Downloading Picasa

Picasa, like Google Desktop, is software you download and install on your computer. Downloading Picasa is easily done by navigating to http://picasa.google.com, and clicking the Try Picasa now button in the right-hand side of the home page. This will take you to a software download screen where you will download Picasa as an executable file to your hard drive.

25 tips to boost traffic to your website

Getting your website a lot of daily traffic takes a lot of hard work and planning. How will people find your site if you don't tell them where it's at? This is a very important thing to consider - you have to advertise somehow. Here are a few great methods to try to get more visitors coming to your website. Read on for more details.

“Exactly how am I supposed to get traffic to my website?” A lot of new web site owners think that simply having a good web site is all you need to get loads of visitors coming your way. Sorry, but this is completely untrue.

Getting traffic to your website and making people aware of it takes a lot of hard work and planning. Oh, and one other thing, this will not happen overnight. So be prepared. How will visitors find your site if you don’t tell them where it’s at? You have to advertise.

All webmasters, new and old, realize soon enough that traffic is the lifeblood of their website. Without it a website will simply be lost in the ether somewhere out there on some server. Traffic is exactly what brings a website to life - the importance of this one thing can’t be taken for granted. Bringing in traffic to your web site is not easy and it will take a lot of hard work. I can promise you that - but without a lot of traffic your website will not thrive.

I’ll try and list just a few ideas below to help you start getting traffic directly to your site without getting too way techie. Before you start spending a lot of time and money on getting visitors to your site, be sure your website is ready for them. After that, try a few, or all, of the 25 methods to boost traffic to your website that I’ve listed below.

1. Create valuable, original content.

2. Use the best keywords or keyword phrases for your site.

3. You want to make sure that you don’t have broken links on your site!

4. Create a blog to build traffic to your website.

5. Join the SiteBuildIt! Value Exchange link program.

6. Let your audience see “your own personality” in the writing of your web site.

7. Create an XML sitemap for your website, then submit it to Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.

8. Write and submit articles to article directories.

9. Create an newsletter and offer free subscriptions to your visitors.

10. Offer free online services or utilities from your own web site.

11. Regularly post on forums related to your sites topic.

12. Join several forums and form your own online communities.

13. Submit your web site to social book marking sites like Squidoo, del.icio.us etc.

14. Try Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising.

15. Add a sitemap to your site.

16. Use on page website optimization methods (ex. page title, META tags, headlines, etc).

17. Create and submit press releases to various Press Release sites.

18. Use viral marketing to help spread the word about your site.

19. Know your website’s users wants, needs and interests.

20. Write and ebook and give it away for free.

21. Add video clips to your website that supports your websites topic.

22. Consider giving something valuable away to your customers.

23. Once your website is established, create your own affiliate program.

24. Your web sites content should be fresh and new and uploaded frequently.

25. Submit your site to all the major search engines using a service like Selfpromotion.com.

Once you’ve tried even a few of the methods listed above I’m sure you’ll see a spike in your traffic ratings in no time at all. And if you use several of them, I’m sure you’ll see a measurable traffic surge over time when you check your stats. And all that extra traffic is a very good thing. This is definitely a case of “the more the better”. Want to learn more about the SiteBuildIt experience? Then visit: pedigreedpups.com/WebDRarticle. Want to learn more about creating websites in general? Then visit us anytime at: the-website-doctor.com.

Understanding Google Apps

If you’re like me, you have spent years purchasing and installing applications for your computer. The centerpiece of those applications has probably been Microsoft Office,the application suite that is virtually ubiquitous and that includes the Microsoft Word word processing application, Microsoft Excel for spreadsheet, PowerPoint for presentations, Outlook for e-mail and communications, and Access for database applications. Every few years, a new version of Office is released, and you have the option
of installing it so you can keep up with the people you work with in other companies,who have their own versions of Office, too.
Google Apps is a set of Web and business applications that is aimed at competing with Microsoft Office. What makes Google’s offering dramatically different from Office is the fact that the applications are all offered online as Web-based services that you access with your Web browser, not as separate applications you install on your computer. This ‘‘software as a service’’ approach wasn’t invented by Google.Lots of other companies give you the ability to store files, keep your financial records, and perform other functions online using your browser. The fact that these applications are being offered by one of the most popular and best-known—not to mention most successful—Web businesses around is what makes Google Apps notable. Google Apps is Google’s signal that it wants to shift from being the leader in Web search to a leader (if not eventually the leader) in Web services.

Downloading Picasa

Picasa, like Google Desktop, is software you download and install on your computer. Downloading Picasa is easily done by navigating to http://picasa.google.com, and clicking the Try Picasa now button in the right-hand side of the home page. This will take you to a software download screen where you will download Picasa as an executable file to your hard drive.

Downloading Picasa

Picasa, like Google Desktop, is software you download and install on your computer. Downloading Picasa is easily done by navigating to http://picasa.google.com, and clicking the Try Picasa now button in the right-hand side of the home page. This will take you to a software download screen where you will download Picasa as an executable file to your hard drive.

Organizing Your Images with Picasa

Picasa is a free, downloadable software package offered by Google. While still in its developmental phase, Picasa nonetheless offers many powerful tools allowing you to organize, manipulate, and modify the images stored on your computer’s hard drive. Because Picasa organizes your images chronologically regardless of their location, it becomes not only easier to compare the volume of images created from one month/ year to the next, which can be useful if you are in a business environment and need to inventory your images, but also to simply find files that you may not have remembered were there. Essentially, instead of having to go through your hard drive searching for stray images, you have only to install Picasa, and the work will be done for you.

Picasa combines tools previously found in separate programs, such as the slide show creation of PowerPoint, for example, and the photo manipulation of Photoshop. You won’t get anywhere near the quantity and sophistication of specialized tools found in the aforementioned programs, but Picasa’s interface is both intuitive and easy to use, and allows you to perform surprisingly powerful actions without any prerequisite knowledge. Also, don’t overlook the fact that Picasa is free, thus potentially saving you hundreds if not thousands of dollars.

Finally one big plus to keep in mind is that Picasa is, after all, a Google product. So it has many built-in methods for getting your photos online. Tasks such as creating a Web album, emailing images, or even adding them to a blog can be performed at the click of a button.

Understanding Web Traffic Analysis

When you create a Web site, your hosting service should provide you with a way to track the number of visits each page receives as well as some indication of where they are coming from. This isn’t information for its own sake: you want to be able to analyze and act on the data. By learning about who visits your Web site, how your visitors find you, and what they do while they are browsing through your online presentation, you can tailor your product selection and presentation to better meet their needs.
Traditionally, the practice of Web site traffic analysis is referred to as reviewing the ‘‘log files,’’ the information-packed and techie-looking files that contain computer addresses and Web page URLs. Such information needs to be displayed in the form of a graph or chart to understand it better, and that’s exactly what Analytics does. Typically, you want to look at information over a particular period of time, whether
it is a month, day, or week. You need to pay attention to facts such as:
• Domain Reports—This kind of report tells you which domains your visitors come from.
• Referrer Reports—A ‘‘referrer’’ is the site that referred someone to you—in other words, it’s the site a visitor was visiting just before it came to your site. By tracking referrals you can see which links steer you the most visitors.
• File Type Reports—These sorts of reports tell you what type of files are being accessed by your visitors—they might be images, presentations, PDFs, and so on.
• Browser Reports—These tell you what kinds of browsers your viewers are using so you can tailor your content to particular versions or types if needed.

Often, log file reports present you with a ‘‘Top Ten’’ list of pages visited, files accessed, domains that visit you, countries of origin, and so on. When you’re trying to choose from Analytics’ rich set of reports, you might keep such options in mind so you can present your coworkers and managers with the information they need to make informed decisions about your Web site and what sort of content is contained on it.

How Can Google Talk Help Your Business?

Google Talk isn’t just a supplement to phones and e-mail. It’s also a way to save money. Like most of the other Google services described in this book, it’s free. You can install it on each of your employees’ computers and get them typing messages to one another quickly and without incurring any expense at all. And if you run up costly long-distance phone bills with international calling, you can opt to exchange chat messages with Google Talk instead. Since you’re using the Internet to communicate, you don’t pay anything more than you already do for Internet access. And you ‘‘converse’’ almost as fast as you would on the phone.

Not only that, but Google Talk can be used for an increasingly popular technology called Voice over IP, also known as Internet phone service. Programs like Skype and Vonage let you use your computer as a telephone; with a microphone and (optionally) a headset, you can literally speak (yes, I mean really speak with your actual voice, the old-fashioned way!) over your computer using Google Talk. Why use your
computer as a phone when you already have lots of phones at hand? The answer is in your pocketbook. Programs like Google Talk enable you to talk to someone across the country or across the globe without spending a dime.

The VoIP Telephone Services Revolution

Ever since the birth of the internet, entrepreneurs with an eye to the future have predicted that voice communications -- telephone services -- would eventually be merged with internet services. With the widespread adoption of VoIP, that day has come, and it is causing a revolution in the telephone industry.
In simple terms, a VoIP service allows you to use your broadband (high-speed) connection to place telephone calls over the Internet. It is not difficult to see how this is rocking the telecom industry to the core.
It's all about cost

Two things have made traditional telephone service providers like AT&T and Bell so powerful. Their monopoly over local telephone services, and their traditional stranglehold on lucrative and usually over-priced "long distance" services. Both of these captive markets have been seriously eroded over the last few years, as the reality of VoIP has started to sink in.
In anticipation of the revolution that is now upon us, most aspects of telephone service have gradually been opened up to competition. Most of us now have a choice of providers for both local and long distance telephone service. And the biggest reason for the new competitive environment is the recognition that the widespread adoption of VoIP is inevitable.
The development of VoIP
VoIP has been developing slowly over the last ten years or so. Early implementations allowed computer users to talk to each other through their computers. This was only feasible if you had a voice-enabled computer, a reliable and stable internet connection, and a software program installed on your computer that made it all work.
The advantage of this computer-to-computer communication was that you could completely bypass the traditional telephone system and talk to anyone in the world free of charge -- as long as they had a similar setup to yours. But the disadvantages of communicating this way were also obvious. You could only communicate this way using your computer. You were completely dependent on often unstable dial-up internet connections. And the person at the other end of the conversation had to also be "online" with a voice-enabled computer.
Today's VoIP has solved these problems
Today's versions of VoIP have left these problems in the past. Two things were required to make VoIP technology feasible on a large scale basis, and both of these things have now been realized.
First, broadband internet service has been widely adopted. This makes it possible to have stable internet connections that are "always on". Second, the industry has developed a simple, inexpensive method of integrating the IP network (the internet) with the traditional telephone system. This allows a user of VoIP to use his or her own telephone to call anyone else in the world who has a traditional telephone connection.
This is where we are today. As traditional telecom companies like AT&T, Bell, Qwest, and SBC develop their own implementations of VoIP technology the way has been opened up for a myriad of choices for consumers. Today's VoIP allows anyone with a broadband internet connection to place calls to anyone with an ordinary telephone connection, anywhere in the world.
Why you save money with VoIP
The major advantages of VoIP are lower cost, and greater flexibility with no significant decrease in voice quality. First, a VoIP subscriber does not need a traditional phone line. Instead, you are assigned a phone number by your VoIP provider. Prices for these numbers can be as low as $9 usd per month.
Second, most VoIP subscribers will purchase a "bundle" of services that includes unlimited incoming calls and unlimited long distance calls to anyone within a defined geographic area. For instance, VoIP unlimited calling plans to anyone in the USA or Canada start at around $20 per month.
Third, most VoIP service providers offer free bundled features that most traditional telephone companies charge for. These include free voicemail, call forwarding, caller ID, call waiting, call waiting ID, 3 way calling, speed dialing, and many more of the services that the traditional companies are constantly trying to sell you.
Greater flexibility and portability
Another significant advantage is the flexibility and portability of VoIP phone service. With VoIP your personal telephone number is programmed into the converter that acts as a bridge between your internet connection and your regular telephone.
This has several important advantages. As already mentioned you do not need an actual land line. Instead your telephone number is assigned to your converter (not to your geographic land line). So you can take your converter with you anywhere in the world, plug it into any available broadband connection, and immediately start using your regular number to make and receive calls.
This flexibility also lets you choose a number in an area code where most of your long distance calls originate. For instance, if many of your friends, family, business associates or customers are calling from a specific city that traditionally involved a long distance call for them, you could choose a number in that area code and immediately turn all their calls to you into local (free) calls for them.
The advantages of VoIP are many, and the savings can be very significant. So it is no wonder that VoIP has become the hottest telecom technology of the decade. Informed consumers and businesses around the world are adopting this technology at a phenomenal rate.

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Finding The Cheapest Voip Service

You've done it, I have done it. At some point we have all combed the Internet trying to dig up the cheapest service rates we can find. Some of us look for discounts in the form of bundled services, while others seek out that holy grail of low rates.
When looking for the cheapest service rates, new technology is worth looking into more often than not. Instead of just searching for low rates, try looking for new ways of getting that service first, then compare rates on those services.
Thanks to modern technology, elective utilities can be much less expensive than ever before. You might try voip service, or satellite tv rather than cable, both of which can save one a significant amount of loot each month.
Another way to pinch a penny is to keep an eye out for promotional offers and special incentives. People sometimes have a habit of thinking this is just another way to get you to "buy something". Maybe so, but is sure is nice to get that rebate a few weeks later.
Sometimes finding the cheapest service is a matter of taste. My grandfather for example wouldn't touch voip service with a ten foot pole for fear the "new fangled" monster might do him in. We all know this type, and pardon me if this is you :)
In closing, when sticking with traditional services, be sure to read the fine print. It isn't always the advertised rate that gets you. 0.02 cents a minute is great for long distance, but not if it's only that rate for 2 hours on Friday afternoon.

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Corporate Blogging: 7 Best Practices

Blogs have become one of the hottest communication tools on the Web. Offering the opportunity for anyone to create their own free Web site, encouraging opinions and interaction, blogs provide forums for individuals to create their own highly personal presentations to the Web audience. They also provide for consortia of all types to experience the sort of online community feeling that was pioneered by early newsgroups and by the phenomenal success of AOL in the 1990s.
Blogs have reached into the corporate and government sectors as well. What started out as an outlet for teenage expression and grassroots journalism has turned into a lucrative communications tool for small and large businesses alike.
Corporate Blogging refers to a company producing or supporting a blog that it uses to accomplish business objectives. As with anything, there are certain "best practices" to be followed to ensure your company reaps the maximum benefits. These seven tips guidelines will help make your blog a success.
1. Fine Print. Blogging can lead to legal issues. Companies should have real concerns about liability, exclusions and limitations, and indemnity. Although there are laws that protect against libel, misappropriations and other injuries suffered as a result of posts on the Web, companies can still be held "vicariously" responsible for statements made by employees that are harmful to others. Since there are so many legal issues surrounding blogs, it is imperative that the site has some sort of disclaimer and limitation of liability.
2. Know What You're Doing. Senior management should be educated by the corporate communications and legal department about what blogs are and how they might affect business. That way, they can be contributing members of the blog, further improving employee relations. Their support and participation is often what makes a blog more effective.
3. Create blogging policies. In any medium where an employee is sharing information, there is the possibility of leaking trade secrets or financial information. Blogging also has a tendency to become personal. A company should have a list of policies regarding blogging to ensure that trade secrets are kept secret and personal lives do not become public. Policies may include keeping financial information from being posted, as well as severe consequences for anyone using the blog for negative publicity.
4. Avoid the Marketing Blog. Making your blog into a blatant marketing campaign is a bad idea. Customers are looking for real answers and honest opinions. They will pick up on insincerity instantly. Use the blog for what it's for, transparency. This is an opportunity to make a real connection with your customers. Don't ruin it by filling it with empty advertising.
5. Keep It Fresh. Blogs are usually judged by their amount of new content. Easy to add on to, they are designed to be updated constantly. To keep your readers coming back, make your content relevant and timely. Don't forget, content can include anything from product releases to job openings, recent news to thoughts from the CEO. It's practically impossible to run out of material.
6. Reinforce the company's core values. Use your blog to reflect your company's inner soul: its mission, goals and direction. A blog is just another medium by which you interact with your customers and employees. It's another part of the brand experience. It should be consistent with the impression the company wants to make.
7. Encourage employees to use it. Create an atmosphere where they are comfortable asserting their opinions and concerns. You'll be surprised how the quietest employees will speak up when given such an opportunity. With all communication, blogging can become negative, so remind employees of the public nature of the blogs and the ramifications for their actions.

Blogging for Money

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

Whether a blogger's focus is to communicate with customers or just to have fun, they have begun looking at ways to earn revenue from their blogs. The most popular ways for bloggers to earn some added cash for their pet projects are:

1. ) Google Adsense in Blogs

Google AdSense allows webmasters to dynamically serve content-relevant advertisements in blogs. If the visitor clicks one of the AdSense ads served to the blog, the website owner is credited for the referral. Webmasters need only to insert a Google-generated java script into the blog or blog template. Google's spider parses the AdServing blog and serves ads that relate to the blog's content. Google uses a combination of keyword matching and context analysis to determine what ads should be served.

2. ) Affiliate Programs (Product Endorsements)

Affiliate Programs work when an affiliate web site receives income for generating sales, leads, or traffic to a merchant website. Generally, bloggers will mention or endorse specific products and if site visitors purchase the product, bloggers will receive a portion of the sale.

3. ) Product Promotion

Businesses use blogs to detail how specific features or product add-ons can increase functionality and save time. Content-rich product promotion will help with search engine placement.

4.) Banner Ads

While less popular than in the past, websites with high traffic levels can still earn decent revenue by selling banner space.

As the Internet evolves bloggers will continue to seek out ways to monetize their opinions and thoughts. Daily journals and online blogs have become more than just a communication means to many.

Blog Problems

What in the world is up with the world of blogs? Blogs are meant to be this great new technology where people can share their ideas and interests with others around the globe. As far as I'm concerned the state of blogs is one of chaos, confusion, and anti-interactivity. The other day I decided to do some research on the Web and try to connect to some blog writers out there that interested me. Let me tell you it was not an enjoyable task as I had envisioned. I spent four painful hours surfing through around a thousand on-line journals, and I found only a few that interested me. What are we doing out there people?
First of all, just getting to a blog can be a pain in the arse. For example, you type in the words 'Philosophy blogs' and a whole bunch of sites come up. Some are conglomerate sites with thousands of journals, but the area you're searching for may have only one blog in it! This is because they separate the blogs into a million different categories, like 'love', 'lovers', 'lovable' etc. Why not have just a few main categories to choose from?
The next problem is the content. People with 'philosophical' blogs are having personal chats with their mates about the local dance competition on Tuesday! Why not go to a chat room if you just want to talk to your friends? Blogs are supposed to be a personal viewpoint expressed to the whole Web community. Wouldn't you actually like to meet more people like yourself? How is this going to happen if you talk in strange uncommon slang and acronyms that you and your friends can only understand? Please stick to the subject at hand, and take it at least half seriously.
Another major problem is the fact that you can find a really cool blog that sparks an interest, but then find that the writer hasn't added an entry in over a year! What's it doing on the Net? Have these people passed away? I seriously doubt it, as there are so many blogs in this 'lost' state. Having a blog is a responsibility; it's a shared diary for the whole community. How can someone form a relationship if you only write in your blog once a millennium?
Back to the subject of content: These on-line journals are a real chance to communicate regularly with others with similar views to yourself. We can learn a lot from each other, as each human is an individual with special traits and skills that only they have. So why do we see so many blogs just talking about trivial nonsense like 'Who the coolest movie actor is.' Humanity is an intelligent species evolving everyday towards a higher consciousness. So where are all the thinkers out there, the people who have taken us to the next levels of spirituality and scientific exploration? I'd really like to hear what you've got to say, but all I can find are philosophical beliefs on why died pink jeans express one's true inner self.
The issue of making comments on someone's blog is also a controversial one. Why have comments sections if you're not going to reply to people who have expressed an interest in what you've had to say? How is this community going to function if all the conversation is one-way! Come on people, wake up and smell the onions! Let's change the blogging community into the awesome structure of shared knowledge that it was intended for. Please don't let it turn into the small-talk world of chat rooms.

Blogging for Business

Business blogs are primarily used to improve a company's communication both internally and externally. Business blogs are a type of communication channel that could be used effectively in product launches, team interaction internally within the company or interaction between clients and company. With the level of interactivity blogs provide, clients feel more confident in the company. Not to mention the amount of traffic it brings to the main site.
Personal and business blogs: What is difference between two?
There is not much of difference between personal and business blogs visually but there is a fine difference between them in terms of reputation and brand attached.
Business blogs should be well planned before hand. Companies can't afford to just walk away after launching their blog. Business blog has to be successful. Constant and consistent posts are the rule of the game. Blogsphere is full of best writers and faster one learns their rule, better for them. Companies can't just rely on the fact that they are market leaders in their business so they will be successful with their blogs too.
The postings on business blog should be open and should portray personality of the writer and the company. The postings on business blogs should be very informal, and should be written in first person voice. Posts should be informative and relevant with an expert touch to it.
Business Blogs and it content:
According to search engine optimizers, "Content is King". Indeed this is true for websites but not for a blog. Blog is all about writing with a particular voice and personality. A lot of people would like the style and would stick to the blog with regular visits. A lot of them will hate it and would never return.
Content for a business blog should be written in a strong voice with high consistency in quality. It becomes somewhat difficult to maintain quality with regular postings, but no choice. A few bad or substandard posts and regular visitors to the blog will fly off.
Important
Don't hammer your visitors every time with posts like how great is your product and so on. Add some funny incidences or bit of humor to your postings. Talk something about how employees enjoyed drinks in a party organized at particular department. Add some lighter moments in between posts.

eBay Gold

Internet auctions are relatively new having been around since the mid 1990's. There are several Internet auctions including Yahoo Auctions and UBid. But of course the undisputed king of Internet auctions is Ebay. Ebay has over 40 million registered users making it one of the top 10 most visited websites in the world.

Just about anything you can imagine can be found on Ebay. And there were more incredible bargains to be found than at any other ecommerce website or brick and mortar store I had ever visited. After about six months or so of buying, I began selling items on Ebay. I had an extensive collection of unbuilt as well as built plastic model cars. I began placing the models on Ebay with starting bids of $5.00 and no reserve. To my surprise, people started jumping all over these model kits. Some of them sold for as high as $70.00. It was at this time that I realized the enormous money making potential of Ebay. The key to being a successful seller on Ebay is selling items that people want. There are a number of ebooks on Internet auctions that tell of the importance of a great headline and a killer ad for your auction. While this is true, it is also important to remember that the best ad in the world will never sell an item that no one wants. The items that do well on Ebay are unique or interesting items. Antiques, pottery, collectables and high-end apparel are just a few of the items that will bring high bids on Ebay. If you can easily find the item at Wal-Mart, chances are it will not do well on Ebay.

There are a number of wholesalers around the country that you can buy merchandise from to sell on Ebay. But before you buy, do your homework. It's very tempting to buy a bunch of electronic widgets that sell for $2.00 a piece. You might think you can buy 20 of the $2.00 widgets and then sell them for $12.00 a piece on Ebay and make a killing. Unfortunately, you discover that no one is bidding on your widgets despite the fact that you have started the bidding at a mere $6.00. In fact, there are very few people that are even viewing your auctions. The end result is you are now stuck with 20 widgets that no one wants. The first mistake here was not doing a search of widgets on Ebay to find out if they're hot or not. The second mistake was trying to sell an electronic item. Yes, I know there is a huge market for electronic gadgets. That's the problem; the market is too huge. It is already saturated. How many times a day are you bombarded with offers for the latest and greatest cell phone or digital camera? If you try to sell in this market on Ebay, you're encroaching on Best Buy's turf, which means you'll be smashed like a bug. On the other hand, how many offers do you receive for NASCAR collectibles or Gucci shoes? Or how about die cast models? These are the hot items on Ebay. These are in demand items and more importantly you can sell these items without competing against Wal-Mart and Best Buy.

If you're new to Ebay, the first thing you need to do is to build positive feedback. Feedback is vital to your success on Ebay. Potential buyers will read your feedback in order to determine if you're an honest seller. If you have high numbers of negative feedback, many buyers will look elsewhere. Take a look at some of the Ebay Power Sellers feedback. Many of them have feedback in the thousands with a rating of over 99% positive. It's no secret how these Power Sellers became successful on Ebay. They take care of their customers. This means they'll have plenty of repeat business.

When you first sign up with Ebay, you'll have zero feedback. Most buyers will shy away from an Ebay newbie with zero or very low feedback. Start building your feedback rating by selling personal items from around the house that you no longer want. This is a good way to get the feel of using Ebay and to build positive feedback. You should invest in a good digital camera. Good clear pictures are an important selling feature on Ebay. Remember to describe your items accurately and honestly. Do not try to trick or deceive buyers in any way. You can't afford receiving negative feedback this early in the game.

I came across a perfect example of a deceptive seller on Ebay a while back. The seller had sold a pair of slightly used shocks for a 2003 Chevy pickup. He used Ebay's Buy-It-Now feature to sell the shocks for just one cent. Wow! What an incredible deal! But wait a minute. The unwary buyer forgot to read the entire auction. The shipping charges were a whopping 60 bucks! The result was a pissed off buyer and negative feedback for the seller. This was an obvious attempt on the part of the seller to make money on the shipping costs. He was banking on the fact that the buyer would not read the entire auction and would simply assume the shipping charges would be reasonable. Do not use deception in your auctions or try to make money on shipping costs. If you treat your customers the way you expect to be treated you will never go wrong and you'll be well on your way to building a reputation as an honest top-notch seller.

If you happen to get a few non-paying bidders, resist the temptation to leave negative feedback for these individuals. Leaving negative feedback will only result in possible retaliation by the non-paying bidder and negative feedback for you. Once again, you do not want any negative feedback this early in the game. Buying items off of Ebay is another great way to build positive feedback. When you win an auction, pay for the item promptly. The result will be positive feedback for you. Most buyers will not care whether your feedback came as a result of buying or selling as long as it's positive.

After you've built a feedback rating of least 25, you'll be ready to start purchasing wholesale merchandise to sell on Ebay. Remember what I said about doing your homework before buying merchandise. If you have your eye on a particular item you think might sell on Ebay, first do a search of that item on Ebay to find out what people are bidding if anything on the item. If it looks hot, at least 7 or 8 bids, then it's probably a good bet. If it doesn't appear to be getting many bids, you should steer clear. You can also do an advanced search for auctions that have already ended. It's a great way to find out the final bid price for a particular item. A few extra minutes of research can save you from a giant headache down the road.

Optimization for Yahoo!

From Jerri L. Ledford's Book

Every search engine differs a little bit from the others, and Yahoo! is no exception. Where Google focuses on elements like relevance of content and links, and MSN focuses on freshness of content and the tags on your site, Yahoo! is more focused on keyword density and keywords in the URL and title tags.

So if you’ve used basic SEO techniques, you’ll likely be listed with Yahoo! in a matter of time. Your rank on Yahoo! will depend on competition, of course. So you’ll need to focus carefully on the keywords that you select if your industry is a highly competitive one. Just be careful, because using a higher density of keywords so you’ll rank well in Yahoo! could cause you problems with MSN and Google. It could look to those search engines as if you’re stuffing your site with keywords.

The Yahoo! Search Crawler

The Yahoo! search crawler is called SLURP, and it will rank your page based first on your keyworddensity. The optimum keywords density according to Yahoo! is:

Title tag — 15 percent to 20 percent: Yahoo displays the title tag content in its result page. Therefore, write the title as a readable sentence. A catchy title will attract the reader to your web site.

Body text — 3 percent: Boldfacing the keywords sometimes boosts the page’s ranking. But be careful not to overdo it. Too much boldfaced content irritates readers.

Meta tags — 3 percent: The meta description and keyword tags provide important keywords at the beginning of your web page. Just be careful not to use the keywords repeatedly in the keyword tag, because Yahoo! may consider that practice spam. Write the description tag as a readable sentence.

Yahoo! also looks at the inbound links to your site. And of course, there are other factors SLURP looks at while it’s crawling your site. Even when you’re optimizing for three (or 15) different search engines, there are a few basic optimization strategies that are essential and relevant for all of them. Rather than focusing on all of the differences and stressing yourself out, focus on all of the actions that are similar for each search engine, and then think of how you could change or improve your site so that it will be the most relevant, and the most locatable, for your potential visitors. Put customers and visitors first, and your search engine rankings should follow naturally.

Understanding Google PageRank

From Jerri L. Ledford's Book

Google’s proprietary ranking algorithm is what makes it different from the other search engines. An element of that algorithm is Google PageRank.

Google explains PageRank like this:

“PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the Web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.” Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages’ relative importance. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don’t match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines dozens of aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query.”

In other words, a PageRank is based on a ballot system that compares your site to all the other pages on the Web that are related. The comparison allows the algorithm to determine which pages are most relevant to a search query based on numerous elements of the page. A hyperlink to a page counts as a vote of support. The PageRank of a page is defined recursively, or in comparison to the other pages that Google is also ranking, and depends on the number and PageRank metric of all pages that link to it. A page that is linked to by many pages with high PageRank receives a high rank itself. If there are no links to a web page, there is no support for that page. Google assigns a numeric weighting for each web page on the Internet; this PageRank denotes your site’s importance according to the PageRank algorithm.

So if you want to successfully rank on the Google search engine, you should follow the guidelines that are laid out in Google’s Webmaster Central (http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/). There is also a set of tools available in Webmaster Central that allows you to analyze and add to your site to help make it more Google-friendly. Those tools include the following:.

Site Status Wizard: Determines if your site is currently being indexed by Google.

Webmaster Tools: This is a set of tools designed to help you improve the indexing and ranking of your site. You can also find the Google Sitemap Generator here.

Content Submission Tools: Use these to submit your site to Google, or to add products to Google Base or content to Google Book Search.

Google’s Webmaster Blog: Find tips and strategies for ranking well in Google on this blog. You’ll also find changes to the Google algorithm and other information that you’ll need to stay on top of your site rankings.

Webmaster Discussion Groups: Talk to others about what they’re doing to improve their Google rankings.

Webmaster Help Center: If you don’t understand something about Webmaster Central, here’s where you’ll find an explanation.

Ultimately, if you follow the guidelines laid out in the early parts of this book, and design your pages for people, not search engines, you’ll rank well in Google. You may need to tweak some of the inner workings of your site — keywords, links, meta tags — and you’ll need to be patient. But given time, your ranking with Google will occur naturally. Then all you have to do is continue improving your offerings for customers and stay on top of maintaining your site, and you should see your ranking climb gradually.

Optimization for Google

From Jerri L. Ledford's Book

By this point in the book, you should have a pretty good idea of how Google works, including how your sites are indexed and what you should avoid doing. But there are a few more things to understand about Google and how your site is ranked. These additional tips will help you to improve your rankings.

The first thing you need to understand about Google is that, given time, if your site is on the Web and has at least one link to it, you will eventually be crawled. As an example, I have never done anything with my personal web site by way of SEO. I haven’t checked the code to ensure that it’s written with search engines in mind. I haven’t used or invested in keywords, and I haven’t submitted my site to a search engine.

Yet, if you type my name into the Google search engine, my personal web site will be the first result returned. I’m ranked number one for my name, because (presumably) there is only one of me. If someone searches for my name, I’m at the top of the list. And that’s good. But your site is probably going to be much more diverse than mine, so how do you get Google to take notice? Again, be patient. Google will crawl your site in a short period of time (sometimes it takes less than a week). And once your site has been crawled, you can begin the slow climb through the search results.

On my personal site, it took nearly a year to reach the top ranking slot for my site. But I never did anything to boost that rank. It’s my personal web site, so I don’t put a lot of effort into it. In short, it is what it is, without any type of SEO strategy at all.

If your site is topically related to other sites, however, you probably won’t be able to throw your site on the Web and wait for it to be indexed at number one. And although you will be indexed automatically, you’ll have to compete for top placement.

Google doesn’t sell placement, either. There are ads above and to the right side of the search results, but ads are the only placement that’s available for purchase. That means that where your site places is based on your SEO and search marketing efforts.

Optimization for MSN

MSN is now powered by Microsoft Live, and although you can go to the MSN.com web page and still access MSN search capabilities, the underlying technology has been rebranded as Microsoft Live. But it’s still one of the top three search engines, and it’s definitely not one that you should ignore. Studies have shown that searchers who enter your site from MSN searches may be fewer in number than those from other search engines, but they routinely have higher conversion rates.

As with other search engines, the basic optimization techniques that you’ve learned are the best way to get listed with MSN search. MSN also does not allow paid ranking, so your organic efforts will be the deciding factor for your rankings.

The one difference with MSN is that this search engine puts more emphasis on the freshness of content than other search engines. Specifically, sites that update high-quality, relative content on a regular basis have a better chance of ranking high with MSN. So if you have not yet implemented a content strategy, and if you want to rank well with MSN, you should plan and implement that strategy. MSN, like Google, indexes pages according to a proprietary algorithm. And like Google, MSN (or more accurately, Microsoft Live) has a set of guidelines that you should follow if you would like your site to rank well. Those guidelines can be found by going to MSN or Microsoft Live and using the search string: Site Owner Help. The guidelines that you’re seeking should return as the top search result.

MSN also looks at your meta description tags, and the title tags on your pages. So pay close attention to creating the most useful and relevant tags you can. Also include keywords and importantinformation as near the top of each of your pages as possible.

Over time it’s certain that the MSN brand will be folded into and eventually replaced by Microsoft Live Search. Branding is likely to be the only thing that changes when this happens. MSN had long used Microsoft technology (MSN, after all, does stand for Microsoft Network). This means that your SEO efforts will remain viable even as the MSN/Microsoft Live rebranding takes place.

Social network aggregators

Social networks have gotten so pervasive that much like metasearch aggregators engines, social network have begun to arise. The concept is to log in to one place and see all your updates from various social networks, photo sharing, and presence applications. Examples : socialthing!,socialstream, profilactic

Social media, then, are services that allow you to publish or distribute content to a core group of people who are connected according to some central interest. If you’ve ever heard the term Web 2.0, then you’ve heard someone talking about technologies such as social media.

The concept of Web 2.0 is that the next generation of web-based services will be structured differently than those in the past. It’s not about new technologies, really. Instead, Web 2.0 is about the way that people will interact with the Web.

In the past, it was pretty straightforward. You went to a web site, saw what there was to see, and then if you liked it you talked to your friends or sent them an e-mail that included a link. Web 2.0 is about streamlining that process and taking advantage of the connections that the Internet enables. Specifically, Web 2.0 is about using the Web as an application. This means that many social-media sites are considered Web 2.0 sites, but not all Web 2.0 sites are social networks.

Now, when you find something you like online, sure, you can send your friends an e-mail — or you can distribute it using one of the social-networking services. This allows you to stay connected with your friends, streamlines the connection to those friends, adds new friends to the network, and makes it possible for you to receive items of interest from them as well.

In short, social networking and social media are all about one thing: communicating with your friends about common interests. People want to classify the Web. These technologies allow them to do just that rather than depending on someone else’s classification who doesn’t see the world the way they do.

Social-Media Optimization

From Jerri L. Ledford's Book

Ask any child over the age of 10 what MySpace is, and you’ll get a pretty good description. During the conversation, you’ll also probably hear about other places like Flickr, FaceBook, ShoutLife, YouTube, Twitter, and Jaiku. These are all examples of the different social networks that have become an Internet phenomenon over the past few years.

Social networks are groups of people who are linked by some type of connection. MySpace is a social network where friends people who know each otherconnect. New friends come into the mix. Friends’ friends come into the mix, and eventually you have a network of people who may not know each other in the real world but are connected on the Internet.

The phenomenon part of the social network is how quickly people have adopted it. And using the connections made available by social networking, the category of social media has grown nearly as quickly. Social media are contents generated by social networking. The publishing mode for social media is many-to-many publishing. What this means is that a group of people publish a work or works that are distributed to another group, or several groups, of people.

Literally defined, social media are the technologies and practices that people use to share content, opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives, and multi- media. These technologies and practices can be translated into all different kinds of social networking. Table 18-1 is a short list of some of the types of social media and social networking available.

Types of Social Media and Networks

Wikis

These are collaborative web sites. The concept behind wikis is that anyone who has access to the site is able to add to or change any page on the site. Examples : Wikipedia

Social networks

A group of people tied together by some common interest. Interests can range from reading to education to food to news or any other subject imaginable. Examples :FaceBook,MySpace,Villij

Presence applications

Presence applications are like miniature blogs. These sites allow users to communicate back and forth using their services. Conversations run from important to completely mundane on these web sites. Examples : Twitter, Jaiku,Pownce

Video sharing

Have a great vacation video you want to share? YouTube takes “America’s Funniest Home Videos” to a whole new level. If you have a digital videocamera and some time, you can create and share any kind of video thatyou would like. examples : YouTube

Virtual reality

This interesting social networking category is like living in a fantasy world. You make up your looks, personality, your life, and all of your surroundings.But don’t think this is just a game. Living a virtual life can be more than just fun; it can also be a way to make a good income for some people. Examples : Second Life

Events

Events networks connect people according to the events that they are attending or want to attend. If you want to know who’s going to be at that TobyMac concert on Thursday night, check out on of the social-events networks. Examples : Upcoming

News aggregation

These social networks are connected by current and past news. If you find a news story that you think is good enough to be shared with people whose interests are the same as yours, you can add it to your network for them to view. Examples : Digg, Reddit

Photo sharing

Everyone wants to share pictures. Photo-sharing networks let you share your pictures with anyone that you want to. Most of these services also allow online photo storage. Examples : Flickr,Zooomr,PhotoBucket

Livecasting

Livecasting is literally live webcasting. A community is built around the webcasts, including everything from blogs to chatrooms. Examples : Justin.tv

Episodic online videos

These social networking sites are built around online videos, but the videos difference here is that each person tells a specific story in a series of episodes. The social network is built around your favorite episodes. Examples :YourTruman-Show

Media sharing

If you want to create a network of people with whom you can share all kinds of media files, these services are the ones to use. Connect to as many or as few friends as you like when sending e-mails, videos, audio files, and more.

Examples :Izimi, Twango

Music sharing

Not music file sharing, but creating community around music. Most of these sites allow for integration with iTunes or other media players to keep track of the music you listen to, and make recommendations based on your tastes and the tastes of your network. Examples :last.fm, pocketfuzz

Social bookmarking

Social bookmarking is one of the most widely used social-media techniques. These services allow you to tag news stories, blogs, videos, audio files,web sites, and other Internet-based services to share with friends. Tagged sites are then ranked (and searchable) according to the number of tags received.

Examples : del.icio.us, ma.gnolia.com,blinklist

Avoiding SEO Spam

From Jerri L. Ledford's Book

So spamming a search engine isn’t the best idea in the world. When you are caught spamming one, the penalties will differ according to the search engine, but most will delist you from search results. Being delisted isn’t the worst thing in the world that could happen to your site. In most cases, you can get your site reincluded.

It may take an explanation to the search engine of the tactic you employed, why you employed it, and how you corrected it, followed by resubmission to the index. Then it could take a couple of months (or longer) to get reincluded. Then you have to work your way back to the top of the results. The whole process could take six months to a year or longer.

Time is a valuable commodity when you’re talking about the Internet and the possibilities that it brings to your revenues. Time lost on the Internet is easily as expensive as if you had a bricks-and- mortar store that you just didn’t open on one of the busiest days of the week.

What’s at stake makes it especially worrisome that you could possibly spam a search engine and not know it. It wouldn’t be intentional, but the results would be the same. So, how do you avoid this? How do you rank well without falling into the black hole that leads to search engine spam? That’s an easy question to answer, really. There’s only one way to avoid accidently (or purposely) ending up labeled as a spammer. Build your web site for your audience and not for a search engine. Really, it’s that simple.

Here’s why: The purpose of a search engine is to find, index, and serve content to people who use the search engine to find something. The search engine’s target audience is those people. And in an effort to do the best job possible for those people, it’s going to look at every page it indexes in the scope of what’s best for the searcher.

So, if you approach creating your web site in the same manner that a search engine approaches serving content to its users, your goals will automatically align. And that natural alignment will keep you out of trouble with search engines.

You should already know how to design your web site with the user in mind. But you can keep a few guidelines in mind to make search engines see that your site is exactly what searchers are looking for:

1. Provide users with unique relevant content. The most important element of your site is probably the content that you put on it. Provide the information that users need to help them understand, compare, or make decisions. Make it useful, and users (and crawlers) will love you.

2. Use links appropriately. You want a good balance of links into and out of your site. You can’t necessarily control all of the links that come into your site, but you can influence them by participating in your industry. And when you build links that lead away from your page, make sure they take users to other sites that are relevant and useful.

Spam of any kind is bad. And no one wants to be labeled a spammer. But being labeled as SEO spam is probably one of the most detrimental blows that your web site can suffer. So instead of focusing on how you can make search engines like your site, focus on how you can make users like your site, and search engines will naturally follow the users.

Google AdSense and Blogs

by: Diane Nassy

If you have a blog, or are thinking about starting a blog, then you are definitely going to want to read this article. It’s all about how to line your pockets with money that’s just waiting to be made without working much harder than you already are.
No only are blogs the hottest thing on the ‘net right now, but they are custom-made for Google’s AdSense program. Why? It’s simple. Blogs represent constantly changing and fresh content to Google’s search engine spiders. Feeding fresh content to those little spiders is just like tossing raw meat to a tiger. They just gobble it up. The more pages of your blog that get indexed, the more traffic you get. And the more traffic you get, the more exposure your AdSense ads get. Are you beginning to see where I’m heading here?
It’s not just Google that loves new content, all of the major engines do. In fact, some web-savvy bloggers are testing Google ads on one page and Overture ads on the other. It doesn’t take too long to see which ads are doing the best when you have nearly side-by-side comparison statistics to look at. Just don’t make the mistake of putting Google and Overture ads on the same page together. While they won’t kill each other like a pair of Siamese fighting fish in the same bowel will, you will be violating both sites’ Terms of Service, and it isn’t worth killing the goose (geese) that laid the golden egg.
It’s a snap to set up Google AdSense ads on your blog. Everything you need to know is right inside of the Google control panel. What’s not so easy is figuring out what ads are going to appear on each page. Since Google targets your key words, and your blog articles could possible wander towards any subject, you never know what you’re going to get.
Well, “never” is a strong word because there actually IS a way to pre-test your blog’s ads before you post your newest edition. Here’s what you do:
• Write your blog article like you normally would
• Plug in your AdSense code and then post your newest page to a sub directory that’s not part of your blog.
• Click refresh a few times until Google wakes up and starts sending ads.
• If you don’t like what you see then fine-tune the article until you see the types of ads that you’re looking for.
With some ads paying as much as $5 per click or more, I’d certainly spend an extra 30 minutes or so tweaking my blog. That’s for sure.
If you’re working hard to get your blog in front of visiting eyeballs, then it doesn’t make any sense at NOT to be using Google AdSense to draw every penny out of your site that’s possible. OK, that’s the end of the article. Now get busy tweaking your blog and checking your ads. You’ve got money waiting to be made!
About the author:
Diane provides marketing and internet profit tips.
For more Google AdSense tips, visit http://www.adsense.deeljeabiz.com
Email : deeljeabiz@gmail.com

When AdSense Goes AWOL

by: Diane Nassy

No matter how hard you work to optimize your page, there are going to be times when Google just can’t figure out which AdSense ad to deliver, so it defaults to delivering a PSA (Public Service Ad) instead.
Now I don’t have any problem with charities, but I give to the ones that I choose to give to. Since I don’t have a non-profit license of my own, the goal of my web site is to make money and I depend on Google AdSense revenues to help pay my bills. Someday I want it to fund my retirement as well, so I can’t afford to have non-revenue PSAs showing up on my site.
The good news is the Google understands the human’s basic greedy nature, so it provides us with an alternative to donating our precious web real estate to charitable organizations. That alternative is known as AdSense Alternate Ads.
As strange as it seems, this feature allows you to let Google competitors into your site. Don’t worry, Google is allowing it with their eyes wide open. They even tell you how to set up the alternate ad code to work on your site and they let you do it right in your AdSense control panel.
Once you add the code to your site, Google will pull ads from whatever service you defined rather than serve a PSA. Google will do that even if those ads are coming from Yahoo, or Overture, or your grandmother’s attic.
This goes a long way towards ensuring that you never lose an opportunity to monetize a visitor’s time spent on your site. How nice it is of Google to gives us that opportunity.
Who do you choose?
Ah, now that’s the big question. Most people head straight for Overture or Yahoo, but there are other fish in the sea worth considering. In fact, some of these fish make their living almost solely by serving replacement ads for PSAs. Run this search (http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official_s&hl=en&q=google+psa+alternatives&btnG=Google+Search) on Google and you’ll have plenty of options to choose from.
Why bother?
Sometimes Google doesn’t have any ads in its inventory to match your site’s keywords. Sometimes Google gets confused and can’t figure out which ads to deliver, so it grabs a PSA ad.
Google also has a not-so-readily-available list of what it calls “stop words”. When the Google AdSense spiders detect these words on your page they automatically trigger PSAs. Some of the more commonly known words include severe profanity (think: George Carlin’s 7 Words You Can’t Say on T.V), as well as other words which may very be quite legitimate for your site such as pharmaceutical, drugs, death, dying, abortion, and the list goes on and on. At least we THINK that it goes on and on but no one really knows for sure outside of a trusted few Google staffers.
But no matter what the reason, you don’t want non-revenue ads running on your site. There’s no excuse when Google makes it so easy to keep the revenue flowing.
About the author:
Diane provides marketing and internet profit tips.
For more Google AdSense tips, visit http://www.adsense.deeljeabiz.com
Email : deeljeabiz@gmail.com

Adlink Success - A New Advertising Style From Google Adsense

by: Derrick Pizur

There is a new advertising style from Google Adsense that is available in your Adsense panel, it is called “Google Ad Links.”
This new ad system presents a list of 4 or 5 vertical links(you can pick either 4 or 5 and Google will supply the actually links) to your site visitors, when the visitors click on one of the targeted contextual words it displays a results page from Google listing ten Adwords advertiser’s ads for this related topic.
Here is what Google says Adlinks are: “What are Ad Links by Google?
Ad Links are a new form of text advertising that we're offering to our AdSense publishers. Using the same contextual targeting algorithm that targets Google ads to your content pages, Ad Links units display a list of topics that are relevant to your page. Each topic, when clicked, brings the user to a page of related advertisements.
The result is advertisements that are closely targeted to the interests of your users. By selecting the topics through interaction with the ad unit, users are presented with useful information in the form of related advertisements. Their direct involvement with the evolution of the ad unit guarantees an interest in the ads that are presented.”
Positive Aspects of Adlinks:
They allow you to blend this in with sections of your links which will get more visitors to click on them, inevitably increase your Adsense revenue.
The Adlinks ads display 10 ad results when clicked without cluttering you page.
Google’s rules allow you to place three Adsense code block on a website. If you are doing this near say a 500 word article it can distract the visitor from viewing the article. With Adlinks you can still display 1 block of normal Adsense code and the Adlinks block and it keeps your page relatively nice looking while still giving you revenue potential.
Negative Aspects of Adlinks:
Adlinks requires your visitors to make two clicks. One on the original Adlinks block and one when they view the Adlink results. As any marketer knows the more actions you need a visitor to take the less the response rate.
Where are the best places to display Adlinks ads?
The best place to display them are within your navigation menu. Try to make them blend in as best as possible.
Another great place to put them is at the end of an article suggesting an interested reader view these resources. When doing this the reader is very targeted since they red your whole article and if they are likely leaving your website, why not let them leave through Adlinks and make some money?
Are Adlink ads as effective as the normal ad blocks?
Well some have seen positive results while other have not. Personally I am going to test it some more to see what kind of results and make my decision then.
About the author:
http://www.derrickpizur.info
Want Free information about Google Adsense and Search Engine Opt?

How To Drive Traffic to Your Blog

ProBlogger.net

When Darren Rowse comes up to you, and asks you to write a post for ProBlogger.net, it’s not something you can really say ‘no’ to. Not that you’d want to of course, but more the fact that it’s the opportunity of a lifetime. Why should I write, of all people though? Well Darren wanted to hear the methods that I as a young person use to drive traffic to my blog, without spending any money.

Learning the basics

First you need to grasp and understand that the Internet is a big place. Several billion web-pages, and often with very little time available to the end-user, they’ll use several techniques to find what they’re looking for.

SEO

Search? Standard engines like Google, Yahoo and Live are the most popular nowadays, and optimizing your site to be found easily, can be easy and hard based on many factors.

My best advice for someone starting out would be to start by building quality content for somebody to see, then progressing to “The Three Cs”. This way, you’ll get noticed by genuinely interested people, who’ll actively want to play a part in your site’s development, by giving you quality feedback on ways to improve, design and usability.

If you have a blog or a website that’s been going for several weeks, perhaps a month or two, and you’ve done “The Three Cs”, or at least some of them, would be to start focusing on building on your existing content, with fresh, interesting, relevant and unique content. Note I say ‘relevant’ and ‘unique’. This is important. There are so many splogs out there now-a-days, that people can quickly distinguish whether an article has been written by somebody or not, at least the majority of the time. Relevance too, like I said, is a key factor. If you have a very personal blog, then one day write something completely off-topic about a new type of golf club that comes out, people will start to wonder if you and your blog actually have an aim or a purpose, which is yet another vital thing to consider.

If you’re somebody with a very mature blog, that is several months or more old, you can now focus on the technical side of things, which is mainly down to the spiders. If you’ve been blogging this long, then if you’re not on your own domain, or hosting, I recommend it, as it allows for greater flexibility, design and SEO. Search engine optimization? Yep! A Google Sitemap can be stuck on your server for the Google-Bot and metatags can be added, which let you pre-define information about your page automatically, such as the author, a description, keywords and feed information. This also makes usability easier for feed-ready browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer 7. Tacky pre-set designs become a thing of the past too, and upgrading to Wordpress can be a smart move, as the developer community there will help you along the way with every aspect of your blog, from the writing itself, to the advanced functionality like widgets that are available, and the themes that are freely downloadable to customize your blog’s look. Of course you could always give design a go yourself as I did at Techzi.net - though admittedly I enlisted the help of two professional designers as well.So, what are these ‘C’s that I’ve been talking to you so much about anyway? Read on to find out…

Community, communication, consideration.

The three founding principals of marketing your blog to an audience, whether general, or specific. People want to get be a part of the next thing, so give them a chance.

1. Community

Whether you start up your own community, or join others, via means of MyBlogLog, MySpace, LinkedIn, Xing and others, this is a guaranteed and proven way to get visitors, to get hits, impressions, and often quality traffic, because you know that these people haven’t just clicked on a random link or search engine listing, but have seen you or your website’s profile, and followed it through to your homepage/landing page. The best ways to get the profiles themselves noticed? See below…

2. Communication

I don’t mean ’spam’ by this either. Get involved in genuine discussions, with other people of similar interests, start up a civilized, profitable, knowledgeable discussion, then when you’re finished, ask if they’d take a look at your blog or website. You’d be surprised how many loyal readers have come to my own blog in this way. Simply leave comments in communities, on social networks, on other blogs, etc.

Still not quite your way of dealing with people?

3. Considering

All the time, you have to consider the reader. Who are you writing for? The reader. Who will be navigating your blog? The reader. Who should you devote your time, energy and attention to? The reader. Consideration is important, and you can show this in many ways. Either by having a clutter-free, easy-to-follow design, or you could alternatively try getting the readers involved, by asking questions in blog posts, or website statements, and opening up comments. If people comment, strike up a conversation with them, and keep them coming back. Answer their queries and requests with solid, reliable, dependable answers, and take note of the feedback they leave by using it, and putting it into action. If someone states that your text is hard to read, change the colour to stop it clashing so much with the background, or simply make it slightly larger.

There are lots of ways you can show consideration to your audience, and it shows just how loyal you are to your readers through this. If someone spots an inaccuracy in a blog post and tells you, don’t be lazy. Go change it! They’ll keep coming back, they’ll tell their friends, and in turn this C will do word-of-mouth marketing wonders.

The Element of Surprise

You’ve looked at both SEO, content and the ‘C’s now, but my last tip is probably what has brought me the large majority of my visitors, both loyal and one-off traffic hoppers. Differentiate yourself, do something different. Be daring, be random! Try something wild, or something completely unheard of, whether it’s outrageous, or greatly beneficial to the reader. Sometimes, even beneficial to the writer! (http://www.techzi.net/donations/) Mad things work out great sometimes, other times, they really can lower your reputation, so it’s time to take calculated risks here.

My advice? Follow your instincts. Be an entrepreneur. Take that risk. Make it happen. Throw a competition (http://www.techzi.net/competition/), for all the good it will do. Stand out and be different. Darren will sure know what I mean by that…

Essential Blog Directories for Your Blog

Gaining exposure for your blog is critical to building a following, readership, and revenue. Besides the basic SEO steps of adding compelling and keyword friendly titles, URL structure and descriptions (along with the basic Wordpress SEO plugins) basic link building for blogs begins with listing them in blog directories.

Personally, I love launching a new blog, or adding one to an existing site, and watching the high valued links roll in. And as we know, BLOG = Better Listings On Google.

There are many paths to consider when building links to your site or blog such as link baiting or blogroll link swapping, but few are as easy to implement and cost effective as submitting to blog directories - and good link juice is essential to a healthy growing blog.

1. Best of the Web Blog Search La Crem de la Crem, Best of the Web’s Blog Directory is very selective and only lists aged and valuable blogs. A link from here is majestic and well deserved.

2. EatonWeb Blog Directory is a real jewel with many aged inbound links and a blog rating system. You may have to pay a fee for your blog to be reviewed, but like Yahoo, the review fee is well worth the few dollars.

3. Blog Hub offers a drop down category and member blog list. With its “new blogger” list and hot topics, Blog Hub is a great directory to list your site.

4. Upon visiting Bloggernity, you find a crisp, clean, and easy to navigate site. Scrolling down, you find the new blogs. As there is little advertising on the home page, it is pleasant to the eye of the reader as well.

5. Blogarama has an impressive listing of over 65,000 blogs. The site is well designed and follows the same content categories as many other sites.

6. One of the most selective Blog Directories on the web (and Wordpress powered), Blog Search Engine is owned by Performancing’s parent company and serves search results powered by IceRocket.

7. Blog Catalog features a vast directory of categories, from academic to writing, while offering the ability to search by country, language, or user. It has a no frills design, but offers convenient member access through simple blog registration.

8. Globe of Blogs has too many features to list. In order to be listed on the site, the blog must not be commercial. The site may appear to be busy, but I like the features of being able to search by title, author, or subject. Narrowing the search becomes easier on this blog.

9. The ultimate directory of British blogs connotes all things British. It is not directed by location, but by the culture! It is asked that bloggers be genuinely “britished.” Being listed in this blog reaches readers all the way across the pond!

10. Blog Universe is the perfect place to promote your video or podcast themed blog. Its layout is easy to navigate. Although the content is limited, it is an all around good directory site worthy of submission.

11. Bigger Blogs is a relatively new blog directory with only a few blogs registered. The blog is intertwined with a business directory. The blog section is difficult to find, and it is located through a link on the right side of the business directory page. However, the benefit is that the earlier you are accepted on a blog directory, the more exposure your blog will obtain. In addition, a back link is indeed a back link, so this can help with your search engine placement.

12. Bloggeries has the best categories and subcategories home page on the internet. The layout is clear and concise, and readers are able to find what they are looking for in a snap!

13. Bloggapedia has an interesting and eye catching homepage. Readers are easily connected to the top blogs and newest posts. Innovative categories and a colorful design make this blog directory a hit.

14. Spillbean is a well-designed blog directory site with categories such as health, society, internet, and personal. The site is aesthetically pleasing, but there are not many listings yet.

15. Blogging Fusion is a blog with over sixty categories. These categories include photo blogs and family focused blogs. Blogging Fusion has an good amount of blog listings within the directory, and it also has visitor stats available.

16. Blogflux is not only a tool for bloggers, but a directory that has the listings in alphabetic order. The blog listings are organized and clear. It is definitely an effective blog directory in which to be listed.

17. The blogs on the top listings of Bloglisting are fun, colourful, and catch the attention of the reader. Bloglisting displays the page ranking blogs, which is a helpful tool when determining with whom you want to exchange links.

18. Blogio may be a small blog directory with few listings, but it worthy of a submission. Despite its small size, there are quality blogs and a solid ability to search on this site.

19. Blog Explosion claims to be the largest blog promoter on the internet. They have a vast directory but do not seem to have direct links. However, the listing in the directory can still show up in SERP’s, so keep this in mind.

20. Super Blog Directory is a great site that offers tools to posters that others do not. You can see the latest submitted links and blogs on the site, which is a perk that draws traffic into the directory.

Amaya 10.1

A complete web browsing and authoring environment and comes equipped with a WYSIWYG style of interface
Amaya is a Web editor, i.e. a tool used to create and update documents directly on the Web. Browsing features are seamlessly integrated with the editing and remote access features in a uniform environment. This follows the original vision of the Web as a space for collaboration and not just a one-way publishing medium.

Work on Amaya started at W3C in 1996 to showcase Web technologies in a fully-featured Web client. The main motivation for developing Amaya was to provide a framework that can integrate as many W3C technologies as possible. It is used to demonstrate these technologies in action while taking advantage of their combination in a single, consistent environment.

Amaya first started as an HTML + CSS style sheets editing software. Since that time it was extended to support XML and an increasing number of XML applications such as the XHTML family, MathML, and SVG. It allows all those vocabularies to be edited simultaneously in compound documents.

What's New in This Release:

· New features
· Redesign of the user interface: new toolbars, palettes, panels
· A contextual menu provides navigation and editing commands.
· Within a template instance, the contextual menu allows one to insert and append template components
· Tools can be displayed on the left, or on the right, or custumized tool by tool
· There are now two editing modes: tthe word processing mode (called Text mode) or the XML editing mode (called XML). A button allows one to switch the mode quickly.
· On/Off buttons or entries can be used to go in/out of an inline element.
· For example you click strong, enter the strong text, then click strong to close the element.
· Insert and Append commands must be used to insert before and after the selected structure element
· First implementation of Amaya themes
· Possibility to change tabs order or to display two documents side by side
· There is now an icon in each tab area to close it (not available on mac)
· The application now doesn't close when the last tab is closed
· New XHTML document allows one to create a simple document or a template instance
· Save As allows one to save without template when the document is a template instance
· The File menu gives now access to the list of recent open documents
· There is now a command Select All
· Amaya proposes new options when a table, an image or an object are created
· The links view display all elements with an id attribute as they are potential targets of a link
· Class attributes are now displayed in the status bar
· New management of the selection within tables
· Reconfiguration of menus
· Profiles for customization of the user interface
· Bug fixes
· Set the environment variable G_SLICE="always-malloc" to prevent a crash on new Linux platforms (the crash occurs as soon as a dialog is displayed)
· A reference to the current page now moves to the top of page
· Amaya generated an explicit lang="en" attribute when an element of an English document is copied and pasted into a French document
· "Preserve Lines When Pasting" didn't work correctly in MacOS X
· The Preferences dialog didn't display correctly
· In dialogs, buttons that clear an URI are now displayed close to the URI
· It's now possible to delete a link with the Link dialog
· Maps areas could be lost
· The CSS parser now detects the BOM character
· Large background images could crash the application on Windows
· When changing or deleting the same attribute for several contiguous elements, only the first element in the set has the change/deletion applied.
· Avoid several concurrent download of a document
· Dialogs are now displayed at the current cursor position
· Amaya didn't complain and could generate invalid markup for an Xhtml Strict or Basic document when an element was not inside a block element.
· On MacOS X, the menu items Copy/Cut/Paste were disabled after having double-clicked a file in the file browser.
· Fix a problem with CSS background images loading.

WordPress eBook: Success with WordPress

Are you looking to find success with WordPress?  Over the past year, WordPress has become the top blogging platform in the world, and many major internet companies (such as CNN, Yahoo, Sony, The New York Times, People Magazine, and eBay) have taken notice.   A quick browse around many of these companies websites show WordPress installations being used to manage portions of their websites.   At the same time, many bloggers are using a number of techniques to make significant income with their WordPress blogs.   Are you getting the most out of your WordPress installation?

Whether your blogging goal is to simply write a personal blog, transition to making a full time income online, or anywhere in between, the open source WordPress software has you covered free of charge.

With the Success with WordPress eBook, you’ll learn a number of blogging techniques, advanced strategies for optimizing your WordPress blog for search engines, and of course how to properly market your WordPress blog for the most exposure.

A list of the topics covered in this eBook include:

   1. A Beginner’s Guide to WordPress
          * Installing WordPress via Fantastico
          * Finding a WordPress Friendly Webhost
          * WordPress Post-Install Checklist
          * Creating a WordPress Sitemap
          * Creating a Robots.txt File
          * Using Google Webmaster Tools
   2. Building a Multi-Author WordPress Blog
          * Setting Up Author Permissions
          * Adding Author Information To Your WordPress Blog
          * Building an Author Page
   3. Using WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS)
          * How do I build my CMS?
          * Should I use a Content Management System?
          * Building a WordPress Forum
   4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tips designed specifically for WordPress
          * WordPress Permalink Structure
          * WordPress Post Slug
          * Using the Post Meta Title
          * Using Images + Alt Tags
          * Emphasize Keywords
          * Using Anchor Text
          * Making Your Post Dates Stand Out
          * Standardizing your Backlinks
          * Using Breadcrumbs On Your Blog
          * Controlling Link Juice
   5. Building a Niche Blog with WordPress
          * What is a Niche Blog?
          * Niche Blogging Strategy
          * How to Locate a Niche?
          * How to find a niche domain?
          * Finding a WordPress Niche Theme?
          * Completing Your WordPress Niche Blog

The other topics covered in great detail in the Success with WordPress eBook include how to maximize CPC Income with Google AdSense and also a number of advanced Affiliate Marketing techniques designed specifically for WordPress users.

WP e-Commerce

Authors: Dan Milward, Thomas Howard, Chris Beavan, Allen Han

The WP e-Commerce shopping cart plugin for WordPress is an elegant easy to use fully featured shopping cart application suitable for selling your products, services, and or fees online.

WP e-Commerce is a Web 2.0 application designed with usability, aesthetics, and presentation in mind.

Perfect for:

    * Bands & Record Labels
    * Clothing Companies
    * Crafters & Artists
    * Books, DVDs & MP3 files

DotShoppingCart

Many of our customers struggled with the complexity of the software. To set up a full featured ecommerce web site they had to install different software e.g. shopping cart, wiki, blog, forums etc. Even though they might send time and effort to get all the pieces working these different systems work in the silos. The end customers had to use different logins to sign in to the different parts of the web site. Also the site owners had hard time to gather the useful information cross the heterogeneous systems. Now we have a solution for our customers looking for a powerful web site building platform.

Here are the reasons to use DotShoppingCart:

    * Web Site Made Simple
      Easy-to-use site setup and design wizards with pre-designed themes and templates can get your site up and running in minutes.
    * Flexible Customization without Coding or Programming Knowledge
      DotShoppingCart has WYSIWYG HTML editor and block building tools built in. The content management system allows you to create unlimited pages and articles. The innovative block building page editor enables you to customize the look and feel of every single page of your site.
    * Versatile and Feature Rich
      The pluggable modularized architecture meets all your needs to create and manage your web sites. All the functionalities break into the our unique server block framework. Each server block serves a dedicated feature. Many server blocks are integrated e.g. products category list, blog, FAQ, online help, RSS feed, RSS viewer etc. Whether it's a ecommerce business or a family Web site DotShoppingCart is the best one stop shop software for building your site.
    * Stress-free and Scalability
      Hundreds of our customers sites run though our hosted services. We make sure all of these sites get loaded in customers' browser within 1 second on average broadband connections.
    * Search Engine Optimized
      We put a lot of effort into ensuring that DotShoppingCart is optimized for search engines. Whether it’s search friendly URLS or properly structured content or products, you will find that DotShoppingCart was built to help your customers locate your content with ease.

Dropthings : ASP Open source

Dropthings is a open source Web 2.0 Ajax Portal that shows the power of several .NET Framework 3.5 technologies. It supports widget based modularized website, drag and drop personalization of content and an open API for widgets. It is the sample featured in the book, "Building a Web 2.0 Portal with ASP.NET 3.5" and you can use it as a personal portal, a group website, a public portal or as a dashboard for an enterprise that aggregates services from different systems.

Wikipedia Tells : ASP

Active Server Pages (ASP) is Microsoft's first server-side script engine for dynamically-generated web pages. It was initially marketed as an add-on to Internet Information Services (IIS) via the Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack, but has been included as a free component of Windows Server since the initial release of Windows 2000 Server.

Programming ASP websites is made possible by various built-in objects. Each object corresponds to a group of frequently-used functions useful for creating dynamic web pages. In ASP 2.0 there are six such built-in objects: Application, ASPError, Request, Response, Server, and Session. Session, for example, is a cookie-based session object that maintains variables from page to page. Web pages with the ".asp" file extension use ASP, although some Web sites disguise their choice of scripting language for security purposes. The ".aspx" extension is not an ASP page, but an ASP.NET page, another server-side scripting language from Microsoft, based on a mixture of traditional ASP, and Microsoft's .NET technology.

Most ASP pages are written in VBScript, but any other Active Scripting engine can be selected instead by using the @Language directive or the <script language="language" runat="server"> syntax. JScript (Microsoft's implementation of ECMAScript) is the other language that is usually available. PerlScript (a derivative of Perl) and others are available as third-party installable Active Scripting engines.

History

Previously called dbWeb, and created by Aspect Software Engineering, ASP was one of the first web application development environments that integrated web application execution directly into the web server, 9 months after the release of NeXT's (now Apple) WebObjects. This was done in order to achieve high performance compared to calling external executable programs or CGI scripts which was the most popular method for writing web applications at the time it was introduced. Today there are additional platforms for web application development that are more common on other operating systems. Both JavaServer Pages and PHP are more commonly found on webservers running non-Microsoft operating systems, with PHP currently being the more common of the two. Also of note is ColdFusion, a popular Java technology running on several platforms including Microsoft servers as well as other platforms.

Prior to Microsoft's release of ASP for IIS 3, programmers relied on IDC and HTX files combined with ODBC drivers to display and manipulate dynamic data and pages running on IIS. The basics of these file formats and structures were used, at least in part, in the implementation of the early versions of ASP.

InstantASP and ChiliASP are 3rd party products that run ASP on platforms other than the Microsoft Windows operating systems. Chilisoft (the maker of ChiliASP) was purchased by Sun Microsystems and later renamed "Sun ONE Active Server Pages", then later renamed to "Sun Java System Active Server Pages". It appears that InstantASP is no longer available. There are large open source communities on the internet, such as ASPNuke, which produce ASP scripts, components and applications to be used free under certain license terms.

Come to Bromo, Indonesia is Waiting for you

Mountainous areas of Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park was stated firstly as a national park based on a letter of Statement of The Agrarian Minister Number : 736 / Mentan / X / 1982 on the date of October 14 th 1982 on area of 58,000 ha.
After having applied a limitation order of the budgetary year of 1983 / 1984 until the budgetary year of 1995 / 1996 on the area, there issued the letter of designation for it as Taman National Bromo Tengger Semeru ( Bromo Tengger Semeru Park ) based on a letter of decision of the Agrarian Minister Number : 278 / KptsVI / 1997 on May 23 rd 1997 that included an area of 50,276.20 ha.

Potentials of is ecosystem or natural resources that ground

the designation of the area as a national park area :

1. Natural phenomena caused uniquely by or as volcanic activities of Mt.Tengger
have become 5 (five) mountains :
Mt. Bromo ( 2,392 m high asl.(above sea level ),
Mt. Batok (2,40 m asl. )
Mt. Widodaren ( 2,614 m asl. )
Mt. Watangan ( 2,601 m asl. ) and
Mt. Kursi ( 2,581 m asl ),
and a wide Laut Pasir ( Sand Sea ) caused by its eruption.
Besides Mount Semeru is the highest mountain in Java Island and it is now still an active volcano.

2. A scarce endemic flora of family Orchidaceeae has 40 scarceorchid types, 15 of which are endemic in East Java, and 3 of them are typical South Semeru, those are Malaxis purprreonervosa, Meleola wetteana, and Liparis rhodocila. Besides there are also Corybas fornicatus ( red pearl orchid ) and Mavodes petola which are protected by Laws.

3. Hydrological Potential as water resouce area for several important river bank areas ( DAS )
in East Java for example DAS Brantas.
This hydrological potential is very famous as life support system.

In strengthening treatment of Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park area intensively, its treatment has been started sic\nce 1984/1985 by Natural Resources Conservation IV through development of Suaka Alam and forest of Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park project until 1992/1993.
Then in 1992 Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park is legal as Technical Operator Unit (UPT) of Direktorat Jenderal Perlindungan Hutan dan Pelestarian Alam based on descision letter of Forest Minister No. 1049/Kpts-II/1992 date November 12, 1992
in 1997 through decision letter of Forest Minister No.185/Kpts-II/1997 date March 31, 1997 Bromo Tengger Semeru organization structure changed as Balai Taman Bromo Tengger Semeru.

The main duty Balai Taman Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park is doing the treament of National Park (Bromo Tengger Semeru) area for plant natural resource conservation and its ecosystem based on the related role.