest benefit of marketing in forums is that they are centered around a very tight group of people who are all interested in the same subject. This is essentially a community of raving fans for a particular topic, making them extremely targeted prospects.

Forums are also an excellent way to connect with other bloggers, meet other marketers, and gain insights into your market.

8. Interviews are another great way to generate traffic.
When you interview a fellow blogger, they will almost always publish a link to the interview on their blog. At the same time, you are also sending traffic to their website by posting the interview on your blog.

This can be a very effective technique for generating traffic and meeting new bloggers. Unfortunately, most people are just afraid to ask.

9. Build a List - If you're not building a líst, you're missing out on a major source of ongoing traffic. Your líst is the most valuable asset in your business.

Best of all, it can be leveraged at anytime to drive a funnel of visitors to your website.

10. Video Marketing - Video sites have quickly become some of the most highly trafficked sites on the Internet, making them one of the best places to generate lots of extra traffic.
http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
And don't worry, your video doesn't have to be a Spielberg classic. In fact, it can just be a PowerPoint presentation with audio. Even simple videos can drive thousands of visitors to your site.

Once you've created your video, you can then submit it to the top video submission sites with a tool called TubeMogul .

And finally, My Favorite...

Search Engine Optimization is one of the best ways to generate extremely targeted traffíc online. By following just a few basic principles, you can get lots of traffic from the search engines every month.

By Kim Roach www.sitepronews.com

Adsense Advantages & Disadvantages

2008-09-20T10:55:00.000-07:00

AdSense's advantages

AdSense is simple to join.

It's easy to paste a bit of code into your pages.

It's free to join.

You don't have to spend time finding advertisers.

Google provides well written, highly relevant ads - chosen to closely match the content on your pages.

You don't have to waste time choosing different ads for different pages.

You don't have to mess around with different code for various affiliate programs.

You're free to concentrate on providing good content and Google does the work of finding the best ads for your pages from 100,000 AdWords advertisers.

It's suitable for beginners or marketing veterans.

AdSense provides simple, easy-to-understand stats.

If you have affiliate links on your site, you ARE allowed to add AdSense ads. However, with your affiliate links, you must not mimic the look and feel of the Google ads.

You can filter up to 200 URLs, so you can block ads for sites that don't meet your standards. You can also block strong competitors.

Inevitably, AdSense is competing strongly for space on web sites with all other revenue sharing opportunities.

If you own a small web site you can plug a bit of AdSense code into your site and almost instantly relevant text ads that are likely to appeal to your visitors will appear on your pages.

If you own several sites, you need apply only once. This makes AdSense much simpler than joining a bunch of affiliate programs.

As you can see, I'm really keen on this revenue sharing service.

Adsense Disadvantages

One problem is inappropriate ads. You don't want spammy junk advertised on your site. Google's standards probably aren't as high as yours. You can filter out 200 URLs, but in some industries that won't be enough.

The stats Google supplies are inadequate. They're easy to understand at a glance. However, they don't tell you exactly which ads people are clicking on, or which keywords are involved. That's frustrating.

Also, I'd like to be able to identify and block ads that have very low payout rates, without doing a lot of sleuthing and messing around.

The ad panels say "Ads by Google" - free advertising for Google. You don't earn anything if someone clicks on that link.

The minimum payout is $100, which is regarded as too high by sites which don't receive much traffic. That won't worry experienced webmasters.

Also, sites that want to display AdSense ads may not include "other content-targeted and/or text-based ads on the pages displaying AdWords ads." However, human beings review the sites. Rejected sites have been able to appeal successfully.

Another disadvantage is that Google doesn't allow you to share your stats with other webmasters. The AdSense Terms and Conditions say:

"Confidentiality. You agree not to disclose Google Confidential Information without Google's prior written consent. 'Google Confidential Information' includes without limitation: ... (b) click-through rates or other statistics relating to Site performance in the Program provided to you by Google..."

That's really weird. Web site owners need to be able to share such information and discuss successes and failures.

A big disadvantage of the service is that Google doesn't say how much its AdSense partners will receive. You'll just receive an unknown share of the revenue.

Only a company with the goodwill and respect Google has earned could get away with such a cheeky offer.

Google says:

"How much will I earn through this program? The AdWords ads you are able to display on your content pages are cost-per-click (CPC) ads. This means that advertisers pay only when users click on ads. You'll receive a portion of the amount paid for clicks on AdWords ads on your website. Although we don't disclose the exact revenue share, our goal is to enable publishers to make as much or more than they could with other advertising networks."

So the only way to know how much you'll earn is to try it and see. If you want to bail out, all you have to do is remove the code from your site.

Don't put all your eggs in the AdSense basket. If Google discovers fraudulent clicks on ads appearing on your pages, it can dump your site from the service, and refuse to pay you all revenue owed. Some webmasters who claim total innocence have had this happen to them.

Google has made several changes to its AdSense FAQ, clarifying varying things. For example, it IS possible to apply for separate accounts for separate web sites. I've done so, and checked with Google that it's OK in my case. Read the rules - they look ambiguous to me. If in doubt, ask first!

Some time after the launch of AdSense, Google added "channels" which improve the tracking. I strongly recommend that you experiment with these.

Sites with "excessive advertising" are being rejected.

Source

100 Google AdSense Tips

2008-09-08T10:22:00.000-07:00

1.

AdSense Earning = Impression-count x Click-though-rate x Cost-per-click x smart-pricing-factor.
2.

Impression count is basically referring to your traffic. It means the number of times AdSense block is displayed.
3.

Click-through-rate (CTR) is ratio of clicks per impressions. It can range from 0.1% to 30%, but most commonly around 1% to 10%.
4.

Cost-per-click (CPC) is the earning you get per click. While traditionally it refers to the amount advertisers pay for each click, it can also mean the amount publishers get for each click.
5.

Smart-pricing is AdSense method to determine how valuable clicks from your site is worth. If clicks on your site doesn’t provide good value to advertisers, e.g. from visitors’ geo-location that seldom translate to sales, you will only get a fraction of the supposed CPC.
6.

Apply for AdSense account via blogger.com for faster approval.
7.

Once you get your AdSense publisher code, you can put it any of your websites without requiring further approval.
8.

Read and reread Google AdSense Program Policies and Terms and Conditions.
9.

Don’t click on your own ads, or ask people to click, even if you are using proxies.
10.

Don’t use click-bots.
11.

Don’t encourage your visitors to click on ads. The only acceptable text is “Sponsored Links” and “Advertisements”.
12.

Don’t put competitor contextual ads on the same page as your AdSense, for example: Yahoo Publisher Network, Clicksor. Non-contextual ads are ok.
13.

Don’t put your ads on objectionable material, e.g. adult sites, gambling sites, mp3, etc.
14.

Basically, don’t cheat AdSense. Google will catch you, sooner or later.
15.

Viewing your on website will not get you banned. Just make sure you don’t click on the ads.
16.

However, repeatedly reload your page to jack up page impressions can get you banned.
17.

When in doubt don’t hesitate to contact the AdSense team. They are very helpful.
18.

Choose a high paying niche without too much competition.
19.

You can try highest paying keywords from cwire.org, but know before-hand that you’ll face very fierce competitions.
20.

Use Overture Bid Tool and Search Engine Keyword Tool to find suitable keyword.
21.

Consider signing-up for AdWords and create a mini campaign. It can help you to understand the working of AdSense.

22.

Put your targeted-keyword on Page Title.
23.

Repeat the keywords in your content.
24.

Learn HTML.
25.

Put emphasis around your keywords by using HTML tags like < h1 >…...< /h1 >, < h2 >…< /h2 >, < strong >…< /strong >, < b >…< /b >, e.g. < strong >AdSense Tips < /strong > .
26.

Get domain name that contains your targeted keyword.
27.

Submit your website to directories for inclusion, e.g. dmoz.org, yahoo directories
28.

Submit your URL to search engines for crawling.
29.

Create and submit your sitemaps to Google Sitemap (sitemap.xml) and Yahoo (urllist.txt)
30.

Google is not the only search engine. Optimize for different engines as well. You are very likely to face less competition than in Google.
31.

Invest for original fresh content. Write or pay for contents regularly.
32.

Use copyscape.com to find content theft. You invest for your content. Don’t let it be taken by unscrupulous webmasters.
33.

Article marketing is one of the best way to deliver traffic to your site. Write and submit articles to article-submission sites. Include short summary and hyperlinks to your website in the author information box.
34.

Don’t use objectionable methods to draw visitors to your site; buying traffics, spyware, hidden-texts, page cloaking etc will get your AdSense account terminated.
35.

New visitors have higher chance to click on the ads than regular visitors, thus higher CTR (click-through rate).
36.

Regular visitors have higher chance to recommend your site to others.
37.

Search engines are where most of your new visitors come from. Learn a bit about Search Engine Optimization, or pay people to do it. Doing it yourself will save yourself from troubles created by not-so-honorable SEO (Search Engine Optimizer).
38.

Don’t create mirrors. These are sites with different URLs but same contents. It hurts search engine ranking.
39.

Its easier to create many websites with low earning than few websites with high earning.
40.

Forum generally have high impressions count, but very low CTR.
41.

CTR isn’t everything. If your CTR is high but gives low conversion rate for the advertiser site, it will trigger AdSense smart pricing.
42.

Follow good design guidelines. Avoid the common design mistakes.
43.

Help your visitors by creating easy navigation. You want your visitors to stay for as long as possible.
44.

Use Google Analytics to see your website statistics. It can help you optimize your site.
45.

Google AdSense Heatmap works. Just above your main content is the best position to put your AdSense block
46.

Forum sites have different Forum AdSense Heatmap. Best positions for AdSense for forums are: on the left panel, after the first post, and just below the last post before the footer.
47.

Forum is interactive medium. Be sensitive to your visitors concerns.
48.

Try 300×250 medium rectangle, 336×280 large rectangle, or 160×600 wide skyscraper ad formats. These are the best performing AdSense ad formats.
49.

Choose colors that blend with your content.
50.

Wrap the AdSense block around your content.
51.

Put images next to or above your AdSense block can help improve your clicks-rate.
Edit: take note, however, to make it clear that the images are not part of the ads. If not sure, consult AdSense support before doing this.
52.

Use channels to track the performance of different format, colors, and positions.
53.

Opt in for both image ads and text ads. Google will choose better performing ads for you.
54.

AdSense have both CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and CPC (cost per click) ads, and will choose the one it thinks can perform better.
55.

Both image ads and text ads can be either CPM or CPC.
56.

Put link unit ads. They can add to the bottom line.
57.

Try Google Search unit. They provide value to your visitor while adding to your bottom line.
58.

Put in lots of efforts in creating contents and promoting your website. AdSense is not a get-rich-quick scheme.
59.

Clear low-value links from your site. You want your visitors to exit through the ads. Put only links that are really useful for the visitors.
60.

Search “AdSense Tips” on Google. Most webmasters continuously try to optimize their AdSense and many are more than willing to share their result.
61.

If you blog, Darren has some tips for you.
62.

Inside AdSense is official AdSense blog, where you can find latest developments about AdSense.
63.

You can get help of other AdSense pulishers at AdSense Help Group.
64.

If you are serious about making money from AdSense, get Joel’s AdSense Secrets.
65.

Don’t put too many ad blocks on your site. Find out the highest CTR block and remove the others. Few clicks on the 1$ ads are better than many clicks on the 3-cent-ads.
66.

Experiment, experiment, and experiment. You can never stop trying for new ad format. Even if you think you can’t improve anymore, one slight change might increase your earning significantly.
67.

Remove the “Advertise on this site” from your AdSense block until your site is big enough to attract real advertisers. This will help to clear off many MFA (made-for-adsense) sites. You can disable it from AdSense account setting.
68.

Use AdSense Preview Tool to test the ads that will appear on your site. You can click on ads in the AdSense preview tool, as the advertisers are not charged from it.
69.

AdSense uses geo-location to deliver advertisement. So, what you see on your site might not be what your visitors see. Use AdSense Preview Tool to view your AdSense advertisement displayed for visitors from other places.
70.

Use AdSense Competitive Ads Filter to remove scrapper sites ads. Scrapper sites are sites without real content. They are either link farms, content theft, or meta search engine.
71.

Use AdSense Competitive Ads Filter to remove irrelevant ads.
72.

AdsBlackList.com have good list of URLs to block. Try it.
73.

Try variations of AdSense colors, format, position on different pages to make it more unpredictable for your visitors.
74.

Learn some CSS.
75.

If you are putting multiple ads block on your website: put most clicked block to appear first in the HTML. Higher position in HTML = higher paying ads. You can do this using CSS.
76.

Try to put contents on different subject topics. If it can draw visitors, write more on that topic.
77.

If you have dynamic pages, use htaccess rewrite rule to make it appear as static, e.g. http://www.hundredtips.com/100-google-adsense-tips.html instead of http://www.hundredtips.com/?p=6.
78.

Validate your site HTML and CSS.
79.

Break your long articles to few short articles; this way the users are exposed to the ads for more times.
80.

Keep each article focused on one topic.
81.

Watch your statistics and pay attention to articles that bring in visitors.
82.

Write more articles within the subject that attract visitors.
83.

Web-savvy visitors are less inclined to click on ads.
84.

Have patience. You need time to build the traffic, and to optimize it.
85.

Think long-term. Analise what your visitors need, provide value and good experience to visitors.
86.

Consider buying websites. If you do it right, you can get back your investment in a relatively short time.
87.

Watch your AdSense earning. Notify AdSense Team if you find anything suspicious. Your competitors might try to sabotage your account, or your well-meaning friend keep on clicking on the ads thinking they are helping you.
88.

Use Google AdSense section targeting to help AdSense deliver more relevant ads.
89.

Use AdSense Alternate Ads in case if AdSense can’t find any relevant ads.
90.

Use rotating color ads. It keeps your visitors from getting AdSense blind.
91.

Try other contextual advertising networks too. Yahoo Publisher Network is still in beta and only available in U.S., or you can try Clicksor, Bidvertising, etc. Just make sure you don’t put the on the same page with the AdSense.
92.

You can put your clickbank, amazon, or other affiliate links on the same page with AdSense. You can also put other advertising network, so long as it is not contextual ads. Try Chitika, and disable the contextual ads option.
93.

If you don’t follow the Terms and Conditions, your AdSense account will be disabled and you’ll get banned for life.
94.

If you didn’t do anything wrong and your AdSense account is disabled: write them a polite and professional email, be patient and be persistent. Offer them your server logs to prove your innocence.
95.

Spread the links to your website: put it on your email signature, put comment on blogs, participate in your niche forums.
96.

Promote your articles in social bookmarking sites: del.icio.us, digg, reddit are good start.
97.

Provide �Email a Friend� option to visitors.
98.

Familiarize yourself with AdSense earning report. It can help you determine where your money is from, and optimize accordingly.
99.

Offer newsletters for visitors. It give you chance to get the visitors back regularly.
100.

On AdSense support page, you can find almost every information you need about AdSense.

source : http://www.hundredtips.com/100-google-adsense-tips-part-5.html

44% of SEO/SEMs Say Google's Chrome Won't Win the Browser War

2008-09-08T01:33:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I asked you guys if you think Google Chrome will win the browser wars.

The responses were pretty much all over the place. We had a total of 162 responses, with 72 people saying no, 55 saying yes and 35 saying they have no idea.

Here is the break down:
:: No said 72 respondents or 44%
:: Yes said 55 respondents or 34%
:: No Idea said 35 respondents or 22%

Forum discussion continued at:

* Google Chrome, Google's Browser Project, Google Blogoscoped
* Google Chrome - Google's Browser Project, WebmasterWorld
* Google Chrome, Google's Browser, Google Blogoscoped
* Google Chrome, Google's Web Browser: Is it Real?, Sphinn
* Google Chrome, Google's Browser Project, Sphinn
* Will Chrome kill IE , DigitalPoint Forums

If you have installed google chrome and exprienced its features..why not participate in this survey..

source : http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/018168.html

Different kind of clients we come across...nice one

2008-09-02T06:36:00.000-07:00

If you do SEO for clients like I do, after some years you see several kinds of patterns. My nerves get sometimes a little strained with some and I guess I am not the only one. If it wasn’t that it would be very funny.

Especially the potential clients I refuse to work for are a strange folk.

So here I present to you the 10 non-ideal archetypal clients who you surely will encounter sooner or later. Of course one or several archetypes can apply to a single client.

1. The clandestine one: Assumes that SEO is evil and does not want to know who he is and what kind of website should be optimized, even if you have to assess how much the optimization can cost. As if you would ask: How much does a car cost?

2. The quick one: Wants you to start right away, assuming he is the only client you have but in most cases very slow to pay.

3. The busy one: Once you are done with a step and need info for the next step, he will need weeks over weeks to reply.

4. The PPC client: Prospective clients who do PPC, especially Google Adwords are not ashamed to tell you how many thousands Euro or Dollars they spent for completely automatic ads in search results but they will cringe at paying you 500 for your hard work.

5. The calling prospective client: This one will call you at the evening, while you are busy like hell or when you’re at lunch and you can’t explain to him that you’re not in front of your screen and basically can’t tell him much right at that moment. If you try to explain what do to, how, how long it takes anyways you can be sure that he won’t call you ever again.

6. The diligent one: You will negotiate with him for weeks or or longer even before you can start. You will show him your portfolio, send him or her papers on the exact measures you will undertake, you will talk to his programmers, you will meet him or her and the team personally but you won’t get the job.

7. The experienced one: “I had 3 SEOs already and I’m still not on top”. Or you will discover doorway pages from two years ago in his code. The most respectable companies are like that.

8. The big or multi-client: He has either many websites he wants you to optimize at once or he will offer you a connection with Sony or something after you optimize the first site, he of course does assume that doing many websites does not cost more than just one and he will pay you less for the first website as he wants to see how you perform before he connects you with Sony.

9. The discontent: He or her will receive the same treatment as all the other clients, pay the same price or even less, he will see the same results as the others but he will be discontent all the time. This one is amazing, because other clients in his shoes are really satisfied.

10. The friend: He will treat you like a friend and he is doing you a favor when paying but he will treat you like an employer or boss when you do the work. He will want to pay less than the others but he will call you Sunday on your private line to ask you if you’re done.

So you might wonder now: Are there clients who are OK at all? Yes, they exist! I had the opportunity to work with some great clients. There are basically several kinds of clients who I adore and really am highly motivated to work for:

* Those telling me that they heard about me or where referred to me or that they read my website and feel comfortable with what I write and like my style.

* Those sending a prepayment ;-) to show a commitment. Some people pay even 100% in advance! Those clients get a 10% discount at onreact.com

* Those who do not expect me to have just one client (them) and start right away without even asking for it. Imagine a barber where you enter while people are waiting or having their hair cut and you expect him to to start immediately.

If you consider to ask a SEO freelancer for a quote for SEO services:

* address him personally
* just send them the URL
* tell them what you do in one short sentence
* and how much you want to spend (if you like).

The first three will be enough and if you address the SEO or the SEO company for a start.

If you want to sell SEO services beware of the above 10 kinds of SEO clients. They will make you wish you never started client work in the first place.

Source: 10-seo-client-archetypes

7 tools to track your blog Visitors

2008-08-31T02:14:00.000-07:00

1. IceRocket Blog Tracker :: It is a completely free invisible tracker that will count your blog visits and other blog statistics. All you need to do is register for an account, add your blog and insert a small piece of code into your blog so after adding the code, the tracker starts gathering statistics for your blog. Then you will be able to analyse and monitor all the visits to your blog in real-time. It is very efficient tracker so I use it for my blog.

2.Google Analytics :: It is another famous tool for tracking website visitors by Google. It is very easy to use and has very clean interface. It provides comprehensive details of the traffic, its traffic pie charts and graphs are very effective in analyzing the growth of the website. It is one of the most widely used tracker across the internet.

3.SiteMeter :: Site Meter’s comprehensive real time website tracking and counter tools give you instant access to vital information and data about your sites audience. With the detailed reporting you’ll have a clear picture of who is visiting your site, how they found you, where they came from, what interests them and much more.

4. Webalizer and Awstats :: My hosting site hostgator is providing two different web stats programs on the log files for this site Webalizer and Awstats. With every cpanel hosting these trackers come free. For tracking the website you don’t need to do anything, they automatically starts tracking when your site becomes online from that server. Webalizer doesn’t distinguish between human visitors and automated requests (bots etc.), whereas AWStats tries to distinguish between the two. So in my opinion, you can rely on Webalizer stats.

5. StatCounter :: A reliable free invisible web tracker, highly configurable hit counter and real-time detailed web stats. Just you have to register on the site and insert a simple piece of our code on your web page or blog and you will be able to analyse and monitor all the visitors to your website in real-time.

6.MyBlogLog :: It is the largest blogging directory and community on internet that also provides statistics tracking to registered users of the site. Registration is free. However, the statistics provided by MyBlogLog are not as robust as those provided by other stat trackers like sitemeter, icerocket, statcounter, google analytics etc.

Source http://abhisays.com/blogging/7-tools-to-track-your-blog-visitors.html

What is Web Analytics? Features?

2008-08-31T01:47:00.000-07:00

Google Analytics provides free information about the way visitors to your site interact with it. By taking a good evaluation of Google Analytics, webmasters will realize how it is an invaluable tool they can and should use especially if they do not have some form of visitor tracking solution.

Google Analytics shares with you which of your SEO campaigns deliver the best ROI or return on investment. If you are not confident on the software you use in finding out your internet marketing results, Google Analytics is good in tracking down results of your internet marketing campaigns. Now alongside the Google AdWords, you can be certain of obtaining significant information about your web site.

Google Adwords is an equally powerful service for placing your web site in search results based on certain key words related to your site. Google Adwords take note of your major web site's key words and efficiently guarantees that your web site appears in search engine results.

Google Analytics was once named as Urchin visitor tracking by Google. It was last November 16, 2005 when Google renamed this service into Google Analytics. It is free for everyone's use and those who have signed up during its early stages are offered with a completely new set of significant and consequential information regarding your web site visitors.

Still, those who are late in signing up for this service can wait until Google offer new sign-ups to the Google Analytics system.

Google Analytics works with tracking codes that will guarantee to track down important user information for you. It uses codes in the destination URLâ€™s that facilitates the web site visitor tracking mission by Google Analytics.

Here are some of the most important reasons why you need Google Analytics as part of your website visitor tracking and have it on your site:

1. Its functionality equals most expensive visitor tracking services, even if it is free.

2. The service is your solution to identify where visitors leave your check-out or sign-up process. Identifying this will help you make amends and modify your sign-up process that is user-friendly. You will then be prevented from losing leads

3. Utilizing Google Analytics will help you identify the pages and links your web site visitorâ€™s click on most. You will also know which page your visitors spend most their time on. You can therefore improve these pages properly and position them and their link texts appropriately.

4. Wondering the previous site your web site visitor logged on to before coming to your site? Google Analytics will tell you all about it.

5. You will also be provided with the most popular keyword users type in the search bar of the search engine in finding web sites associated/related to your website. Knowing these popular keywords is a great boost for your SEO efforts and performance, even on other search engines.

6. Google analytics conduct visitor segmentation. It classifies new and returning web site users, their geographical information and the referral source they use. This provides you with invaluable insight if you are planning on a setting up a new online business.

7. For search advertising results, Google Analytics and Google Adwords guarantees you with end-to-end visibility

8. You can even track other non-search-engine marketing media

9. Overall, Google Analytics provides you a very cheap service on gaining more customers, if you utilize its results.

Like most search engine services, Google Analytics has its own advantages and disadvantages.

-Its setup is very straightforward. You do not have to waste time waiting for results

-It is quite flexible, provides great solution and a wide range of significant and valuable reports

-You can login once and track multiple sites. You have more than one web site to track.

-Google tracking makes it possible to track campaigns even on other media

-You need not be confused of the A/B ad testing

-Its integration with all marketing media so as you can use only single portal to track multiple campaigns is ingenious

-You will get In-depth reports on site navigation of users you never dreamed you could have

-It also has Ecommerce tracking features

However, Google Analytics package falls behind two very important features most search engine marketers need. This is the ability to track down individual user activities and trace activity back to an individual user level. Another is the ability to track fraudulent online activities so as your site will be safe from it. Even if there are the eCommerce tracking features, it cannot completely provide this important tracking capability.

The free web site analytics solution, is Google's statement regarding their supremacy among other search engines.

Source SelfSEO

Lits of Web Analytics Discussion Sites

2008-08-31T01:26:00.000-07:00

http://www.webanalyticsworld.net/

http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/

http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com/

http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/

15 Common Mistakes that Violate Google Adsense TOS

2008-08-29T04:00:00.000-07:00

1. Never click your own adsense ads or get them clicked for whatever reason.
2. Never change the Adsense code.
3. Do not place more than 3 ad unit and 1 ad links or 2 adsense search boxes on any web page.
4. Do not run competitive contextual text ad or search services on the same site which offer Google Adsense competition in their field.
5. Do not disclose confidential information about your account like the CTR, CPM and income derived via individual ad units or any other confidential information they may reveal to you.
6. Label headings as “sponsored links�? or “advertisements�? only.
7. Never launch a New Page for clicked ads by default.
8. One Account suffices for Multiple websites.
9. Place ads only on Content Pages.
10. Do not mask ad elements.
11. Do not send your ads by email.
12. Keep track of your content.
13. Do not alter the results after ad clicks or searches.
14. Avoid excessive advertising and keyword stuffing.
15. Ensure you language is supported.
16. Maximum 2 referral button per product per page.
17. Do not specify Google ads as your alternate ads.
18. Do not confuse with adjacent images.

Source : Make money online

Adbrite as an alternative income source for your blog

2008-08-28T11:56:00.000-07:00

People believe that Google Adsense is the simplest way to earn money online. Indeed it is the largest revenue source of this blog too. But several bloggers are redefining the way blogs make money by using alternative affiliate and money making programs to generate revenue far more than what Google Adsense can give.

ReviewMe rules

John Chow earned a huge $11,702.66 last month (and actually became a dot com moghul) with an Adsense contribution of just over a $1000. A break up of his income reveals diverse income sources.

* ReviewMe: $4,500.00
* Affiliate Sales: $2,150.00
* Text Link Ads: $1,352.81
* Direct Ad Sales: $1,200.00
* Google AdSense: $1,077.67
* Kontera: $1,000.00
* FeedBurner: $271.44
* TTZ Media: $150.74

His largest income is derived from Reviewme, where he is a popular reviewer of websites and their services for a fee. Another major revenue source has been his Text link ads, Affiliate sales and Direct ads sales. Kontera with $1000 has surely generated some interest in my mind. [BTW John Chow loves Quick Online Tips too.]

Double Your Adsense Income

Everton at Connected Internet has also posted his last months earnings of $6,418.35

# Google Adsense: $3,648.26
# Direct Ad Sales: $750.00
# Intellitxt: $555.05
# Text-Link-Ads: $535.43
# Tribal Fusion: $437.10
# Feedburner FAN: $350.24
# Vizu Polls: $110.72
# Chitika : $31.79 ($31)

Although Adsense is a major income source for him, he has doubled his income by adding multiple advertising revenue resources. He is making more money with Tribal fusion, Feedburner ads, Intellitext and even Vizu Polls.

Earn Money without Google Adsense

Indian bloggers might be interested in the $3061.3 earned by Thilak at Tech Buzz. It might surprise you but he has no Google Adsense on his blog and yet he is making money via popular Adsense alternatives.

*IntelliTXT: $693.65
*TribalFusion: $612.19
*Text-Link-Ads: $130.54
*Feedburner: $348.87
*BlogAds: $471.62
*Chitika: $104.43
*Direct Sales: $200
*Blogging on other blog: 500$

He has successfully monetized his blog using Blogads, Feedburner, IntelliTXT, Tribalfusion and Chitika. Earning over a lakh rupees per month is serious blogging income by Indian standards. I also use Blogads, but it has got me no advertisers yet.

Summary: The message is clear. You can successfully monetize any affiliate money making or Advertising program, you just need to do it right. With so many Adsense alternatives available, many of which are allowed with Adsense now, you can easily

multiply the income generated by your site. If these bloggers can do it, so can you.

Read more at earn-huge-money

Revenue System for Blogger - Chitika Ads

2008-08-24T12:13:00.000-07:00

With Jeff Sable from Chitika

BBS: According to your site, Chitika ads are “designed exclusively” for bloggers. How are they different from other CPC solutions?

Jeff: There are a couple of aspects of our ads that have allowed bloggers, as well as other types of publishers, to improve the content of their web sites while making great money. First, our ads feature targeted products. This means the blogger or publisher can focus on writing great and interesting content and Chitika’s technology will automatically serve a relevant product-centric ad to the end user who is reading the content. Second, our ads are designed to complement a web site and “fit” into the site without adversely affecting the relationship with the reader. Because of the combination of these particular attributes and other features of Chitika ads, bloggers in particular have found Chitika ads to excellent and Chitika to be a great partner as they build their businesses.

 BBS: Everyone wants to know about monetization, and the word on the street seems to be that Chitika puts more money in the hands of bloggers. Do Chitika ads have an unusually high conversion rate, or do you think you just give a bigger cut of the revenue to the publisher?  

Jeff: Every day thousands of diverse bloggers from all over the world choose to feature Chitika ads because we consistently help them generate great revenue. The reasons for this include the fact that Chitika ads feature targeted products, are available in many sizes, formats and types, represent thousands of blue chip advertisers in the US and twelve other countries.  We are always striving to improve the performance of our ads for bloggers and publishers, as well as advertisers. I don’t know if Chitika ads have an “unusually high” conversion rate or if other advertising solutions are “unusually low”, but I do consistently hear that we outperform other solutions.

  I don’t believe we give a “bigger cut” to the blogger or publisher. We are a profitable company and rather than “buy” traffic we will continue to “earn” traffic by providing the best in class solutions to help bloggers and publishers achieve their goals. We are building on a business that is already very healthy today and will be stronger in the future. Chitika has a unique history of industry leading developments and we will continue to invest our profits in new technologies and services that will provide great opportunities for our bloggers and publishers, as well as the advertisers who ultimately are paying for our services.

BBS: What is the most popular of your ad products with bloggers? eMiniMalls? RPU? - and why do you think that is?

  Jeff: The largest revenue generators for our network are eMiniMalls, RPUs and Linx. While our other products are helping some of our publishers succeed, these three are the most important because they are deployable on almost any web site, whereas some of our other products are a bit more niche in their appeal.

 BBS: A lot of your ad related services seem to focus on images rather than text. Online ads used to be image banners. Then they became, almost ubiquitously, text link ads. Do you think we’re swinging back to image-based ads again?  

Jeff: The great things is, one type of ad will never be the only ad that’s “in”. There will always be need for image-based ads, text based and banner. Chitika supports all of these types of ads and more so that different publishers can benefit accordingly. We are actually just starting to roll out a great service called Chitika Graphic ads that combine all of these ads using just one ad space. It will display a CPC based eMiniMalls or a CPM graphic/banner ad depending on when it makes sense for the publisher: to earn more revenue. It’s intelligent, relevant and targeted, yes we’re excited about it.

We’ve also recently rolled out our fist video based ad unit (http://chitika.com/blog/chitika-launches-viral-branding-unit-to-bring-power-of-video-and-interactivity-to-advertisers/ ) earlier this year. As adoption increases, I’m excited to see how Chitika’s Viral Branding Unit (VBU) continues to perform. As the video advertising medium continues to grow in interest and acceptance, I know that we will deploy unique and further advanced solutions that are based upon our VBU, but will also leverage our core competencies.

Source : Blog Business Summit

Make Money with Adsense - Google Tool

2008-08-23T11:59:00.001-07:00

What is adsense tools?

What I understood "AdSense is a money making advertisements program run by Google. Webmasters, bloggers and other web savvy can register in this program to enable text, image, banner, and video ads on their web pages. All these properly administered by Google team and can generate revenue on either a per-click (CPC) or per-impression (CPM) basis, soon coming up with cost-per-action (CPA)based service.

History

AdSense technology was derived originally from WordNet, Simpli (a company started by the founder of Wordnet, George A. Miller), and a number of professors and graduate students from Brown University. A variation of this technology utilizing WordNet was developed by Oingo, a small search engine company based in Santa Monica founded in 1998 by Gilad Elbaz and Adam Weissman.Later on Oingo changed its name to Applied Semantics in 2001, which was later acquired by Google in April 2003 for US$102 million. This was how the adsense, make money online was originated. Many webmaster are making $$$ by adsense worlwide. Why not u??

Type of Adsense Setup

How Adsense Program Works?

# The webmaster inserts the AdSense JavaScript code with unique publisher ID into a webpage.
# Each time this page is visited, the JavaScript code creates an IFrame with a src attribute set to the page's URL.
# For contextual advertisements, Google's servers use a cache of the page to determine a set of high-value keywords. If keywords have been cached already, advertisements are served for those keywords based on the AdWords (Will talk about this in other label post).
# For site-targeted advertisements, the advertiser chooses the page(s) on which to display advertisements, and pays based on cost per impression (CPM), or the price advertisers choose to pay for every thousand advertisements displayed.
# For referrals, Google adds money to the advertiser's account when visitors either download the referred software or subscribe to the referred service. The referral program will be retired in August 2008.(check in the above adsense setup image)
# Search advertisements are added to the list of results after the visitor performs a search.
# Because the JavaScript is sent to the Web browser when the page is requested, it is possible for other website owners to copy the JavaScript code into their own webpages. To protect against this type of fraud, AdSense customers can specify the pages on which advertisements should be shown. AdSense then ignores clicks from pages other than those specified. Source

Google Adwords - Keyword-Selector Tool

2008-08-23T11:23:00.000-07:00

The Keyword Tool is used to build or refine your keyword list. Enter terms describing your product or service, and the tool will generate keyword suggestions. Pick the ones that you like and save them to your ad group.

I have putted keyword "Dating" and this adwords tool showed the list like this:

Advertiser Competition

This column shows the number of advertisers bidding on each keyword relative to all keywords across Google. The shaded bar represents a general low-to-high quantitative guide to help you determine how competitive ad placement is for a particular keyword.

Approx Search volume
This column shows the approximate number of search queries matching your keywords that were performed on Google and the search network in the previous calendar month. This number is specific to your targeted country and language as well as your selection from the Match Type drop-down menu.

Approx Average Search Volume
This column shows the approximate average monthly number of search queries matching your keywords that were performed on Google and the search network over a recent 12-month period. This number is specific to your targeted country and language as well as your selection from the Match Type drop-down menu.

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