Blogging Tips

What is Mobile Marketing?

2011-02-04T18:58:00.000+02:00

Mobile Marketing involves communicating with the consumer via cellular (or mobile) device, either to send a simple marketing message, to introduce them to a new audience participation-based campaign or to allow them to visit a mobile website. Some of the tools of the trade and a few of the concepts that will be featured in this Mobile Marketing 101 article are:

Short Message Services (SMS) also known as texts.
Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS).
Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD).
Bluetooth, Wireless and Infrared.
Mobile Internet and Social Media.
Mobile Applications.

Mobile connectivity not only enables people to connect to the Internet via a cellular telephone, PDA or other gadget, but also consolidates the different communication channels in a simple, yet effective, medium. Cheaper than traditional means for both the consumer and the marketer - and easy enough for almost any age group to understand and engage with - Mobile Marketing really is a streamlined version of traditional eMarketing.

Facts and Figures
Let’s look at some interesting Mobile Marketing statistics:
Even in the US, SMS technology was not widely used until only a few years ago – but
in June 2008, CellSigns reported that over 75 billion SMS were sent each month
(contrast against only 18 billion just 18 months before). It was most likely Idol’s SMS voting system that got Americans texting.

Experian, a marketing services provider in the US, estimates that the number of
SMS users (approximately 1.8 billion at present) is twice that of active email users. These text messages are generally read within 15 minutes and responded to within the hour – compared to email communication which could go unread for days. Experian, The Standard, MarketTree and Cellnumbers.com relay the following
statistics about international mobile users: 30 countries exceeded the 100% mobile device to population ratio.

As you can probably imagine, the younger generation are able to recall a lot more Mobile Marketing content than Generation X and the Baby Boomers. The younger users are more in tune with Mobile Marketing due to the increased connectivity and a general interest in market related news.

Further Discussion Points
How does your audience connect to the Internet?
How can you contact those without mobile Internet connectivity?
Which mobile medium does your target audience communicate with its peers
(SMS, voice, mobile social networks)?
How can you use mobile content such as video or games to spread your message?
How can you make your marketing/advertising campaign engaging for the users
(and avoid it being spam-like)
However, only 80% of the population of the US were mobile users.
60% of the world’s population (4.1 billion) are mobile users.
China has over 400 million subscribers.
There are over 50 million subscribers in Indonesia.

In 2006, there were 241 million mobile users in the US alone (out of a total of a possible 332,156 million people in North America).

98% of all handsets in the US have SMS capabilities.
68.7 milion US citizens use SMS and text services.

Although a relatively new service to the US, over 300 billion SMS messages were sent in 2007. South Africa is 6 th in the world for mobile Internet connectivity (which can probably be contributed to the lack of traditional, desktop based Internet connectivity).

And Some More...
Over 70% of South African mobile subscribers do not own a land line connection. Surprisingly, South Africans over the age of 50 spend more on their mobile communication than their junior counterparts.
Only 10% of SMS messages are spam (compared to over 65% of email). The average American text message user in late 2008 sent 357 SMS messages per month and made or received 204 calls, compared to early 2006 where the average user sent 198 texts and made or received 198 calls.
A study of South Africa’s Mobile connectivity estimated 19 million active mobile users in 2006. As coverage increases, so does the connectivity, with 90% of all new cellular connections in the country being prepaid and top-up packages. (NOTE: South African figures are estimates only as Vodacom is the only service provider
willing to release data.)
According to African Telecoms News, Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa have the fastest growing mobile markets. In most areas of East Africa, mobile phone taxes range between 25% - 30%, compared to the 17% average of the continent.
Nielsen Mobile reported in mid-2008, that 51% of US mobile users responded to some or other form of mobile advertising; while Jeff Herrmann went on to say that “only 10% of data users say they find mobile advertising acceptable”.

The most common mobile media content categories in use today include:

Portals
Email
Weather
News/politics
Search
Business/finance (especially since the recent economic downturn)

Who’s Connected?
Known as the Baby Boomers - the generation born between the 1940s and 1960s, predominantly in the US and UK - form today’s older online market. Born between the 1960s and 1980s, Generation X are more connected than their senior counterparts. They are tech-savvy, but remember a life before the Web, unlike
the younger Generation Y – today’s teens and 20-somethings - who have generally known the online world from an early age.

Blogging Dictionary

2009-11-27T20:21:00.002+02:00

Adverblog
A blog that advertises a product or service.

Audioblog
A blog where the posts consist mainly of voice recordings.

Blegging
Blogging for freebies (money, help, etc.).

Blego
A combination of the words Blog and Ego, used to describe the actions of bloggers who write as to their own self worth.

Blink
Short for “web link”; a bookmark or URL

Blog
A blog is a website in which journal entries are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. A blog comprises hypertext, images, and links (to other webpages and to video, audio and other files). Blogs use a conversational style of documentation. Often blogs focus on a particular “area of interest”, such as Washington, D.C.’s political goings-on. Some blogs discuss personal experiences. Blogs can be hosted by a blog hosting service, or can be run by a user with blog software on a regular web hosting service.

Blog Posts/Posts/Entries
Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts,” “posts” or “entries”.

Blog swarm
In BLOG, Hugh devotes a chapter to blog swarms and opinion storms. The analogy describes what happens when dozens of bloggers “swarm” around an issue/story like...a swarm of bees. That’s the image. An opinion storm is the result of a blog swarm.

Secondly, I need to clear up something. What happens when bloggers descend on an issue is a blog swarm – two words – not a blogswarm, blogstorm or blog storm. This a pet peeve of mine, and I cringe whenever I see “blogstorm.”

Blogfoo’d
A comment on a blog was directed at you without using your name.

Blogger
1. A person who posts entries into their blog.

2. Google’s free software program, which allows you to create a blog. They purchased the software rights from Pyra Labs in February 2003.

Bloggerville
A term used to describe the blog community

Blogging
Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called "blogging"

Blogosphere (alternate: BlogSphere or BloggingSphere)
The collective term encompassing all weblogs or blogs as a community or social network. Many weblogs are densely interconnected; bloggers read others' blogs, link to them, reference them in their own writing, and post comments on each others' blogs. Because of this, the interconnected blogs have grown their own culture.
The term blogosphere was coined on September 10, 1999 by Brad L. Graham, as a joke [1]. It was re-coined in 2002 by William Quick (quite seriously) [2] and was quickly adopted and promulgated by the warblog community.

Blogover
A weblog redesign; done by someone other than the author or with outside consultation; see also webloglog. (Thanks to Jish for the word!)

Blogroll
A collection of links to other weblogs. When present, blogrolls are often found on the front page sidebar of most weblogs.

Blogvana
1. (n) - the state entered by a blogger when that person's blog reaches a popularity level which is in direct proportion to the number of things needed to be blogged about its readers; the state at which the number of personal family, friends, or acquaintances of the blogger equals or exceeds the number of neuroses carried by the blogger in question; bloggers reach this state and either quit (become "losers") or forge ahead (become "the blogger elite").

2. the state at which a blogger no longer tries to hide the fact that s/he is ego-surfing; a blogger who is in blogvana will click directly on their link from an ego-surf and not try to cut and paste or open new windows to hide the fact that s/he is ego-surfing.

Blogware
Commonly used in reference to the tools used to write blogs, such as WordPress or Movable Type.

Blurker
One who reads many blogs but leaves no evidence of themselves such as comments behind; a silent observer of blogs. 2. One who reads many blogs but has no blog of their own; a blog-watcher or blog voyeur. (It was coined (at least for me) by the ultimate blurker herself, Liz. Mike.)

Dark Blog
Blogs hidden behind corporate firewalls that the public does not have access to. Many companies are using dark blogs because they speed up internal communications and allow information to be shared within the corporation.

Featurette
A "special" item on a blogger's blog, usually relevant to Bloggerville residents and no one else.

How Blogs Differ from Forums or Newsgroups
Blogs are different from forums or newsgroups. Only the author or authoring group can create new subjects for discussion on a blog. A network of blogs can function like a forum in that every entity in the blog network can create subjects of their choosing for others to discuss. Such networks require interlinking to function, so a group blog with multiple people holding posting rights is now becoming more common. Even where others post to a blog, the blog owner will
initiate and frame discussion.

HTML
Acronym: "hyper-text markup language"; this is not technically a programming "language"; it is a sort of code which browsers interpret to present web sites to people on line.

Internet troll
In Internet terminology, a troll is a person who posts inflammatory messages on the Internet, such as on online discussion forums, to disrupt discussion or to upset its participants. "Troll" can also mean the inflammatory message itself posted by a troll or be a verb meaning to post such messages. "Trolling" is also commonly used to describe the activity.

Link rot
The process by which links on a website gradually become more irrelevant or broken as time goes on, because the websites that are linked to disappear, change content or redirect to a new location.

The phrase also describes the effects of failing to update webpages so that they become out-of-date, containing information that is old and useless, and that clutters up search engine results. This process most frequently occurs in personal homepages that the owner has lost interest in, and is prevalent in free webhosts such as GeoCities, where there is no financial incentive to fix link rot.

Meme
An idea, project, statement or even a question that is posted by one blog and responded to by other blogs. Although the term encompasses much of the natural flow of communication in the Blogosphere, there are active bloggers and blog sites that are dedicated to the creation of memes on a regular basis.

Milblog
A soldier's military chronicle.

Moblog
Literally a mobile phone blog, a form of photoblog that consists of the photographs taken on users mobile phones. Particularly useful at times of crisis and major events, in which mobloggers (mobile phone bloggers) post direct pictures from the scene.

MP3 Blog
A blog that hosts downloadable music in the MP3 audio file format.

Permalink
A hyperlink on a blog which links to a specific post. A permalink (a portmanteau made by contracting the phrase "permanent link") is a type of URL designed to refer to a specific information item (often a news story or blog item) and to remain unchanged permanently, or at least for a lengthy period of time to prevent link rot.

Ping
A ping is a program that checks to see if a remote computer is working. In the blogging world it is a way to let other computers know that you have updated your blog.

Podcast/Podcasting
A form of audio blogging created by Adam Curry, a former MTV Host, and Dave Winer, the founder of Userland Software. Its name comes from the targeting of audio posts to Apples iPod audio player, although podcasts can be listened to on competing players and on computers.

RSS
The acronym RSS means Rich Site Summary, or some may consider it’s meaning as Really Simple Syndication. It creates an index of your messages (posts) that others can access, if you allow it. It may show just the headline or the headline and a summary of your post.
Visitors to your blog can sign up on your blog to be notified when you make updates. This is called an ‘RSS feed’ and can be read by an aggregator (similar to how your email shows you who has sent you a message.)

Simulblogulation
The (pointless) act of identical content being posted to several weblogs simultaneously.

Trackback
TrackBack is a type of peer-to-peer communication system that was designed to send notification of updates between two Web sites via a Trackback Ping. Ping in reference to TrackBack refers to a small message sent from one Web server to another. TrackBacks are useful for informing a Web site that you have referenced its Web site within your own Web site, and is popular with bloggers. TrackBack was first released as an open specification in August 2002

Vblog/Vlog
Video Blog: a blog that consists of video posts.

Blogging Plan - Day 7

2009-11-25T18:57:00.002+02:00

On day 6 we used a few sites to get traffic to our blog.

Day 7 – Check, Improve and Market Like Crazy

Objective: To gather data on your site’s performance. With that data do some minor changes to your site and continue to market it.

Login to your Google Adsense account, and check your stats. See how much money you’ve made, and notice all the other stats. Notice how many people click on your ads (CTR).

Login to your Cpanel account, and it is click on “Webstats” and check for the “Awstats” function. See how many visitors came to your blog in the past month. Identify which websites they are coming from. Identify what keywords they typed into the search engines, and which search engines they used.

Did anyone come from Technorati? How many people came from Google and what keywords did they type to find you? Do you have this keyword in your list? If not, add it to your list and create more posts containing these keywords.

The more you know about what’s happening, the more you know what to improve.

Go to Google and type in this instruction in their search box: site:yourdomain.com

Clicks on “Search”. See if Google has already indexed some pages from your site. If you’ve followed the guide so far, your site should already be indexed. If not, check back in a few days and you should see your main page indexed.

You’re now at the end of day 7, where you should take a complete break from all your Internet activities. Read up more on your niche market, or just do something else not related to your blog.

Then set-up a working schedule, clearly writing how much content you can post in a day, how many directories you can submit to, how many articles you can submit, and how many blogs you can read and comment on a daily or weekly basis.

Last, all you need to do is to repeat days 1-7 over and over again. Along the way, you’ll pick up some of your own ways of doing things, and apply them.

As you Adsense income increases, you may want to consider other forms of monetization to your blog to make even more money and maximizing your return on investment.

Blogging Plan - Day 6

2009-11-22T18:52:00.002+02:00

On day 5 we got backlinks to our blog.

Day 6 – Getting More Traffic and Making Friends

Objective: To see the results of the past few days, and seek room for improvement.

Log in to your MyBlogLog and add a few friends. Make sure you leave a friendly comment on their blog, without leaving your site url as that might make it look like spam. Just add them to your friends list, and join a few communities that you think are relevant to your blog.

Also, set-up your bog details in your profile and add your codes to the Super Adsense theme is you haven’t done that already. This would give you a link back, as well as expose your blog to other bloggers who may end up linking to you.

Sign-up for a Delicious account and add one or two of your best posts as a bookmark to the site, giving it the proper tags. This would give you a couple of links back to your blog.

Get more targeted traffic with Real Traffic Exchange. Signup, submit your sites for review, and then place the codes on your blog. The easiest way to do this is to put the codes in a text widget on your sidebar.

Sign-up for Feedburner and using the “Feedburner Replacement” plugin, redirect all your traffic to Feedburner. Then, add a Feedburner subscription form to your blog and every few days check if people subscribe to your RSS feed.

Content is king, so now go ahead and write more content for your blog, using your keyword list, and also by responding to other bloggers, doing trackbacks and leaving comments on their blogs.

Last Day...

Blogging Plan - Day 5

2009-11-18T18:46:00.001+02:00

On day 4 we added content on our blog.

Day 5 – Getting Links to Your Blog

Objective: To get links pointing to your site, using a few different link building strategies. Links help people find your content and improve your search engine ranking.

You can find partners using link exchange request:

Go to these sites, type in your keyword, and see what other bloggers are talking about:

www.technorati.com
www.bloglines.com
www.blogsearch.google.com

You will find a few interesting posts. Copy the idea (not the content) and write a similar post on your own blog. You can debate the blogger’s idea, agree with it, or add on to it. Use your own words for the article.

Find the trackback link somewhere in the post. While writing articles similar to the other blog’s content, in the “Trackbacks” section, enter the URL. This will instantly notify the other blogger’s software to insert a link to your blog in their comments section.
Of course the owner of the blog needs to approve it, but if your content is related (and original) chances are he / she will. As you do this you will have more links and traffic to your site.

You can also leave a comment on those blogs, putting your website URL in the correct place so others can click through to your blog. Write an article on your target market, referring again to your list of keywords. Make this a proper article with an introduction, 3 paragraphs of content, and a closing, all within 800 words.

At the bottom, put a short blurb about yourself and include the full like (http://) back to your blog.

Using the same article, create an account at ezinearticles.com and submit your article there as well.

Download this Directory Submitter and submit your blog to as many directories as possible. Some of the directories are paid ones and if the price is good you can pay for your links. The majority of them however would offer a free listing in return for a link back to their directory.

Go to Write > Page and create a page specifically for these links. As you submit, add the links to this page and your submissions are more likely to be approved.

Next Day...

Blogging Plan - Day 4

2009-11-14T18:40:00.002+02:00

On the third day we configured our Wordpress blog.

Day 4 – Adding Content and Building Structure

Objective: Create categories, and add 10 new posts to your Wordpress blog.

Before you start writing, register for a Technorati account and follow the procedures to “claim”
your blog. Spend some time setting up your profile including uploading a picture of yourself, and choosing the most appropriate keywords for your blog.

Next, go to Options > Writing and insert the list of “ping sites” into the text box right at the bottom. When you post content, these sites will be notified and they in return will inform search engines about your new content.

Login to Wordpress and go to Manage > Categories and create a few categories related to your topic. You can also rename the default category if you want, but make sure every category you create is based on your keyword research file. In other words, try to use your second tier keywords as your category names.

Go to Write > Post and create one new post for your blog. Keep your posts as targeted as possible. Your keyword research data should give you an idea of what people type for in search engines, so create posts based on these keywords. Remember to implement good SEO, and use
a keyword in the title of your blog post whenever possible.

Under the “Tags” column, write a few keywords that describe your content, each separated by a comma. Make sure your keywords are not longer than 3 words. When you’re done, click on “Publish”.

About 15 minutes later, check if your post is syndicated on Technorati based on the tag(s) you used. You should type this into the browser:

http://www.technorati.com/tag/tagname

If your tag has two words, it should have a hyphen (-) between them.

Post at least 5 new posts today, but you do not need to publish all posts immediately as that would create an imbalance of content on your blog.

On the left of your screen, look for the “Post Timestamp” option. Check the “Edit Timestamp” option, and select a day and time in the future. Then click on “Publish” and your post will only be live on your blog on the selected time and date.

By doing this you can maintain a uniform level of daily content on your blog, even though you may be writing them all in one day.

For the next 3 days, try to add at least 2-3 new posts every day. Your posts can be about 400-600 words in length, there’s no need to write content that is too long. Focus on just delivering the message of the post, as well as putting in important keywords in each post.

Next Day...

Blogging Plan - Day 3

2009-11-10T18:32:00.001+02:00

On the second day we signed up f web hosting and created our blog using cPanel.

Day 3 – Configuring Wordpress

Objective: To make your blog search-engine friendly, and to give it the look and feel you want.

Open your FTP program and connect to your web hosting. To do this, enter the FTP details (refer to setup email sent by your hosting company) into Filezilla or any other FTP program, and click on connect. You’ll then see a list of folders, look for the folder called “www” or “public_html” and get into that.

You should see all your Wordpress files here, and do a CHMOD 755 to these files:
Your .htaccess file
Your wp-content folder

Using the FTP, upload all the plugins we’ve provided to your wp-content/plugins folder. Make sure you upload the folder contents only (not the ZIP file). Refer to our video tutorials if you’re not too sure how to do this. Check if these plugins appear under the Plugins menu, but
activate any yet.

Login to your Wordpress, and go to Options > General. Give your blog a “Weblog Title” and “Tagline”. Cross check with your list of keywords to determine how to do this right. Then go to Options > Permalinks and modify this to be more search-engine friendly.

Next, activate the “All-In-One SEO” plugin from your plugins page.

Using your FTP program, upload all the provided Wordpress themes into the wp-content/themes folder.

Among the important things you need to do:

Upload to the correct folder, and upload only the folders containing the actual PHP files. Do not upload ZIP files here, you’ll need to unzip it first on your PC
Set the correct CHMOD of 755 to the selected theme files according to the theme instruction files
Enter your Clickbank ID, Google Adsense ID, and MyBlogLog ID to customize the theme

Note: If you don’t already have an Adsense account, you can ignore the field for Adsense ID till you’ve created an account. Remember you’ll need to add a few solid pages of content first, and then you can apply for an Adsense account.

You’ll need to modify the design of your theme header to match the topic of your site. You can do this either by:

Editing the source PHD file in Adobe Photoshop
Creating a brand new one, 960 pixels wide and 100 pixels high, with a free tool called Gimp
Posting your requirement in our forum. Ask someone to help you modify the design in return for a small fee

You may want to create a “Contact Us” page. To do that, first activate the “Contact Form” plugin in your Wordpress, and then create a new page. In the new page, just put in the codes that will automatically generate your contact form.

Congratulations! You have successfully created a “search-engine-optimized” and “adsense-ready” blog. Take a break and give yourself a pat on the back. Call a friend and brag about your site.

Note: If anything goes wrong while editing themes and templates, just upload the same file again to your hosting account with FTP and re-do the process. If there is an option in your FTP to upload using “Binary” mode, use it. Uploading in this mode is ideal for Wordpress files.

Next Day...

Blogging Plan - Day 2

2009-11-07T18:26:00.002+02:00

On the first day we decided the niche and the domain we want.

Day 2 – Get Wordpress Set-up

Objective: To get a hosting account and set-up your Wordpress blog. Then, write a post to introduce it to the world.

Now it’s time to get web hosting. Since this is your first site, go to Hostgator or any other webhosting company you like and choose the most affordable hosting package. You can always upgrade later. Pay for the hosting on a half-yearly or yearly basis to save cost.

Your hosting company will send you an email containing details on how to access you account which included information on a primary and secondary nameserver, which may look like this:

ns1.hostingpremium.net
ns2.hostingpremiun.net

Just search your emails for the words “ns1” and “ns2” and you should be able to find this.

Login to your domain registrar and click on your domain name. On the right will be a section for DNS settings. Enter your DNS address here and save it. This is done to point your address (domain name) to your home (hosting).

Login to your hosting account’s Cpanel and click around the various buttons just to see what they’re about.

Now look for the “Fantastico” function, and use it to set-up your blog. You can either set up your Wordpress on the main domain itself, or on a subfolder if you want to use the main page for something else.

Login to your Wordpress account. You can do this by going to yourdomain.com/wp-admin. If you installed WP on a subfolder, go to yourdomain.com/foldername/wp-admin

You will see a default post and comment and you can delete both. Next, go to your Blogroll, and you can also delete all the default links that appear there.

Go to Write > Post and create your first post in WP. Just say something about the topic you’re going to write about. Click on “Publish” to make the post go live on your blog. Explore the other function on your blog. Just click around to get familiar with Wordpress.

Put everything aside and take a rest.

Next Day...

New Blogging Plan

2009-11-05T18:19:00.002+02:00

Day 1 – Prepare a Plan

Objective: Decide on a topic you want to write about, and get a domain name.

If you want, subscribe to NicheADay to get more ideas on good niche markets and niche keywords you can use to build Adsense sites. Readmore about keywords and how to select good keywords.

Go to the Yahoo search tool and type in a few keywords. Spend some time exploring this tool, and see how each keyword is represented here. Try to see the relationship between the main keyword you typed in, and all the other keywords given by the software. After exploring different keywords, decide on 3-5 main keywords in different markets and write them down.

Think about which topic would be the easiest for you to start on NOW, without any additional research. Eliminate the rest and choose only one topic. Identify your main keyword that will be used on your site.

Download Good Keywords and using your 3 main keywords, try to get a list of as many other related keywords. Arrange these by groups in an Excel sheet, putting all related keywords
into a group, forming 3 separate Excel sheets. The data should contain the keyword name, and right next to it the amount of searches last month.

Choose ONE group of keywords, Make sure this group has enough smaller keywords within it (at least 30), and this will form the topic of your first Adsense site. Identify your primary keyword (can only be one), and also your secondary and long tail keywords. Rearrange these keywords in 3 separate columns to make it more meaningful.

Now go at GoDaddy or any other site you want and search for a domain name. A domain name is the “address” of your new website. Without an address no one will find you on the Internet. Make sure your domain name contains the keywords you’ve chosen earlier.

Did you find a .com domain name for the keyword? Register this domain name. Choose a one-year registration for now. Make a payment, and keep the email receipt for your business / tax purposes. Your domain will take a few hours to be fully registered.

Take a rest and do something you like. Read a book on the topic you’ve just decided on, or watch a TV program about it. You can also just go to sleep.

Next Day...

Understanding the Google Connection

2009-10-14T17:15:00.002+03:00

In 2003, Google noticed Blogger and made an offer to purchase the blogging platform from Pyra Labs. Google had been known in the online world as the search engine powerhouse that was extending its reach to include online advertising and more. In fact, Blogger could be considered one of the first in a string of acquisitions made by Google to extend its brand and its strength
in the online market.

It turned out that Google’s timing was perfect, and Blogger’s hundreds of thousands of users quickly turned into millions. Google benefited from new access to millions of customers, and Blogger users benefited from a series of redesigns and upgrades to the software program that made it easier to use and added more functionality than ever. Those upgrades and redesigns
would allow the new Blogger to retain its position as the leader in a market that was growing more and more competitive every day. The blogging platform that was once considered the “beginner’s tool” continues to attract new users at a staggering rate.

Blogger users can now leverage the power of Google and its many products. Considering the availability of Google applications, users of Blogger can easily incorporate them into their blogs to advertise, publish content from mobile phones, upload and embed videos, and send RSS feeds to their feed readers.

Here are several Google applications that users of Blogger can incorporate into their blogs:

Google Docs: With Google Docs, users can create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Google Docs is particularly helpful when bloggers want to share documents with other people or publish presentations on their blogs.

Blogger Mobile: If you use a mobile device in the United States, you may be able to publish content on your blog directly from that device.

Google Earth: Google Earth is a perfect tool for creating maps for your blog.

Gmail: Gmail is an excellent free email program that can be accessed from any computer.

Google Groups: You can join Google Groups that interest you in order to network and share information with like-minded people. Alternatively, you can start your own Google Group. Each of these activities can help drive traffic to your blog.

Picasa: When you upload photos to Blogger, they’re stored in your Picasa account, which comes free with Blogger. You can also organize and edit your photos by using Picasa.

Feedburner: Feedburner is the most popular Web content feed-management program online. You can share your blog’s feed using Feedburner for readers to subscribe to using their feed reader of choice, such as Google Reader.

Google Toolbar: Using the free Google toolbar helps you save time because redundant tasks are quicker to perform with a click of the mouse. Additionally, the Blogger instant-blogging feature, BlogThis!, appears directly on the Google Toolbar.

Google Reader: Google Reader allows you to subscribe to blogs and to follow those feeds from any computer or certain mobile devices.

YouTube: You can upload your own YouTube videos to embed in your blog, or you can use YouTube to find videos by other users that you want to share in your blog.

Google Video: Google Video is a video search engine as well as a site to upload videos that you can link to or embed in your blog.

Google AdSense: AdSense is an advertising system you can use to display ads on your blog in order to generate revenue.

Orkut: You can use the Orkut social networking site to promote your blog.

About Blogging and Blogger

2009-10-10T17:10:00.002+03:00

Blogger is often credited with helping to boost blogging into the mainstream. By offering an easy-to-use and easily accessible blogging platform, people slowly began to realize how much power blogging could deliver. Terms such as user-generated content, citizen journalism, and social Web became part of the common vernacular, and people (and businesses) from all walks of life wanted to jump on the blogging bandwagon.

But what exactly is a blogging platform? In the simplest terms, a blogging platform (or blogging software) is the computer program that does all the work behind the scenes to publish your content on the Internet. You type the content into your blogging software, such as Blogger, WordPress, or TypePad, and the blogging software creates a Web site where your content resides.

The blogging software formats your content, dates it, archives it, and more. Suddenly, having a Web site was no longer a possibility only for businesses with a budget to burn. With the birth of blogging and the popularity of Blogger, anyone could have an online presence, become a blogger, and join an online community that would come to be known as the blogosphere.

Blogger simply gives your blog a home online. Imagine Blogger as a banquet hall. As host, Blogger offers a location for various people to create and store their blogs just as a banquet hall gives people a place to hold events. What happens on your blog and the success of your blog depends on you.

Unlike a traditional Web site that offers a static message, a blog works more like an online diary with posts published in reverse chronological order. In this way, blogs tell a story, and that story is completely up to the blogger, who has the freedom to write and publish anything he wants. Although blogs started out as very simple online diaries, they grew to be much more. Blogs are still used now by many people simply for fun, but they are also used by people who try to earn an income from them, launch a new career, or build a business, for example. The opportunities that blogs create are seemingly endless. It’s all up to the blogger.

Of course, some unwritten rules of the blogosphere and secrets to success exist, such as posting frequency, networking, and creating compelling content. However, a blog is the product of the blogger and evolves the way the blogger desires. At its core, blogging is a simple concept. It requires little to no monetary investment but could potentially demand a great deal of sweat
equity.

Authority Through Blogging

2009-08-28T00:20:00.002+03:00

While many people still think of a blog as a personal journal, many businesses and individuals are now using this powerful marketing tool to establish authority in their respective niches and to produce record-setting proﬁts in far less time than had ever been done previously. How is this so?

The most powerful tool in the new online media is blogging. Simply put, blogging is one of the most revolutionary marketing tools seen in the past 50 years. Through the vast network that is the Internet, businesses and individuals are promoting themselves, their products and their services in every niche possible with increasing transparency in their communication. Through dedicated and innovative marketing, these pioneers are using blogging as a tool to establish authority in their respective niches, thereby receiving vital recognition and raking in increasing proﬁts at the same time.

The importance of establishing authority
Why is establishing authority so important? Through the Internet, there are consumers for every type of product and service. There are now many more business opportunities than there have ever been in the past, all thanks to the new online media. When you establish authority in your particular niche, you become an industry leader and, from that, consumers start to seek out your products and services instead of the traditional marketing process, where marketers seek out consumers.

Establishing authority through blogging is completely opposite to the old way of generating business. In the past, businesses marketing a product had to interrupt your activity to bring a product or service to your attention. For example, a TV commercial interrupts the show you are watching and may be perceived as an annoyance. Now, for every online product and service, consumers are seeking out the business. When someone types in your product or service into Google, are you on the front page?

It doesnʼt matter whether you sell concrete or provide a freelance service; every type of business or service can beneﬁt from engaging the endless supply of niche consumers that exist online.

How do you establish authority?
Authority is not something that comes easily or quickly. However, it can take far less time to
establish authority than by marketing to traditional media outlets such as television, radio, and newspaper. Most authorities in the blogosphere, for example, have only been blogging for a few years.

For example, letʼs take some well-known bloggers in the “make money online” niche, such
as Problogger, Shoemoney, and John Chow. All of them have been blogging for less than three years, but they are linked to endlessly and are seen as authority ﬁgures in their respective niches.

Of course, it is not only about the amount of time it takes to be perceived as an authority ﬁgure - the authors of the above sites have been blogging with a goal of not just engaging, but helping their readers and by marketing themselves and their products in continually innovative ways.

Establish authority by gaining credibility
Many people are now starting blogs to simply “make money online,” but if you can delay the
temptation for instant monetary gratiﬁcation (e.g., plastering Adsense Ads on your site), you
will establish credibility and long-term trust at a much faster rate.

Remember, before you gain authority you must gain credibility. By sacriﬁcing short-term proﬁt, you will show your target audience that you are committed to the greater good of serving your audience instead of bombarding them with ads. Ultimately, to gain credibility, you must help people and not just advertise to them.

Whatever niche you are in, take the time to become an authority. Start by building your community of followers and by implementing an intelligently conceived marketing plan. The
barriers to entering the world of online business are extremely low, so more people are hopping onboard everyday. Remember this, and do everything you can to implement your master plan for success!

Top 100 Websites

2009-08-02T17:43:00.000+03:00

1. google.com
2. gmail.com
3. yahoo.com
4. youtube.com
5. live.com
6. facebook.com
7. msn.com
8. wikipedia.org
9. blogger.com
10. myspace.com
11. yahoo.co.jp
12. baidu.com
13. wordpress.com
14. google.co.in
15. google.de
16. microsoft.com
17. rapidshare.com
18. qq.com
19. go.com
20. google.fr
21. hi5.com
22. sina.com.cn
23. ebay.com
24. fc2.com
25. google.co.uk
26. mail.ru
27. google.com.br
28. craigslist.org
29. google.cn
30. vkontakte.ru
31. aol.com
32. google.it
33. yandex.ru
34. amazon.com
35. flickr.com
36. google.co.jp
37. google.es
38. photobucket.com
39. taobao.com
40. orkut.com.br
41. imdb.com
42. google.com.mx
43. odnoklassniki.ru
44. skyrock.com
45. bbc.co.uk
46. ask.com
47. 163.com
48. friendster.com
49. youporn.com
50. pornhub.com
51. naver.com
52. cnn.com
53. vmn.net
54. redtube.com
55. orkut.co.in
56. google.ca
57. adobe.com
58. doubleclick.com
59. uol.com.br
60. youku.com
61. imageshack.us
62. rakuten.co.jp
63. ebay.de
64. apple.com
65. sohu.com
66. google.com.tr
67. dailymotion.com
68. conduit.com
69. adultfriendfinder.com
70. megavideo.com
71. livedoor.com
72. rediff.com
73. globo.com
74. tagged.com
75. mixi.jp
76. about.com
77. mediafire.com
78. rambler.ru
79. ameblo.jp
80. soso.com
81. google.co.id
82. google.com.au
83. espn.go.com
84. mininova.org
85. metroflog.com
86. livejournal.com
87. megaupload.com
88. netlog.com
89. 4shared.com
90. typepad.com
91. google.pl
92. tube8.com
93. nasza-klasa.pl
94. ku6.com
95. wretch.cc
96. twitter.com
97. goo.ne.jp
98. google.ru
99. daum.net
100. google.com.sa

Twitter Vocabulary

2009-06-06T19:31:00.002+03:00

Twitter Handle: Also known as a username. This is the name you select to represent yourself.
To Follow: To subscribe to someone’s updates on Twitter. You do this by clicking the “Follow” button on that specific person’s Twitter page, which can be found at
http://twitter.com/USERNAME.
(Insert the specific person’s username into the URL, like http://twitter.com/nowfor2).
When you follow someone, their updates will be displayed on your Twitter page so you know what they are doing.
To Follow Back: To subscribe to the updates of someone who has recently started following you. Whenever a new person follows you, you receive an email alert from Twitter. In the email, there will be a link to that person’s profile. By clicking the link, you can check out who they are and decide to follow them back or not. It is not required to follow everyone back, but many people like to.
Follower: A person who has subscribed to receive your updates. You can see your total number of followers on your Twitter profile page.
Update: Also known as a tweet. They can be no longer than 140‐characters. (Later we will talk about different types of updates.) You post your update in the white text box under “What are you doing?”
@Reply: A public message sent from one Twitter user to another by putting @USERNAME at the beginning of the tweet.
Direct Message (or DM): A private message sent from one Twitter user to another by either clicking the “message” link on their profile or typing D USERNAME.
Twitter Stream: A list of a person’s real‐time updates. Every time you post an update, it goes into your Twitter stream, which is found on your account page also at
http://twitter.com/USERNAME.
Tweet‐up: An event specifically organized for Twitter‐users to meet up and network, usually informal.
Hashtag (#): A tool to aggregate the conversation surrounding an event or theme. Created by combining a # with a word, acronym or phrase (#WORD).
Retweet (or RT): To repeat what someone else has already tweeted. People do this if someone has said something especially valuable and they want their own network to see the information too.

Black Hat Domain Names

2009-05-09T00:28:00.003+03:00

Whether you’re going to host on a third party or use a domain you buy, the biggest favor you can do your site in terms of future rankings is to include the main niche keywords in the title of the domain name. If you must, you can use dashes although no more than 2 or the SEs could flag your site as potentially low quality.

Besides third parties, you can buy new or old domains. It makes quite a difference on results but the cost also varies tremendously.

Another incredibly important tip is: keep your domains organized.

Black Hat Seo with the longtail method is about volume and automation. The most prolific Black Hats have thousands if not tens of thousands of domains. Managing these can become a headache unless you organize from the get go.

Keep data on your builds. For example, if on a given day you build 100 sites, note which content generator you used, which template (s), on which server and IP they are. What linking or indexing strategies you used for them. This will take you a matter of minutes but you will have valuable logs allowing you to analyze what works and do more of it.

Old Domains

Expired domains are great, when you can get them. They already have their spiders, a minimum of trust, a lot of the time links and sometimes even links from powerful .edu domains and directories like Yahoo! or DMOZ. What this means is that anybody who can get their hands on them would jump on the occasion since a site launched on one of these would get an immeasurable advantage over any new domain.

This is nothing new as it has been common practice for years to try and scoop up these old domains that are expiring. Countless applications and pieces of software have been built to find and track domains that are on the verge of dropping. That’s actually the easy part. The hard part is catching the domain once it becomes available.

So many individuals and companies are now lined up to buy these domains the minute they drop that it has become nearly impossible for a regular person to get their hands on one of them.

Personally I don’t do much black hat on old domains because there are certain tricks involved. If the content changes too fast or too dramatically, you can see all the benefits wiped out.

Excellent results are to be had with new domains and third party hosts and I tend to stick to those.

New Domains: Cheap and Good

I used to be a big practitioner of the “throw it against the wall, see if it sticks” black hat SEO approach, vomiting anywhere between dozens and thousands of auto-generated sites into cyberspace.

While I have had a slight change of heart and spend more time on niche targeting and keyword optimization, one thing hasn’t changed. When buying domain names, the cheaper the better.

Domains and hosting are your biggest fixed cost. You need them and there’s not much you can do about it.

Social Media Marketing

2009-04-21T21:47:00.002+03:00

Definition of Social Media

Wikipedia says - Participatory online media where news, photos, videos, and podcasts are made public via social media websites through submission. Normally accompanied with a voting process to make media items become "popular".

The Most Powerful Elements of a Social Media Marketing Campaign

Video Marketing
Social Bookmarketing
Photo Marketing
Podcast Marketing
Blog Marketing
Rss Marketing
Social Network Marketing

Quality Content and Hard Work

Promotional Channels for Social Media Marketing Campaigns

Text Based - Blog Platforms, Submitting to the Social Bookmarking Sites,Blog directories and RSS engines
Audio Based - Podcast directories
Photos Based - Photo sharing sites
Video Based - Video Sharing Sites , Submit to social video bookmarking sites, Video Blog Directories
Network Based - Social Networking Platforms

Why Use Social Media

We've established the most powerful elements, and the main promotional channels, of a Social Media marketing campaign. How does it relate to your company?

At a corporate level you may want to:

Attract more customers.
Enable potential clients to have a "peek" inside your organization to help them decide if they want to do business with you.
Get feedback about your products or services
Launch new products
Put "new life" into existing products
Improve customer support - and lower costs
Create more effective news releases
Strengthen client relationships
Improve staff relationships and involvement in company matters
Improve your online reputation
Get your marketing messages global
Create viral marketing campaigns
Get a higher page result ranking on Google and Yahoo
Find new business partners, JVs or affiliates
Traditional marketing typically relies on non-interactive messages to induce a response

Social Media encourages people to join in conversations with you - for example by leaving a comment on your blog or sending you a message on Facebook.

How To Use Social Media
It's very simple! Create compelling, exciting, humorous, informative, FREE CONTENT

Distribute it to as many web destinations as possible

Follow up by getting involved in the conversations you've initiated

a.k.a. Soft Sell Marketing

Content You Need To Create

Content that answers peoples questions, solves peoples' problems, shows you are in tune with current thinking and even establishes you as a "thought leader".

The most important content is your blog. This is the hub that you will use to distribute your sales messages, build customer relationships and ultimately send them to your sales page or contact number.

Write articles that are informative, unique and even controversial.

Create videos that will attract attention.

Produce podcasts for the "on the move" crowd.

Encourage others to share your content by making it easy to add to the Social Bookmarking sites.

Make it easy for people to subscribe to your RSS feed.

Get involved on the micro-blogging sites like Twitter.

Comments on other peoples' blogs and in industry related forums.

Be original and creative - track results and find what keywords lead to sales.

Where to Distribute Your Top Quality Content

Video Sharing Sites - Youtube - DailyMotion - Blip.tv
Social Bookmarking Sites - Del.icio.us - Blinklist - Magnolia
Photo Sharing Sites - Flickr - PhotoBucket - WebShots
Podcast and Videocast Directories - Podcast.net - PodcastPickle - iTunes
Blog Directories - Blogger - Wordpress - LiveJournal
Rss Search Engines - Bloglines - BlogPulse - Feed24
Social Networking Sites - MySpace - FaceBook - Squidoo

Top 5 Twitter plugins for your blog

2009-02-22T22:49:00.002+02:00

As Twitter is becoming more popular and your blog’s target audience is increasingly found there, it is a good time for you to join and incorporate Twitter into your blog. This article will show you the top 5 Twitter plugins to incorporate into your WordPress blog.

Add Twitter username field into your blog comments section
● WP Twitip ID plugin adds an extra field to the comment form of your blog so your reader can enter his/her Twitter username. The plugin then displays the Twitter ID in the comment and links it to the Twitter profile of the commenter.

Show reader’s Twitter avatars in comments section
Twittar plugin lets you show Twitter avatars of your blog commentators by matching the email address in the comment to the user’s Twitter email. If the user doesn’t have a Twitter account, it loads user’s Gravatar image. By installing this plugin you will have a much better looking comments section, with commentators all having an image by their comment.

Get tweets about your blog posted as comments
Tweetbacks plugin imports tweets about your blog posts into your blog comments. You can display them in between the other comments on your blog, or display them separately. So when somebody writes a tweet with your blog URL or any of your article URL’s in it, it will automatically get posted in your blog comments as well.

Let your users tweet your URL’s for more exposure
TwitThis lets your visitors send tweets about your blog posts. When the reader clicks on the TwitThis button, the plugin takes the URL of your blog article and creates a shorter URL using TinyURL.com. Then your reader can tweet this shortened URL and a description of your blog article to all their followers on Twitter.

Integrate your tweets into your blog posts and sidebar
Twitter Tools plugin integrates your Twitter account with your WordPress blog. You can for example create weekly digest of your tweets and get them automatically published on your blog as a new blog post. You can also show your latest tweets in your blog sidebar as a widget.

Hopefully these 5 Twitter plugins will help you on the way to incorporating your Twitter into
your blog. Doing this will make your blog more interactive and more attractive to other Twitter users and should result in more comments from Twitter users, more tweets about your blog and an increased number of followers and readers.

Free Phone Calls

2009-02-07T20:35:00.001+02:00

Talkster provides free long distance, international and conference calls. The local Talkster numbers that they assign to you in order to access the service are regular landline phone numbers. We dont charge you for calling your Talkster number from your landline or mobile phone.
No registration, no credit cards, no catches, no limits!
Never pay for international calls again!

Best Photoblog Software

2009-02-06T20:31:00.002+02:00

Best photoblog software

PixelPost

Pixelpost is an open-source, standards-compliant, multi-lingual, fully extensible photoblog application for the web. Anyone who has web-space that meets the requirements can download and use Pixelpost for free.

Yet another photoblog

YAPB is a WordPress-plugin that converts wp into a easy useable photoblog system.

Google History

2009-02-02T18:41:00.001+02:00

Google as you know, is 10 years old. And for their birthday they created a page where you can see all Google history in a timeline starting from 1998.

Take a look:

http://www.google.com/tenthbirthday

Amazing picture of Obama Inauguration

2009-01-27T19:02:00.003+02:00

Today I found an amazing photo of Obama inauguration. It was created by David Bergman who used his Canon G10 at Barack Obama's inauguration and snapped 220 images. After giving his MacBook Pro 6.5 hours to compile a two gigabyte image, he hosted it up on his website for people to zoom around on.

Niche Marketing In 2009

2009-01-24T15:56:00.004+02:00

Why Are the Next 4 Months So Important?

2009 is going to be a good year for marketers as there are many opportunities and events that you are going to be able to monetize...in addition to all of the opportunities that already exist.

Online spending goes through a few trends throughout any particular year. The summer
months are typically the slowest as people are usually pre-occupied with outdoor activities and vacations. Back to school spending brings a whole slew of online spending, and of course online traffic ramps up drastically through the months of late October to mid December for Christmas shopping.

Does the shopping stop after Christmas though?

Not a chance! Over the past 6 years we have anxiously waited for the months of January - April to hit. These have always been our top money makers as online spending seems to go CRAZY starting in the beginning of January.

Anyone can succeed online and we are helping people every day to achieve the success
they dream of. You do not need to know anything and by no means do you need to be an expert marketer. Since it is global, it does not matter where you are located in the world either!

New Years Causing Change

People have problems or personal goals they would like to strive towards. Our imperfections cause us to want to improve our situation by making positive changes. It has become a tradition to make a personal resolution every year to improve your current situation. This is also known as a “New Year’s Resolution”!

This will tie into huge spending online, in fact, probably the largest influx of widespread spending online every year. As soon as January 1st hits, people make a personal commitment to better themselves. This could be to lose weight, stop smoking, become a better person, get a boyfriend/girlfriend, or improve their health (there are many more!).

These resolutions represent a huge opportunity to us as marketers. We can easily
monetize these markets by setting up targeted campaigns within these industries,
capitalizing on timely “resolution” related emails, and even creatingproducts/services around these particular niches.

The #1 Most Common New Years REZ is ...

DIETING! Many of you have probably already made this resolution.

Millions of people make a resolution to lose weight every year. People could always lose a few extra pounds and what better opportunity to motivate yourself than a brand new year.

What does this mean to us as marketers? First off, a massive audience! People navigate the Internet like it is their last day on earth, aiming to find the “best” solution that will help them accomplish their resolution. People want to lose a lot of weight, and people want to lose an extra 10lbs.

Weight loss may be a difficult market as there is some pretty stiff competition, but it is so vast and contains so many sub-niches and micro-niches, that there is room for 10,000’s of marketers in this marketplace.

This industry is a billion dollar one, and a large majority of all revenue within the dieting industry comes within the first quarter of the year (January to March). There are over 200 million dieting consumers in the United States alone, so this just proves this industry is absolutely massive and is on the minds of more than 2/3 of people.

Quit Your Bad Habits

People take the time at the start off every New Year to address their bad habits. We have already suggested eating/diet as the main resolution that people work to fix every year, but there are some other habits that people aim to curb every year (and these are also billion dollar industries).

One of the main habits is smoking. People know that smoking is bad for them and if you smoke, you will understand the hard work it takes to kick this habit. There are many products and a service out there to help “smokers” quit and this presents us with a great opportunity as marketers.

People are going to start searching for patches, smoking hypnosis, ways to improve and rebuild their lung capacity, information products on how to quit smoking, medications, and pills/rubs to help them quit. You can easily monetize this and take full advantage of this industry throughout the entire year of 2008!

Solutions to help people with these habits are always available and people spend a lot of money online purchasing products for themselves and family members that have any of these habits/addictions. These are also very common resolutions and something that people understand takes MONEY and time to successfully overcome.

This Year I am Going to Fire My Boss

You have likely heard someone say this or you have been saying this yourself. Everyone and their dog wants to make more money, and this could be either be in the form of starting their own business, making money online, getting a new job, working towards a promotion within their company, or investing some of their own money.

This audience is huge and this audience is willing to spend money. These are two things that make for a very profitable industry for Internet marketers. We suggest that if your are going to tackle the financial improvement industry that you choose a specific component of it to start out.

Do not start broad....using search terms like make money online. This will be the beginning and end of any success that you ever dreamed of as it is WAY TOO broad.

Instead focus on more targeted and sub-components of this niche and break it down into types of people:

people that want to get a new job...
people that want to get a promotion...
people that want to work from home...
people that hate their job and want to be self employed...
people in financial trouble looking to earn some extra cash...
high school students looking to earn money for college...
college students looking for extra cash...
etc.

Now that you have the niches broken down a little further, you can focus on what these groups of people are looking for and where they are looking for it.

People that want a new job may be looking on resume/job sites like monster.com and may be doing searches within Google looking for specific jobs within different industries that are relevant to their line of work.

For example, someone may search the following term:

“information technology specialist job”

What if....

You create a page specific to this type of person promoting a product relevant to making money online. How would you make this relevant? Very easy...this is what you would do in this situation.

Create a page relevant to “information technology specialists”. People with this
knowledge have the perfect skills to make money online as they are usually s avvy with the web, can program, and can easily put together websites. However, the missing gap is usually the marketing aspect...the ability to promote products and services online properly.

What if you told these people that you were aware of their skills and you have the perfect opportunity for them that would allow them to work from their own home, and work their own hours? You would likely capture their interest and easily be able to connect emotionally with this person.

Then....

You could either build a list from this audience or you could go into a straight promotion of a product or service that relates to making money online. This person will be informed and much more likely to buy. In addition, then have been shown the relevance between their knowledge set and how they can apply it to earn money without having to find another job (and be able to do it from the comfort of their home).

This is what we call relevance marketing and what you are doing is taking a seemingly irrelevant industry and making it relevant through some creativity and breaking down a broader niche into something that is...you guessed it, MORE RELEVANT!

Need a Date?

If you do, you are definitely not alone. Millions of people make the resolution every year that they are going to find Mr. or Mrs. “Right”. Dating services and technique manuals are big industry year round and even more so during the first 3 months of every year. People make a pact with themselves to get a girlfriend or boyfriend.

Believe it or not, dating is too broad to promote. Don’t waste your time. Focus on the many sub-niches that are within the dating industry, there are literally thousands of them. If you are looking for some ideas, go check out dmoz.org and see what types of dating, the types of products that are out there, and search the forums to find out exactly what people are looking for.

Believe it or not, one of the niches within dating is Vegatarianism Dating! Would you have thought of this without using a directory like dmoz.org for research…probably not!

This is definitely a niche and if you target something like this you are going to be much more successful!

Play the Guitar like a Hero!

Believe it or not, people make “playing a new instrument” or “playing an instrument” their New Years Resolution. People get inspired to play music around the New Year and as marketers we can definitely take advantage of this. You need to remember as well that a large number of people receive instruments as gifts for Christmas.

People are looking to play:

Guitar
Piano / Electronic Keyboard
Drums

These are the main ones. People are not only looking to learn quickly, the reason for them to learn in the first place is so that they can impress others with their musical abilities. If you tap into this emotion through your marketing, you will be able to trigger much higher conversions.

We suggest that you do not try to take on all of these industries at once if you are going to create campaigns geared towards the music industry. Focus on just one, and focus on a single component within the industry.

Relax a Little Bit...

People live fast paced lives. Between work, family, errands, and day-to-day stresses, we never end up taking time out for ourselves. A big resolution for 2009 is going to be relaxing...taking time to sit back and enjoy life.

The main thing people are going to try to do more of is take vacations. This will include not only trips to resorts in places like Mexico and the Bahamas, but local tours, camping, and ski trips.

The audience within this market is large and people are always looking for suggestions of places they can go and ways to get the cheapest fares. There is a slew of products/services within the travel industry and the often times offer the best affiliate tools (in terms of targeting and tracking) out of any program.

Another thing that is big is mental relaxation. Mediation, Yoga, Thai Chi and other relaxation techniques are going to be popular additions to people’s lives in early 2009. You can definitely capitalize on these with your affiliate promotions.

These are obviously not all the New Years resolutions that people make. I can't list all them here as there are likely ones that are so obscure, that it would be difficult for most people to understand (and monetize). Because of this I'm going to provide you with an additional list of some of the more popular resolutions.

They are as follows:

Depression
Self improvement / become more positive
Make new friends
Become part of a club
Get a new hobby
Take up a religion
Do charity work / donate money
Learn to read
Fix up the house / Renovation
Buy a new car

2009 Event Schedule & Marketing Strategies

Valentines Day

Next to travel, jewelry is the biggest revenue generating industry online. People spend millions online every year within the jewelry industry, and the biggest surge in sales for jewelry takes place prior to Valentines Day.

So how do you take advantage of this? It is actually easier than you think because of the sheer size of this industry. Think of all the different types of jewelry there is out there? There are watches, earrings, necklaces, cuff links, chains, pendants, rings, and engagement rings to name a few.

Then there are various types of the following, which you can get much more specific with. Think of all the brand names of watches. There are literally 1000’s of different types of watches...and you could easily take advantage of these keywords through your article marketing or PPC campaigns. What about rings.... diamond rings, ruby rings, stone rings, platinum rings, 14K gold rings...this list goes on.
If you hyper-target your audiences within the jewelry market, you will run into great success. Here is a simple rule to follow however to avoid losing money. If the commission works out to be under $20 for a specific jewelry item, then avoid promoting this via PPC. Article marketing is more cost efficient for lower end items, while Pay-Per-Click should be reserved for higher commission items.

Remember, both guys and girls get gifts on “V” Day, though a majority of the spending does head in the female’s direction. Do NOT forget this when creating your campaigns!

Valentines Day is not only a one year thing. It takes place every year and the same
people spend money on it every year. This presents the perfect opportunity to build a mailing list. You could keep your list interested in other offers (related to their loved ones) throughout the year and then cash-in on your list with next year’s Valentine’s Day!

Remember, people tend to shop earlier online than offline, so you should start your
Valentine’s Day promotions in January. This way people will be able to receive their gift in time for February 14th.

On another note, many people do not have "valentines". The dating audience usually tends to be looking for someone special around this date and they tend to make very emotional purchases. Single people will also indulge themselves in their own gifts during this time, pampering themselves. This is a completely different audience, but is also one that can be taken advantage of prior to Valentines Day.

Super Bowl

The only sport that sells out every single stadium for every game in the US is FOOTBALL. There are a lot of die hard fans in the NFL and the focal point of the entire year is the Super Bowl. Who will be crowned the Super Bowl Champs in 2009?

Where there are die hard fans, money is being spent. What do football fans spend money on besides beer and pizza? Well, one of the biggest is the actual tickets to the games. People will be spending a small fortune on tickets for Super Bowl and many of the ticket reseller sites offer affiliate programs. This is one way to monetize the NFL crowd.

Here are some other suggestions:

Build a list. Football fans are interested in many different topics, and football hype lasts 8 months of the year. This is a very powerful list to have and the volume of traffic you can utilize to build your list is quite massive.

People will buy new TV’s just for the Super Bowl (believe it or not). You have probably seen many electronics companies like Best Buy take advantage of events like this, but these sorts of promotions can easily be taken online. Plasmas, LCD, DLP’s, Projectors, etc are all hot items in the weeks leading up to Super Bowl.

Huge stakes are put on the Super Bowl as many people bet on the outcome. This is
done online in many cases and the gambling aspect of the Super Bowl can be monetized. People like to organize huge party’s and these often require party planners...how to have the best football party of 2008 (you could easily build a list with a guide like this) and people would likely pay for it.

These are just a few ways you can take advantage of Super Bowl. Remember that football fans love their teams (and the sport) and it is a year round opportunity!

The UEFA Cup

Soccer (or football, depending on where you live), is the most widely watch sport in the world and if you did not know this already, it presents us as Internet marketers with a huge opportunity to monetize any event related to it.

Although the UEFA cup is not quite as large as the World Cup (on a global scale), it is an important event for many people as there is a lot of hype and a large following around the UEFA cup. So do you know how to make money this event? Here are a couple techniques and ways you can take advantage of this.

People that play soccer , want to become better. If you promote a program or service
that offers people techniques and skills to become a better player and “play like the pro’s”, you are going to attract a large fraction of the soccer audiences (as many of them are players).

People that watch soccer want to watch it (even when they are at work). There are
many programs out there that allow you to watch TV online, and these are very fitting for those that have to work when the UEFA Cup is on.

People that watch soccer want the gear of their favorite players/teams. There are many stores online that sell soccer jerseys and other apparel of teams and players that will be playing in the UEFA cup. People will be looking to buy these items leading up to and during the cup.

People that love soccer are probably the most die-hard fans out of any sport in the world (even more than the NFL). They are interested in soccer year round. This is another excellent opportunity to build a list as soccer is played year round.

Halloween

Halloween is a funny time of the year. Not only do people go costume crazy around this time, the online spending seems to ramp up as it marks the last day of October...and November brings on the early Christmas Shoppers (people tend to buy online much earlier than offline).

You should plan ahead for the costume market. There are many sites out there that people visit and info products that people look for to be the most creative on Halloween!

You should also consider the fact that people are back into full swing at this point. People are back to work, kids (and adults) are back to school, and people begin to spend a larger percentage of their time indoors...and this means on their computer. This is a ripple affect that increases online spending.

Halloween marks an opportunity for Halloween related promotions, but also marks the ramp up of online spending!

Presidential Election in the United States

This is going to be one of the biggest events in years because of all the turmoil that the US has been in the last couple of years. This will likely be the biggest presidential election in US history with the largest following.

There are many different ways you will be able to take advantage of this traffic, and if you are creative you will be able to build some huge and targeted lists from this election (think different topics of concern.... people that want lower taxes, need to earn more money.... people that want a better educational system).

What if you set-up a campaign telling people that you will show them how to minimize their taxes...if they sign-up to your mailing list? Now you are building a list of people that are looking for financial support. What about looking for information about working as an illegal immigrant (another huge topic in this year’s debate)? You could build a list off of this audience which happens to have a multi-billion dollar purchasing power!

Again, you can keep up-to-date on all the latest news by setting up a few Google Alerts on this subject. Taking advantage of hot topics during the election will be where a bulk of the opportunity resides.

One of the hottest items during these times is t-shirts. People create funny, politically motivated t-shirts using programs like cafepress.com and zazzle.com. These are easy to do and it does not cost you anything to build a store and start creating your own t-shirts for resale. This is just one idea, but definitely another effective way to take advantage of the year long hype that is going to pertain to the election.

Christmas

Many Internet marketers make most of their money online because of Christmas, especially those that promote products that relate to something that people buy for gifts. These are typically retail gifts like toys, clothes, jewelry, appliances and electronics, but sometimes do include services, info products as well as odd ball gifts (like buying a star!).

Christmas can be turned into revenue in so many different ways and introduces
opportunities not only for affiliates, but to create your own products and services. People tend to be very free with their money over Christmas, buying for others but also themselves.

Conversely, it also can be a difficult time for people because of the financial strain that it causes, so this is another marketing angle (and emotion) that can be triggered. If you have a program/service that can help people during a time like this, then you can definitely monetize it as an affiliate (or if you are the product owner, as a merchant).

Here are some of the hottest industries for Christmas:

gadgets
electronics (digital cameras, mp3 players)
gaming consoles / games
jewelry
toys
clothing/shoes
chocolate/flowers
tools
appliances
books
novelties
online gift cards
make money/debt assistance

Christmas is a big time of year online for us as marketers. I'm not going to underemphasize this fact, and because of this, I'm going to give you some very powerful research resources that you can use to find hot industries next Christmas and find items to promote:

Amazon Top Sellers

Shopping.com Product Categories

eBay Pulse

Google’s Hot 100

Boxing Day

If you have a list, this is a perfect time to hit it up. People tend to be very loose with their money on Boxing Day, often times because they received money from friends and family over Christmas and other holiday events.

Boxing Day goes hand in hand with the best sales of the year and most companies try to unload any of their extra inventories that are left over from Christmas...and just in general monetize the spending that takes place on this day. A lot of the online companies offer special “deal” linking codes on Boxing Day that you can send out to your lists or put on your web pages to increase conversions.

People didn’t get everything they wanted and this can be used as a marketing tactic.

2009 TRENDS

A Happy Customer is... A POWERFUL ONE! 2009 is all about the consumer experience. Consumers’ lives are busy. We are all consumers, so just think about the day-to-day customer service you receive. Was it a good experience and did it impact your perception of the company in a good or bad way? Chances are it did.

Companies like Starbucks were built off of a consistently good customer experience. You know that the people there are going to be friendly, helpful, and that your cup of Joe is going to be consistent. If it is not, they compensate your for their wrong doing.

The same model should be applied to the Internet. People are beginning to think that
companies online do not offer customer service because they do not get responses from emails, their support is outsourced and is of low quality, and the overall experience tends to be a poor one.

By becoming a consumer centric you will have the upper hand over most of your competition. It does not hurt you to put your email address on your page to allow your potential customers ask you questions about what you are offering. This will typically boost conversions drastically.

Customer service does take time, but look at it this way. The more service you provide to your customers (or potential customers), the more you know about them. You learn exactly what they are looking for, what emotions are going through their head, and consequently, their “hot buttons” that will trigger sales.

So...make it your goal to provide better customer service in 2009. Whether you are an affiliate or a merchant, this should be part of your business!

The Green Revolution

Global warming, depleting natural resources, melting glaciers, hybrid cars, solar energy, biofuels, wind farms....these probably all ring a bell.

Like 2008, ‘going green’ is going to be in for 2009 as well. People are conscious of the problems that are environment is facing and are making efforts to improve their contributions to bettering the earth. This more times than not impacts their purchasing decisions and causes the green crowd to realign their spending.

The green revolution is definitely a consumer “hot button” and by focusing some of your efforts towards going green, you will impact your bottom line. What about if you offer to donate money to a carbon offset if someone buys your product or from your site? What about if you state that your servers or website is run on solar energy? This will impact people’s decision to buy from your site or somewhere else.

There are few products that you can promote online within this area, but you can focus on people trying to save money on gas, converting to more earth friendly vehicles, conserving energy in their households, or taking advantage of new technologies like solar and wind power.

Time is Money

Time! What does it mean to you? Days are getting shorter and not enough people are
taking time out of their busy schedules to relax. This was big in 2007 and will remain big in 2009.

Here are two different components to this trend; things that save people and companies time, and things that allow people to enjoy their free time. People have been very easy to exchange money for time in the past years with so much activity going on, blackberry messages never giving businesspeople a break, and the daily stresses and time drainpipes (like traffic, computer use, and political and environmental changes).

There is going to be great opportunity for marketers to help people manage their time better, take advantage of their free time, and companies and people looking to improve time efficiency (and ultimately cost efficiency).

One thing that everyone dreams of is working from home. They see this on TV and in magazines and it appears to be the solution they are looking for. Well, working from home is now an option and can free up time once you have built a solid business and this is just one way you can capitalize on this market.

Another trend is companies looking for new ways to keep their employees interested.
They do this by giving new types of incentives and by hosting off-site company events and meetings. They do this to try to resolve the overwhelming work environment and this is a market that Internet marketers can take advantage of.

Let’s think of some of the keywords that will trigger these “time focused” audiences...

save time...
free up....
ways to relax...
work less...
work from home....
manage time...
shorter hours...

Time is something on everyone’s mind and there is not really a specific market you can target with the “trend of making more time”, however it is an emotional “hot button” for anyone that is living a busy lifestyle.

Healthy is IN

More and more people are beginning to focus on what they eat, the activities that they take part in, and the lifestyles that they choose. The benefits of leading a healthy lifestyle have been shown to enhance someone’s life physically as well as mentally. Because of this, the health trend is definitely a growing one.

Consumers are paying higher prices for organic foods and to have a lifestyle that is
deemed healthy. Natural foods, raw foods, healthy supplements, vitamins and herbal
medicine are hot for 2008.

Exercise is becoming less of a chore and more enjoyable and exciting with the new trend classes making a larger presence. Instead of just running on the treadmill (which many people are still doing by the way), there are many new training techniques and ways people can strive to get fit. Yoga, Thai Chi, Mixed Martial Arts, Karate, and alternative exercise equipment are going to be big in the coming year.

What About Those Baby Boomers?

We are 26 years old, and our parents (whom are baby boomers) are either just recently retired or will be retiring within the next couple of years. What does all this baby boomer hype mean for us as marketers? Will this open up new opportunities for us online, and if so, where do you go to find them (and how do you make money from them)?

Baby boomers are retiring. This audience is spending money on things that retired people do. Many retired people have hobbies and many people seek out new hobbies when they retire.

Some of the common things people are going to be spending time is doing leisure
activities. Playing golf, boating, relaxing with their families, scrap booking, learning to play an instrument, and crafts are some of the more obvious ones. All of these industries will be top performers in 2008 with large volume traffic...and traffic equates to revenue if you promote to your audience correctly.

As we get older, our bodies are typically not as robust as they once were. Medical bills are on the minds of people that are retiring and this opens up marketing opportunities for people to looking insure themselves in the event that something does happen, medicines and cures for people that have existing health problems, and support and financial solutions for people with current health bills. These are vast markets and these are major topics of concern (and something people are looking for online).

Housing...THE Downfall

What goes up must come down. The world housing market has experienced a huge surge in the last couple of years...it has grown too fast, must faster than the rate of inflation. This usually means that the market is overpriced and because of all the sub-prime lending woos that have taken place, the foreclosure market is back (unfortunately).

House prices have taken a significant hit (primarily in the USA) and rates have increased, pushing people out of their homes. Not only are there going to be a lot of foreclosures in 2009, it is going to be much more difficult for people to borrow.

There are many angles that you could approach this. You could offer support for the people that are forced to foreclose their homes. You could offer some foreclosure buying secrets to prospective buyers. You could help people find ways to get a loan in this “hard-to-get-a-loan-market” by providing them with different credit options or pointing them towards some loan institutions (many high commission ones online). There are also foreclosures listing portals that have affiliate programs.

The foreclosure market is already prominent in the US and may trickle into other countries as well. This is definitely a trend to keep your eye starting in 2008.

Facebook

What can be said about social networking besides that it plays an important role in most peoples everyday lives. Whether a band is setting up a new profile on myspace.com, someone is posting a new photo album on facebook.com, or businesses are headhunting a specialized employee on linkedin.com, the interactivity between people all over the world has never been more prominent.

Think this market is dying out, think again. Social networking is continuing to grow at a rapid pace and everyone seems to be getting involved. Everyone from small children to their grandparents is using social networks. Facebook is now sitting at number 7 position on the entire Internet!

These networks represent massive audiences, and where there are audiences, there are
opportunities for marketers to make money. This includes Facebook applications,
creating groups around your ideas, driving traffic (and sales) to your website through your profile, building your websites, creating business relationships, networking, adding affiliate links to your profiles, and even advertising on these networks by hyper-targeting your specific audiences.

Think social networks were big in 2008…well 2009 is only going to be bigger. These
networks are going to evolve and new opportunities are going to be unveiled with every new change!

Here is an elaborate list of Social Networking Websites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

Time For An Upgrade

People are looking to upgrade. Each year there are new products, and new upgrades
people make to their existing items. These items include things they use on a day-to-day basis.

Companies to look out for are Apple, Google, and Microsoft as they are often the innovation and launch centers of many new products and services every year.

Whether it is someone getting the newest iPod, getting their hands on the newest piece of software or computer (to upgrade), upgrading electronics device, furniture, and even upgrading homes...2009 is going to be about upgrades as there are likely to be some very disruptive (industry shaking) products and services launched in 2008. Did you know that Google is in the talks of offering a free ad-based cell phone service? This will change the way cell-phone companies work and represents opportunities from the carrier, to the advertiser. This will also represent opportunity for us as marketers!

Every new product that launches represents opportunity and every time someone looks to upgrade, they are likely going online to do their research. This is where you can come in and help these individuals out...and earn some great revenue in the process!

The Itty Bitty Entrepreneur

2009 is going to be a year for the little guy. People are starting to understand that they can make money through the Internet and that they can make significantly more than working for themselves. Because of this, there are new “micropreneurs” building their businesses each and every day online...with many more looking for their starting point.

There are more ways than ever for people to make money, and there is the largest audience of entrepreneurs and small niches of entrepreneurs out there today. People are tired of working as employees and the Internet has really opened up the doors to many different types of self-employment.

We now have people looking to work from home, seniorprenuers, studentpreneurs,
ebaypreneurs, freelancers, side business and weekend entrepreneurs. Often times it is not about making a lot of money...it can start out as just a hobby to make a few extra dollars per month.

These audiences are massive. If you can deliver information on how to become
entrepreneurs within these micro-sectors, you have yourself a business. It is funny that many of you probably fall into one of these categories, and there is nothing easier than promoting to someone that you can “relate” with.

There are services available that help these type of people as well, and you are likely familiar with one of them.

Make It, Own It, Sell It

Make-it-yourself and do-it-yourself products and services are a growing industry. People love personalization and this trend is going to continue through 2009 with all the innovative tools and technologies that are allowing people to easily build their own products/services online. Whether it is having your own personal website online, creating your own t-shirt, or personalizing your own game, people are addicted to “make it yourself” products and services.

There are many companies out there that allow you to make it yourself, and many of them offer affiliate programs or revenue sharing programs. You can make anything from your own toys to t-shirts.

Here is an example of one of these sites:

http://www.CafePress.com

Cafe Press allows you to create your own merchandise and sell it through your store. You can capitalize on this by creating timely merchandise that is relevant to current events, seasons, celebrations or something that is just cool or funny.

Helping people make their own personal space online is also a big thing. This could be in the form of a website, blog, social network profile, or a wiki. More and more people are starting to realize that they there are resources out there that will allow them to build a website without having to be computer savvy.

Putting Your Best Foot Forward

In order to succeed or further your success in 2009, you will need to reflect on what you have done in 2008 as well as build your plan for the upcoming year. Planning is very important to success online, as is setting goals. Below I provided you some tips that you can use to help “ensure” success in 2009!

Reflect on Last Year

Ask yourself a couple of questions.

What did I do well in 2008 that helped me get closer to success

What could I improve on in 2009 (or what did I fail to do in 2008)

Are there any areas of your business that were neglected? Did you spend all of your
spare time learning and never take the time to “implement” what you learned. This is often times the most common reason that Internet marketers never become successful.

How do your sales stack up compared to last year? If you haven’t earned any revenue online yet, what steps do you need to take towards making your first sale in 2009? Now is the perfect time find the answer to these questions and begin building your business based on what you did well 2008 and what you could work on in 2009.

Goal Setting

Without setting goals, you have nothing to work towards. The most effective way to set a goal is to put it into writing and give yourself a date in which you want to achieve this goal. A goal could be anything from writing your first article, to adding a page on your site, to making your first $1 online.

Whatever your goals are, it is crucial to think carefully about them and record them in some way. Set both short term and long term goals and revisit these on a regular basis.

You not only have short term goals to achieve during the week (to keep you actively moving forward), you have realistic goals for the year end. Goals do not have to be realistic, but you are just fooling yourself if you make one like “earn $10,000 by tomorrow”. Goal setting is absolutely essential to success!

Get Yourself Ready for the Next 6 Months

This should also be incorporated into your goals, but you should have a grasp on what you are going to promote, which audiences you are going to target, and which ways you are going to market it within the upcoming 6 months.

As we mentioned earlier in the guide, the upcoming months will see a ramp up in online spending and there are many opportunities that you can take advantage.

Make sure you are ready to start out of the gates quickly during 2009 and start preparing for your next 6 months on the Internet. Taking advantage of some of the upcoming major events will definitely give you business a large boost!

Communicate With Others

Speaking with others can often times reveal weaknesses in your campaigns as well as
allow you to build on ideas that need a bit of refining. If you have customers, now is a perfect time to open up the lines of communication with them as well. Post a survey or send them a quick email asking for the feedback on improvements as well as things that they are looking to accomplish in the upcoming year. It is surprising how something so simple can increase your revenue so greatly.

Look Through Their Eyes

It is time for us to stop thinking about what WE THINK others want and find out what they REALLY WANT! Too many marketers think they know what the consumer wants but in
the end their perception is entirely wrong. If you learn one thing related to marketing this year, make it to focus on the customer.

Learn the WHO, WHAT, WHERE, AND WHY of your audience. Find out what their hot
buttons are and what is triggering them to go online in search for a resolution in the first place. People that are looking to go on a diet have different motives.

Become your own customer in 2009 and prepare to have the most successful year yet!

Make 2009 a WINNER!

Now that you have read this you need to take some action. Every success starts with an action, and if you read and do not “implement”, none of these techniques and dates or trends will benefit you.

Remember, you do not need to know everything to succeed nor do you need to implement
everything you have learned within this guide to succeed. In fact, people are making
$100,000’s within one or two industries and you can be doing the same!

Make 2009 a winner! If you start today, you will definitely have made “leaps and bounds” of progress by the time December comes around next year. Odds are you will be making some very good money online.

Think about this for one second… or two...

People spend billions of dollars online every year. Affiliates make millions of dollars online every year. This number is only growing. Starting an Internet marketing business is the only business that you can start for less than $100 and have access to customers worldwide! The potential is endless and if you have already made your first buck online, you will “get” this!

If you haven’t, then you are not too far away. Success comes with a little hard work and if you are willing to invest in yourself, then you will be able to earn a full-time income online.

Your life can change starting today! Take action and don’t look back.

Most Popular Blog and RSS Directories

2009-01-19T18:24:00.002+02:00

Free blog directories list

http://www.2rss.com/index.php

http://weblogs.about.com/library/nosearch/blsubmit.htm

http://www.all-blogs.net/submit.php

http://www.answers.com/main/new_blogger.jsp

http://blogs.botw.org/helpcenter/submitblog.aspx

http://blawg.org/modules.php?name=Web_Links&l_op=AddLink

http://www.blogcode.com/signup.php

http://www.blogrankings.com/addblog.php

http://www.blogsearchengine.com/submit/

http://blogarama.com/index.php?show=add

http://www.blogbib.com/submit.php

http://www.blogbunch.com/suggest/

http://www.blogcatalog.com/blogs/submit_blog.html

http://blogdex.net/add.asp

http://blogdigger.com/add.jsp

http://www.blogflux.com/add.php

http://www.blogfuse.com/directory/suggest.php?action=addlink

http://www.bloggernity.com/cgi-bin/add.cgi

http://www.bloghop.com/account/index.htm

http://www.bloghub.com/cgi-bin/add.cgi

http://blogintro.com/Form/Submission.html

http://www.bloglisting.com/addablog.html

http://www.csthota.com/blogmap/submit.aspx

http://blogmatcher.com/u.php

http://www.blogarama.com/index.php?show=add

http://www.blogpulse.com/submit.html

http://www.blogrankings.com/

http://www.blog-search.com/

http://www.blogsearchengine.com/add_link.html

http://www.blogsweet.com/suggest_link.php

http://www.blogtopsites.com/register.php

http://www.blogtree.com/signup.php

http://www.bloguniverse.com/radlinks/

http://www.blog-watch.com/add-url.php

http://www.blogwise.com/submit

http://www.sarthak.net/blogz/add.php

http://www.bloogz.com/man_en/add_your_url.php

http://boingboing.net/suggest.html

http://www.bulletize.com/add.php?sid=0

http://www.completerss.com/AddFeed.aspx

http://www.contentsmatter.com/add.php

http://www.crayon.net/using/suggest.html

http://www.daypop.com/info/submit.htm

http://www.diarist.net/cgi-bin/links/add.cgi

http://portal.eatonweb.com/add.php

http://www.easyrss.com

http://www.everyfeed.com/addsite.php

http://www.fastbuzz.com/main.jsp

http://www.feed-directory.com/addfeed

http://www.feeds4all.com/AddRSS.aspx

http://www.feedsfarm.com/a.html

http://blogs.feedster.com/add.php

http://findingblog.com/add.php?cat

http://www.findory.com/submit-blog

http://www.fybersearch.com/add-url.php

http://chordata.geckotribe.com/suggest.php

http://geekphilosopher.com/MainPage/gpBlogLinkAdd.php

http://www.globeofblogs.com/register.php

https://www.gobignetwork.com/blog/AddBlog.aspx

http://www.headlinespot.com/site/suggest.htm

http://www.iblogbusiness.com/add.html

http://www.icerocket.com/c?p=addblog

http://www.industry-blogs.com/submit.php

http://www.esperanto.se/kiosk/engindex.html

http://www.lsblogs.com/howtosubmit.php

http://www.newsxs.com/en/sources

http://www.newzfire.com/suggest.aspx

http://www.newsgator.com/ngs/subscriber/Folksonomy.aspx

http://dir.nooked.com/submit.dir?action=Start

http://www.onlyfeeds.com .addfeed.html?catid=

http://www.plazoo.com/en/addrss.asp

http://feedfinder.pluck.com/SubmitFeed.aspx

http://portal.eatonweb.com/add.php

http://www.postami.com/rss.finder/submit_feed.php

http://www.pressradar.com/suggest

http://www.pubsub.com/add_feed.php

http://www.rateitall.com/suggest.aspx?WL=0&TopicID=20004

http://www.anse.de/rdfticker/addchannel.php

http://www.readablog.com/AddFeed.aspx

http://www.redtram.com/pages/addsource/

http://reader.rocketinfo.com/desktop/AddRSSFeed.jsp

http://www.rss-network.com/submitrss.php

http://www.search4rss.com/addfeed.php

http://blogsforsmallbusiness.com/directory/add.html

http://smallbusiness.com/wiki/Weblog_directory_company_blogs

http://www.sphere/com/feedback

http://www.synblog.com/addblog.html

http://www.tailrank.com/import

http://www.technorati.com/ping.html

http://www.terrar.com/addurl/

http://www.topix.net/bin/feedback

http://www.theweblogreview.com/submit.php

http://www.truthlaidbear.com/addtoscan.php

http://www.wilsdomain.com/blogs/wilsdomain9b.php?op=newsubmit

http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/my/cgi_rss_submission

Blogging

2009-01-09T16:56:00.001+02:00

A blog is a mandatory piece of your online puzzle. Search engines love blogs because they are easy for their spiders to read, they are updated often with content, and are very easy
to modify.
You should post to your blog at least twice per week. If you are talking about something on your main site, link to it. You have a link list on the sidebar of your blog. Use it to link to all of your sites that have a common subject with your blog. Avoid posting links to sites you don’t own. Your goal with your blog is to rank well for your main terms and funnel your customers into your website. This means no adsense and no affiliate links for your main blogs. Creating a blog for
adsense and affiliate sales is easy and should be held separately from your main blog.

Your posts should be from 200 – 1000 words and contain truly valuable information for your potential customer. This gives them a reason to come back and see what you’re
talking about next.

Every time you blog, you must ping. Wordpress has an auto-ping feature and it will ping for you automatically. Hosted blogs do not. These pings will have you listed in the largest blogging directories online. Here are the ping services I use:

Stress Reducing Computer Tips

2008-04-20T03:53:00.001+03:00

For many of us computers are an intrical part of our business. An entrepreneur can not afford for their computer to be inoperable even for a minute. Implement some of these quick and affordable computer tips to keep your computer healthy and making money for your business.

#1 - Double Internet Speed

Comcast recently doubled cable modem download speeds. Now you can surf the Internet and download files twice as fast. However, you need to power cycle your cable modem [unplug it for 30 seconds and reboot computer] for the new configuration to be automatically downloaded to your modem.

#2 - Connecting to Work from Home

Having trouble with your corporate VPN connection when working from home? Oftentimes this can be fixed with a simple firmware upgrade to your network router or a slight change in settings.

#3 - Sudden Lost Connection

Has your Internet connection suddenly stopped working? Frequently computer users with software-based firewalls suddenly find their Internet connection no longer available. Oftentimes when you download a software update, it can change your original configurations. As a quick test, disable the software firewall. If connectivity returns, it’s a misconfiguration issue.

#4 - Slow E-mail and Internet Browsing

Did your computer worked wonderfully, but suddenly e-mail or Internet browsing is painfully slow? It could be your cable connection went out. And although the connection has returned, your computer and the cable modem may be having difficulty communicating. Try power cycling your modem.

#5 - Eliminate Popups

Google offers a free popup blocker with its toolbar. Download the toolbar at www.toolbar.google.com. Not only it will block popups but it will make your online surfing much easier.

Hawaii Real Estate

2007-09-02T20:41:00.000+03:00

For information about Hawaii real estate you should visit adrhi.com.Most buyers find that it takes a lot of searching to find just the right home but now it can be so easy.Their website allows you to search all active Hawaii Real Estate listings on every island. The site is easy to use and navigate through property searches. Featuring the finest homes, condos and land for sale, that Oahu real estate, Maui, Hawaii & Kauai has to offer in areas such as: Honolulu, Kahala, Lanikai in Kailua, West Maui, Portlock in Hawaii Kai, Waialae Iki, Kaneohe, North Shore of Oahu, Mililani, Kapolei, Waikiki and more. Their eatured referral relocation real estate agents are located from Hawaii to Florida and all places in between. The geographic distribution of their members gives their clients a wide base of top real estate professional to meet their special relocation needs. Also their referral base provides clients access to highly qualified, licensed professionals over a wide geographic area. They have an extensive understanding their community, what it has to offer, plus local market pricing data. They can provide buyers and sellers with up to date MLS Listings as they become available.When you hire this team you can expect:Professional representation.Service to get the job done.Extensive communication and support.Effective follow-up.Absolute personal commitment.For more information visit their real estate blog.

Real Estate Values

2007-08-31T21:47:00.000+03:00

If you are looking for houses for rent you should visit nationalrelocation.com.National Relocation offers a free and easy service for finding homes for rent, condo rentals, townhouses for rent, apartments for rent and duplexes. National Relocation has rental houses, homes & apartments across the United States and is the best place to begin your search for houses, condos or other rental properties. Using their service will save you time and effort when you are looking for a home, condo or apartment to rent.Also you can get real estate values and area information across the United States. Gain access to property for sale in your desired area. If a home is listed on the Multiple Listing Service, it will be accessible through one of their National Relocation real estate agents.
Sometimes,when people relocate and try to buy a new home they need to get a mortgage or home loan.But you will have no problem with that.You will find the best mortgage quotes at National Relocation.Whether you are buying your first home or looking for a mortgage refinance, you will find the best mortgage rate possible. Mortgages will allow you to own a home, whether a starter home or the home of your dreams, without having to wait until you can pay for it outright. It is a good idea to get mortgage quotes for your home purchase so that you can choose the right type of mortgage for you and your family and get the best deal on a mortgage rate and an interest rate possible.Visit NationalRelocation.com and you will find everything you need to start your new life.

Online credit card scammers get charitable

2007-07-10T12:06:00.000+03:00

Credit card thieves are becoming big-time charity donors, but it's not out of the goodness of their hearts. According to Symantec Corp. the criminals are starting to use charitable donations as a way to check whether their stolen credit card numbers are working.Credit card numbers are bought and sold in underground "carder" forums, which bring together the people who have stolen the credit card numbers with those who want to use them. These charitable donations are typically made by the person buying the card numbers as a final check to ensure that the numbers will work.Symantec's security response weblog noted the interesting trend, where scammers will use charities to test if a card is active without raising suspicion.Identity thieves frequently test credit card information by moving small sums of money, and banks have responded by scanning transactions records looking for unusual recipients of what look like test transactions.Even if the charity test is performed on just a small fraction of stolen card numbers, the contributions could add up. The Federal Trade Commission recorded 670,000 cases of reported identity theft and fraud in 2006, 60% of which began with Internet solicitations. And corporate breaches spill millions of customers' credit card information into the black market: A breach in January at the retailer TJ Maxx revealed the private financial data of more than 46 million customers, while Certegy Credit Systems, a branch of Fidelity National Information Services, announced last week that a former employee had stolen and sold customers' data, exposing as many as 2.3 million accounts.Given that Symantec's researchers see the charity test as a growing trend, the tactic could mean significant sums of money moving into philanthropic coffers, if only in $5 and $10 increments.

Hotel News

2007-04-04T18:05:00.000+03:00

If you are interested in Hotel News take a look at HotelClubNews blog.This is a site from Flairview.Flairview is a world leading global accommodation e-wholesaler and specialist distributor of hotel room inventory over the Internet.You will find there a lot of Hotel News and updates.Also you will find information about hotels on Amsterdam,Barcelona,London,Madrid,New York,Paris,Sydney,Venice and many more destinations.The site is clean and easy to navigate.Ester is comming so if you plan to go on vacations and still haven't decided where to go you should read some Hotel News.

Dealing with duplicate content

2007-03-16T02:10:00.000+02:00

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Deftly dealing with duplicate content

Games for Windows Live goes live May 8, 2007

2007-03-15T18:29:00.000+02:00

Just as Microsoft Xbox Live in two flavors, the Free Silver membership which allows basic online play, or the paid Gold version at US $49.99 per year that offers enhanced online playback, and for the first time in history, the chance for PC based Windows Vista gamers to compete directly against the Xbox 360 counterparts, as well as track achievements, play against players who match your skill level and other benefits not available in the standard free Silver package.

Unfortunately, despite Halo 2 for Vista coming out on the same day, cross platform playability is not a feature, with the first Xbox 360/Vista cross gameplay title set to be Shadowrun, set for a June release, along games such as UNO to be co-console and PC playable as well. Of course, only Microsoft knows their future plans, but it seems inconceivable that a future Halo Vista 3 release wouldn't be playable against Xbox 360 Halo 3 owners, although only time will tell on that one right now.

While that’s a relatively small selection to start with, Microsoft is taking their new venture very seriously are no doubt working with developers and their own programmers to accelerate this program as much as possible.

One reason why it is so important is the number of PC gamers compared with console gamers. There are over 200 million games using a flavor of Windows on a PC, with connected console gamers garnering dramatically fewer numbers in comparison.

This development has been foreshadowed by Microsoft for some time, with their ultimate aim of letting you play almost anywhere, or at the very least access your ‘Live’ account from any device, including your cell phone, although that last particular development is still set for the future. Unsurprisingly, the initiative is called ‘Live Anywhere’.

The new Live experience for PCs is said to look very much like that enjoyed by existing Xbox 360 owners, ensuring a smooth experience for those already familiar with the system, while offering excellent simplicity so that new users can quickly learn how it all works and play games across friends, colleagues or even strangers on the other side of the planet.

Xbox 360 Live ‘Gold’ edition members are eligible to create a Games for Windows Live account without having to pay any extra, making that simple decision one to be applauded.

As with any new release, this is a version 1.0, with Microsoft promising to expand the service in the future, perhaps even adding a ‘Marketplace’ feature as seen on Xbox 360’s currently.

Games for Windows Live also supports (through Vista) the use of a wireless Xbox 360 controller, further blurring the gaming lines between games console and personal computer.

So, while Sony are offering their ‘Home’ social PS3 networking software by the 3rd quarter of the year to all PS3 owners, Microsoft has decided to go for the biggest market of all, despite their continuing Xbox 360 work and achievements: the biggest market of the PC using consumer.

It’s worked for Microsoft many times before, and it looks like it will work again this time, too!

From iTWire.com

Google to tighten its rules to shield search requests

2007-03-15T18:24:00.000+02:00

In a nod to privacy advocates, Google Inc. said Wednesday that it is adopting a new data retention policy so that it's harder to link users to what they search for online.

Under the plan, the Mountain View Internet company will shroud the information it collects about users in anonymity, eliminating a potential treasure trove of evidence for government search warrants and subpoenas.

By the end of the year, Google expects to purge important identifying information on its computer servers about the sources of virtually all search queries after 18 to 24 months. Subsequently, the company will have access to only partial records, so that no one can trace the queries back to individual users.

Google's move is intended to comply with various foreign laws and proposed legislation dictating that Web sites must keep user information for up to two years in case it is needed for legal proceedings. Similar rules are under consideration in the United States.

Google is the first major search engine to set a time limit for retention of search information, which can reveal a great deal about an individual such as whether they're sick (as indicated by a number of queries about cancer) and political affiliation (demonstrated by searches for certain blogs). Until now, the company kept search logs indefinitely, raising criticism that the data could be misused by Google, law enforcement or marketers.

Google said the changes are in response to feedback from privacy groups and government agencies, including the Norwegian Data Protection Authority, which raised concerns about Google's existing practices. The new policy, Google said, provides more transparency to users about data retention and better protects their privacy.

Kurt Opsahl, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, gave measured praise to Google's decision, calling it a step in the right direction. He asked that Google similarly purge information collected about users of its other products, such as YouTube.

Retention of search records emerged as a hot-button issue last year after a demand by the Justice Department that several Web sites turn over query data became public. Yahoo Inc., Time Warner's AOL and Microsoft Corp. handed over the information, to the consternation of many privacy advocates, but Google fought the request in court and ultimately got the amount it had to provide reduced.

Separately, AOL made a high-profile blunder by posting 19 million search queries online as part of a research project. Ostensibly anonymous, the information was used to identify some of the users responsible for the queries, prompting a public apology by the Web site and a series of resignations.

"By taking some technical measures to anonymize this data, there is an extra layer of protection," Opsahl said. "You can't disclose what you don't have."

As part of the new policy, Google will erase eight of the bits that make up an Internet Protocol address, known commonly as an IP address, that identifies the computer used to make a search query. It will also make cookies -- the small files that help track user visits to specific Web sites and preferences -- anonymous.

After the plan is implemented, Google intends to keep the partial records and associated search query terms, explaining that the information will help the company improve its services and help detect fraud.

From sfgate.com

Viacom sues YouTube over copyrights

2007-03-15T18:20:00.000+02:00

From BusinessWeek

Media conglomerate Viacom Inc. is suing YouTube for $1 billion, claiming that the video-sharing site had built a business by using the Internet to "willfully infringe copyrights on a huge scale."

Other media companies also have major concerns about YouTube, but Viacom's was the first lawsuit filed by a major media owner.

Several media companies have reached agreements to supply YouTube with clips, including CBS Corp., General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal and the British Broadcasting Corp., but many others remain reluctant to deal with the Web site because of copyright concerns.

YouTube had been a quirky, fast-growing startup until the deep-pocketed Internet search behemoth Google Inc. bought the company last November for $1.76 billion.

But YouTube's soaring popularity, especially among younger people who are increasingly tuning out traditional media, has broadcasters frightened of losing viewers and advertising dollars.

Last month, Viacom demanded that YouTube remove more than 100,000 unauthorized clips from its site, and since that time, the company has uncovered more than 50,000 additional unauthorized clips, Viacom spokesman Jeremy Zweig said.

A quick search of YouTube's site turned up numerous clips from Viacom programs including segments from Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and Nickelodeon's "SpongeBob SquarePants" cartoon.

In the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in New York, Viacom says YouTube "harnessed technology to willfully infringe copyrights on a huge scale" and had "brazen disregard" of intellectual property laws.

Viacom is especially at risk because many of its shows are aimed at younger viewers who also are heavy Internet users. At the same time, Viacom is trying to find other, legal ways to distribute its shows digitally, such as by selling episodes of "The Daily Show" and "South Park" for $1.99 each through Apple Inc.'s iTunes service. Those shows can then be viewed on a computer or iPod.

YouTube says it cooperates with all copyright holders and removes programming as soon as it is notified. But Viacom argues that approach lets YouTube avoid taking the initiative to curtail copyright infringement, instead shifting the burden and costs of monitoring the site onto copyright holders.

Alexander Macgillivray, associate general counsel for products and intellectual property at Google, said YouTube was protected under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which gives online service providers protection from copyright lawsuits so long as they comply with requests to remove unauthorized material.

"We're saying that the DMCA protects what we're doing," Macgillivray said in an interview. On the other hand, he said, "The DMCA is silent on what we have to do if we don't get a notice" to remove material.

Universal Music Group, a unit of France's Vivendi SA, had threatened to sue YouTube, saying it was a hub for pirated music videos, but later reached a licensing deal with them. NBC and the BBC also provide YouTube with clips.

Despite those arrangements, relations between media companies and YouTube remain tense. CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves told investors last week that its pact with YouTube had provided a big promotional boost for its shows. But he added that many big technology players "don't quite respect the content enough," although that was changing.

NBC has set up a channel to show authorized clips on YouTube, but it recently criticized the site and Google for not doing more to prevent copyrighted material from being posted online.

Bruce Sunstein, co-founder of intellectual property law firm Bromberg & Sunstein in Boston, said YouTube was still in the early stages of what was likely to be a "very long working-out of arrangements" with the owners of broadcast copyrights.

"Finding a way of peaceful coexistence is quite a struggle," Sunstein said. "Google's motto is 'Don't be evil,' and you could argue that with YouTube that motto is wearing a little thin."

Unlike the original Napster file-sharing service, which was shut down following complaints from music companies that it encouraged piracy, Sunstein said he expected YouTube and its corporate owners to eventually make peace with broadcasters. "I think YouTube very much wants to be legitimate," Sunstein said.

That doesn't mean other lawsuits won't follow Viacom's. Now that Viacom has thrown the first punch, other media companies may join the fray, Standard & Poor's analyst Scott Kessler warned in a research note.

A major lawsuit against YouTube has been widely anticipated because so much of the online video pioneer's success has been driven by easy access to copyright clips shared by its users.

While YouTube has yet to generate much revenue, its online traffic has been growing rapidly. According to comScore Media Metrix, YouTube attracted 133.5 million visitors worldwide in January, up from 9.5 million a year earlier.

Google began bracing for a legal onslaught last fall when it withheld nearly $220 million of YouTube's acquisition price in an escrow account. The Mountain View-based company also has another $11.2 billion in cash.

American Technology Research analyst Rob Sanderson believes Viacom filed the lawsuit to pressure Google into setting clear ground rules and fees for the usage of copyrighted content.

"This is all about a media company trying to protect its future," Sanderson said. "It's not about them trying to get damages for the past sins of YouTube."

By SETH SUTEL

Inside AdSense: Make a date with AdSense Calendar

2007-03-15T00:32:00.000+02:00

Inside AdSense: Make a date with AdSense Calendar

InPhonic Inc.

2007-03-13T17:23:00.000+02:00

If you are looking to buy a cell phone online try InPhonic.InPhonic is a online seller of wireless services and devices. They sell wireless services and devices through private labeled websites that they create and manage for online businesses, affinity organizations and national retailers, as well as through their own branded websites.They are headquartered in Washington, D.C. and maintain technology and operations centers in Largo, Maryland and Reston, Virginia.The company has 475 employees, offices in the District, Largo and Reston, and partnerships with Amazon.com, Staples.com and AOL.com. Its main competitors are large retail chains such as Wal-Mart and Radio Shack.InPhonic Inc. ells wireless telecommunications service, wireless phones and accessories over the Internet. Customers can purchase wireless service and products from InPhonic's retail Web sites such as Wirefly.com, A1Wireless.com and VMCSatellite.com.
Practically all of the company's revenue comes from its wireless sales and activation business, and the remainder comes from its satellite services business.You can learn more about InPhonic at Finance Yahoo and The Washington Times.

SponsoredReviews is Officially Launched

2007-03-13T16:34:00.000+02:00

One more Pay-to-blog website is out there folks.SponsoredReviews has officially launched on March 12th,2007.They have combined the best features of our two largest competitors, while at the same time lowering fees.The fee is just 35 %.SponsoredReviews has:Automated Rating System,so will make it easy for advertisers to find high quality blogs.The bidding system allows Advertisers and publishers to negotiate pricing.The payouts are bi-weekly through Paypal.
SponsoredReviews is now offering $100 in Free Reviews to the first 10 Advertisers if they sign up,post an Opportunity to have bloggers bid to review their product/service and send a feedback of their experience.Remember you have to spend first 100$ but SponsoredReviews will give it back to you.The opportunity must be posted before Friday March 16th.So,if you like what you read,go and sign up!

YouTube Alternative From Microsoft

2007-02-23T18:29:00.000+02:00

Microsoft has launched a new site similar to You Tube.It's name is SoapBox.It's still in beta but I think it's going to grow fast.The difference from YouTube and Google Video is that you can upload larger 10 min videos.In fact there is no limit!you can watch a video and at the same window you can search for other videos without leaving the page.

Gmail finally really open to everyone

2007-02-14T23:58:00.000+02:00

Nearly three years after Gmail was first released, the free Web-based e-mail from Google is being opened up for anyone in the world. Beginning Wednesday, everyone and their mother can sign up instead of having to get an invite from a Gmail-using friend. Google has been phasing out the invitation restriction geographically, with total general availability offered in Europe last week and in North America, South America and Asia this week. The service is still in beta test mode, however.

Many people thought Google's ad-based searchable e-mail service with an unheard-of gigabyte of free storage was an April Fool's Day joke when it was announced on April 1, 2004. Privacy advocates and others objected to Google serving up ads based on the content of the messages. Making Gmail accounts available only by invitation, and thus a scarce commodity, increased their allure and led to auctions of invites on eBay. Later, rival Web-based e-mail services followed with full search functions, vast amounts of storage and ads.

Jailed blogger case assigned to mediator

2007-02-14T23:56:00.000+02:00

Video blogger Josh Wolf, who last week became the longest-imprisoned journalist for contempt of court, got some good news yesterday in the form of a court order assigning his case to a mediating judge for settlement negotiations.

On August 1, Wolf, 24, was sent to a federal correctional facility in Dublin, Calif., for refusing to cooperate with a federal grand jury seeking unpublished footage he shot during a 2005 anarchist protest in San Francisco that turned violent. With exception of a short release on bail, he's been there ever since--for almost six months.

But on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge William Alsop, who has thus far presided over the case, referred it to U.S. Magistrate Joseph Spero for mediation, Wolf's Oakland, Calif.-based attorney Dan Siegel said Wednesday.

"For getting Josh out of jail, it's only good news," he said, adding that it's not unusual for such a case to get referred to a magistrate. Neither side in the case had made a public request for mediation, so Alsop presumably made the decision on his on volition, said Siegel, who had not yet talked to Wolf about the news

Google lets site targeting advertisers pay per click

2007-02-14T23:48:00.000+02:00

Google will soon let advertisers bid on a cost-per-click basis for ads they target on specific publisher Web sites. Right now, advertisers using Google's site-targeting feature place bids based on cost-per-thousand impressions.

Beginning in a test next month, advertisers will be able to bid on a cost-per-click model in which they set a maximum price they will pay every time someone clicks on their ad, according to a Google AdWords blog posting. Many advertisers, particularly smaller brands, prefer to pay only when someone clicks on the ad--which ostensibly indicates a desire to get more information for a possible purchase--as opposed to paying based on the number of visitors to the Web page.

Gravatar to Return Next Month

2007-02-04T22:03:00.000+02:00

Gravatar is a service that allows little avatars (called gravatars) to appear next to people's comments left on blogs. In a way Gravatar is like MyBlogLog but Gravatar's avatars appear next to a person's comments and not in a sidebar widget like with MyBlogLog. However, it wouldn't take much for them to compete with each other. In fact, this post shows MyBlogLog being used to show avatars in blog comments.

You can read a little more about Gravatar in this old post we wrote in July, 2005. The Gravatar service -- which apparently became overwhelmed from so many gravatars being loaded sometime last year -- will be returning in early February according to the Gravatar Blog (thx 901am).

The wait for Gravatar 2.0 is almost over. The new site will be released in early February with an all new interface and some great new functionality.

When the new site goes live, I'll send a one time email notification to all account holders. If you don't currently have an account, then leave a comment here (with your correct email address) and I will send you the notice as well.

Over the coming weeks I'll be posting screenshots and other tidbits to keep you updated during the final phases of testing and deployment. Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed to make sure you don't miss anything!

There is a message on the Gravatar homepage as well that says there are 90,000 Gravatar accounts. They also say they are working on an improved system that will "serve gravatars expediently and reliably." That's important because if you are in the business of displaying tiny avatars billions of times it is crucial that the tiny avatars load very quickly.

BooBox Launching Affiliate Tools for Blogs

2007-02-04T22:00:00.000+02:00

TechCrunch reports that Brazil-based BooBox will be launching a tool to help bloggers sell products from their blogs using clickable images. With BooBox bloggers can add clickable graphics that when clicked open a window over the browser page that displays products that people can purchase. For example, when a photograph of a woman wearing sunglasses is a clicked a window opens showing a selection of sunglasses. The purchase can be completed in the window that opens. Amazon.com is the retailer used in the online demo located at the bottom of the BooBox homepage. BooBox says it uses tags to control what products are shown when the image is clicked on.

You won't even feel it: you tag your image, we send it to the e-commerce website that send a list of possible itens related to your image. Each image tagged gets a booBox icon over it to show your audience where to click.

Presumably you would just tag your image as iPod, TMX Elmo or Versace sunglasses and BooBox's window will show related products when the image is clicked. In the demo you can see the small BooBox icon that gets placed on the images. BooBox likely also provides a snippet of code that bloggers will have to place somewhere on their blog to make the clickable images work.

TechCrunch gives the BooBox an early thumbs up but notes that it isn't clear whether or note they will charge for the service.

Since sites will be using their own affilate codes, booBox won't be able to directly take a cut of transactions. It isn't clear if they are launching this for free, or charging for the service. Pending their position on that, as well as details on how difficult this will be to integrate with websites, I'm giving this an early thumbs up. This may be quick acquisition bait for Amazon or eBay.

However, it seems pretty clear on the website that they do not plan to charge for use of the tool.

How Much Does It Cost To Use The BooBoxes?
For you, nothing. We want you to earn a lot of money with your blog.

There are some affiliate merchant tools like GoldenCan that utilize a 4th click feature where every 4th click is actually GoldenCan's affiliate link but the BooBox website does indicate any kind of 4th click implementation. Maybe they are planning some other feature or service they will charge for. Otherwise it is unclear how BooBox will profit from the implementation of their service.

The idea of linking graphical images to windows offering an array of products from an affiliate retail site is one that might work for some blogs. Michael Arrington said "I imagine Gadget and fashion sites, in particular, will be looking into this quite closely." One possible downside with an image-linked affiliate tool is that blog readers may not be used to clicking on images so they may ignore them. The product window will also need to be extremely easy for users to close so blog readers are not annoyed by it. More coverage of the new BooBox tool can be found on Techmeme.

From :BloggersBlog

YouTube to Share Ad Revenues With YouTubers

2007-02-04T21:58:00.000+02:00

The BBC reports that YouTube plans to share in ad revenues with Youtubers.

The system would be rolled out in a couple of months, he said, and use a mixture of adverts, including short clips shown ahead of the actual film.

YouTube has more than 70m users a month and was recently bought by Google.

The offer applies only to people who own the full copyright of the videos that they are uploading to the YouTube website.

The BBC article says any pre-roll ads will be short -- about 3 seconds short.

The audience of the YouTube website will not have to put up with overly long "pre-roll" adverts. Mr Hurley said a clip of three seconds length was one of the options, although the details had not been worked out yet.

Three seconds doesn't seem very long but YouTube has to be careful -- it won't take much to turn off users and send them flocking to one of the many competing video sharing sites. It is even possible that no form of pre-roll will work no matter how short it is. Check out Ad Brite's In Video product for a much different video advertising strategy.

YouTube cofounder Chad Hurley made the announcement at the World Economic Forum in Davos. You can see the video here (thx Jeff Jarvis). In the video Hurley also talks about YouTube's plans to protect the copyrights of music and video publishers.

The BBC also notes that Revver, another video sharing site, already has a revenue sharing model in place. Metacafe is another video sharing site with a producer rewards program. Break.com also pays for some content according to a Lifehacker post. Down the road some of the video sharing websites may offer to pay more for exclusive access to content. Until then many video content producers will probably try out multiple video sharing websites to see how and where they can earn the most revenue from their videos.

Web Celebrities

2007-02-03T23:59:00.000+02:00

1.

Jessica Lee Rose (lonelygirl15)
YouTube Star
Age 19

For millions of online fans she was first known as Bree a 16 years old American teenager.Bree,unusually self-possessed and literate, recorded her private thoughts on a digital camera and posted on YouTube under the nickname Lonelygirl15.
On August 26 the videos were exposed as fakes and Bree was outed as 19 years old New Zealand born actress with the name Jessica Rose.
But that served only to increase the fame and she became the poster child for the success of YouTube.Now she is landing movie deals and recorded a commercial for UN.

lonelygirl15.com

How To Market Your Blog in 2007

2007-01-30T15:14:00.000+02:00

For those bloggers out there who have decided to start their blogs, or launch their blogging careers, in 2007 I salute you — and present to you with 41 ways to kickstart your marketing efforts. Kick back, grab a cold one, and check it out. And if, in a year’s time, you’ve cracked the Technorati 1000, don’t forget where it all began! :)

Get Your Own House In Order

Write well, write consistently, don’t give up: All the marketing in the world won’t help you if you have a lame-duck blog. In your search for more traffic, more promotion, and more publicity, never forget it starts with great content — and needs to continue with great content on a regular schedule. There’s no question that maintaining quality and regularity is difficult while you’re starting out, particularly if you’re time strapped … but hang in there, because if you sacrifice this, all of your marketing efforts will be for naught.
Become an expert on something: Develop a keen interest, continue to read and write intelligently, and after a while, your experience will grant you this informal title; bloggers will seek you out, your reknown will grow, and it will be easier to be noticed, linked to, and get cross promoted (see below)
Design is more important than you think: Your mother’s right — first impressions count, and they can count for cash money. If you’re serious about blogging, don’t stick with a n unaltered top10 Wordpress theme no matter how cool you think it is. You want to separate and elevate yourself from the blogging masses, and its impossible to do if you look exactly the same as them. Easy to say, hard to do, but absolutely necessary if you don’t have the money to pay for a private ground-up theme: learn CSS and a photoeditor of choice, and learn to tweak your theme yourself, so that your blog looks professional, stands out, and screams “yes, I am worthy of your attention!”.
Get Your SEO On: An entire post in and of itself — get your own domain name, host your own blogging software, enable permalinks, use create keyword rich headlines, create unique title tags, enable trackback and ping functionality, ensure your blog pings pinging-services.
Publish full feeds: A controversial topic. Publishing full feeds puts you at the mercy for content scrapers who will scrape your RSS feeds and repost your content, create traffic, and reap adsense bucks. On the other hand, some data suggests that it can also increase your traffic, and a few pundits swear by it. Feed subscriptions are critical; get your feeds burned through Feedburner so you can track how many are subscribing. People who subscribe to feeds rarely unsubscribe, and every single feed subscriber is a potential source of traffic to your blog.
Do interviews with other bloggers: Score interviews with newsworthy individuals (who may be linked to newsworthy content), to create link worthy content, but more importantly, create news on THEIR blog to get back to YOUR blog.
Break important stories: See the post on how to find news. Long story short: if you have an interest in an area, it is still possible to do this as long as you’re willing to put in the time and energy to find stuff. Benefit: being picked up by A-list blogs, mainstream news outlets and more.
Have a contest: Or, have regular contests, which encourage participation and buzz in your corner of the blogosphere.
Publish original research: If you’ve got the time, start with a question, try and figure it out with the data available, and “publish it”. For fun, I asked myself “How many of the Top 30 Diggers actually blog?” And I just went through their profiles and created a table of how many blogged. I then talked about what it meant, and tried to answer the question “why?” [answer: not many do blog, its because being a top 30 digger requires a huge time investment]
Put out Press Releases: Particularly if you have something new, unique, or particularly important to say (such as an important story, or research)
Work your long tail: A tip based on your SEO efforts; there is a free service called Hit Tail that will analyze the search terms leading to your blog traffic, and yank out high quality key words you should be focusing on that you might not immediately think of. This can help you focus your future posts as you are already getting traffic for those key words.
Answer your comments, in your comments, and off blog: Of course you have enabled comments on every post, right? So, when you do get comments, answer as many as humanly possible, and if its an interesting enough issue or question, contact the poster directly for a friendly follow up. Treat every potential poster as a potential subscriber to your feed, and a future friend and contact.
Spend time to create links and trackbacks: In every post spend as much time as you can to create outbound links to relevant and high linking blogs; many blogs automatically have trackbacks enabled, so in their comments section they will have a link back to your blog. If its a highly trafficked and ranked blog, this can mean traffic BACK to your blog, and it can draw notice from the author themselves — because, let’s face it, we’re all vain in a fashion, even A-listers, and we’re all interested in who is linking to us.
Get Your MyBlogLog widget and work it, work it, work it (in a nice way): MyBlogLog — know it, love it, and embrace it. Since its been acquired by Yahoo, it has the potential to explode all over the blogosphere. The two sentence run down is that it offers a free widget that enables you to build a free community around your blog, and to easily see which other bloggers have been to your blog. You can “add” friends, and generate traffic, but more importantly, your own network of like-minded blogging colleagues in a way that is relatively easy and efficient. Just go easy on the unsolicited messages. I wrote a complete review over here.

Getting the Word Out

Join a blog carnival: Where every blogger who joins one blogs about a topic, then each blog gets promoted. Here’s an index of blog carnivals to get you started.
Join blog network: Between 9rules, b5media, and others, there is networking potential, income potential, and a link-a-palooza waiting for you (through the linkroll as every member may have to link to every other member) if you’re able to get into one. Goes back to tip #1 — don’t forget to keep up your blog.
Participate in forums: Forums with tons of pages, huge lists of members, and a responsive community are an easy way to not only connect with other individuals, but an opportunity to tastefully demonstrate your expertise and a link back to your blog
Participate on larger blogs in comments: Like number three, except that by participating directly in another blogger’s comments you a) get their recognition and b) get the recognition of the blogging community. Also, here’s a tip: try and be one of the first few commenters on heavily trafficked sites to get recognized — most people won’t read past the first 10-20 comments. Here’s another tip for traffic: IF (and ONLY IF) you have posted something relevant that is pursuant to the ongoing conversation and IF the blog has a commenting policy that will allow you to do so, post a link back to a post on your own site (”hey guys, I wrote about how we can solve this problem! — check out the link over here, but let me summarize it for you … “). Sometimes you’ll be surprised at how much traffic comes back.
Join Blogburst: Blogburst is a type of “blog network”, which syndicates content across American newspaper’s websites, such as USA Today and Reuters. That’s right, you could get a post syndicated on Reuters. Trust me — it can happen . Highly ranked inbound links + traffic + bragging rights to your mom that your post got featured in a newspaper. Not too shabby. Also on the upside, they have a new revenue sharing scheme. The bad: read their terms of service carefully — you give up certain rights when they republish your content, and the revenue sharing works on the top100 publishers only.
Participate in Darren’s contests: He has enough of them, and often publishes links to all of the participants.
Submit to blog directories: So people can find your blog.
Submit to Google sitemaps: Really part of “get your house in order”, but when you do, Google will be able to find you so much easier; translation — more Google juice, more traffic, higher rankings faster. Tip: for Wordpress fans, this plugin is particularly useful.
Submit to article directories: You might want to submit your favourite posts to article directories, where they will enable you to have a biobox / blurb with a link back to your own blog. Again, demonstrating your expertise, and moreover, the article might get picked up in a ezine or another blog, leading to more traffic and more inbound links.
Get interviewed: If you’ve demonstrated your expertise, or have done something newsworthy, or reported on something newsworthy, try and get interviewed. As long as its done in a fair way (doesn’t need to be a completely puffpiece) by a site or blogger with some reknown, its more traffic for you.
Get listed on a news aggregator, or blog aggregator: Like Techmeme for technews, or Tailrank for blogging news. Hint: some news aggregators will actually accept submissions if you ask them nicely; double hint: try and get listed by linking to a top story within your first 100 words.
Create free stuff for yourself and give it away: Like ebooks, digests of your favourite posts, pdfs, and so on. Make sure to include a link back in the document, back to your site.
Create free stuff for other people: the same, let them distribute it, get a link back.
Pay for pub: Efficient means of using your cash is to buy targeted Adwords, or keywords in Yahoo’s advertising network; you could get other bloggers to write about you using PayPerPost or ReviewMe; or you purchase text link ads through Text-Link-Ads.com

Connect, Connect, Connect

Make friends with other bloggers: Ridiculously simple, but its true. Benefits of “networking” (making friends) include more mentions on other blogs, more requests for interviews, more partnerships in future deals, more “adds” into their MyBlogLog network, more “ads” into someone else’s blogroll (and therefore links back to your blog) — it goes on and on.
Guest blog: Offer to do it for free, and you’ll be able to demonstrate what you know to an entirely new audience. Gives you great credibility, and of course, most will allow a courtesy link back to your own blog. A free foot-in-the-door to some communities as well.
Volunteer, intern, scut-monkey your way into a blogger’s graces: Maintaining a highly trafficked site is a lot of work. Offer to volunteer your time with menial behind the scenes stuff (moderating posts, acting as a bird dog for news) for free and with a smile, and you’ll get a foot-in-the-door with the blogger, their network, and future opportunities.
Get hired: You never know which blog organizations are looking to hire new bloggers; again, an opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge, meet new bloggers, and open tons of professional “doors” … because now that you’re getting paid? You’re a “pro-blogger”, mate!
Network in person: Find other local bloggers using services like Meetup, and see if they’re literally getting together to commiserate about blogging or their topic of blogging. If you’ve got the time, there’s nothing that makes an impression as actually meeting someone in person. Tip: bring a business card; Another tip: if you don’t have any, make some; yet another tip: if important people are going to be there, really — try and go. Remember, you didn’t know me before Problogger, but I met Darren in person at a function in Toronto that played a part in me writing this. Think about that.
Join virtual groups: Through Yahoo Groups, Usenet, and more; then bring the conversation off the group with emails and instant messages. Be friendly, be helpful, and it will pay dividends.
Cross promote: Once you’ve gotten to know people, you can kindly remind them to promote posts that you’re particularly proud of; or, vote for your submissions on Digg or your social bookmarking site of choice. Reciprocate.

Make Social Media Work For You

Facebook: Its a social network that has opened its doors behind its college beginnings. Anyone can sign up. Start connecting with old friends and colleagues, like any other social network. But, unlike other social networks (as far as I know), you can import your own blog’s RSS feed, so that your connections can see what you’re blogging. Who knows where that might lead? Update: Myspace also allows this function, i believe.
Join Helium: Helium is a new site that is actively looking people to head new categories of content. Think a paid “about.com” — for its authors. If you have a particular interest that isn’t yet served on Helium you might want to check it out; besides giving you cash for content, it’ll also demonstrate your authority in a topic, and you’ll be able to leverage Helium’s own traffic for your own blog through a linkback on your profile.
Yahoo Answers! A similar idea; but this time, you’re answering questions that people are posting. Yahoo! is quite careful about spam, however, and including a “signature” is a dicey proposition at times. There is a fairly sophisticated registry and voting system that tries to prevent “gaming”, but given how much traffic yahoo! answers gets, AND its inclusion as a separate result area in Yahoo SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) it might be something worth looking into.
Create a Squidoo ~~Page~~ Lens: On a given related topic to your blog; participate in the Squidoo community; Squidoo has a ton of traffic, and you could funnel traffic and tastefully include links to other relevant sites and perhaps your own blog.
Use MySpace Marketing: Far beyond the confines of this post, but in a similar fashion to Squidoo, the idea is to capitalize on the HUGE amount of traffic MySpace gets (some interesting thoughts over here). Create a profile, create relevant content and links back. Start adding friends. Comment on your friends space. Join groups. Start enjoying the trickle back traffic.
Get Dugg / Netscaped / Reddited / Stumbled upon: Whole articles (and sites) are written about the intricacies of socially bookmarking. Here’s a tip: focus on creating great content, make friends on these sites if they allow you to, and submit your stories judiciously. ‘Nuff said (for now).

Widget Madness

2007-01-25T19:36:00.000+02:00

The New York Times has an article about the emergence of widgets. It certainly isn't the first article about widgets but it provides a good introduction and a great title -- "Some Bling for Your Blog" -- which is really what widgets provide for blogs. Some bloggers, like Pastor Hyatt, may already have a widget addiction.

On his Web log, Pastor Hyatt, the leader of the Evergreen Community in Portland, Ore., has woven in widgets, or mini-applications, that show a selection of book covers from his personal library, present the most recent posts from some of his favorite blogs, and serve up random quotes from the television show "Arrested Development."

"You start small, and it's kind of like an addiction," said Pastor Hyatt (his blog is at bobhyatt.typepad.com). "TypePad has a whole section of widgets, and they're adding more all the time," he continued, referring to a popular blog-hosting service.

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, about 12 million Americans now maintain a blog. Widgets are elements, often in the left or right columns of a blog, that enhance its usefulness or aesthetic appeal. (The term "widgets," confusingly, can also refer to compact applications that operate on a computer's desktop.)

"Widgets pull content or services from some other place on the Web, and put it into your personal page," said Fred Wilson, a venture capitalist at Union Square Ventures in Manhattan.

Some of the widgets mentioned in the Times article include Blufr, StreamPad, ChipIn, MyBlogLog, LibraryThing, Mini-Clock, Plazes.com and ClustrMaps. Widgets have been around for quite a while. It is just a catchier name for what used to be called blog add-ons. Before that the snippets of code that you could paste on your homepage was often simply called "free stuff" for your website. There has already been discussion earlier this year that 2007 could be the year of the widget. There was even a conference about the widget economy last November called WidgetsLive -- it was produced by Niall Kennedy and Om Malik.

Widgets have been growing over the past two or three years. They have followed the growth of blogging and social networking. Widget companies need people with profiles and blogs to embed their snippets of code in order to thrive. Widgets make it easy for bloggers and social network users to add photos, videos, music selections, weather forecasts, clocks, quizzes, maps, friends, polls, chat, emoticons, stock charts, sports scores, video games and other content to your blog. There are also widgets for your desktop but it is the blog widgets that seem to be generating the recent excitement. Yahoo has Yahoo Widgets; Google offers Google Gadgets and Microsoft has Microsoft Gadgets. Wordpress offers sidebar widgets for bloggers using its blog publishing service. Typepad also has a widget gallery.

There are already a few blogs dedicated to widgets like Widgetoko, Widgets Lab, Widgets Blog, Sexy Widget, LogDirect, Wordpress Widgets, Snipperoo, Flying Seeds, StickiWidgets, eHub, Mashable and Widgify. A couple other widget blogs -- Widget Daily and Widget World -- have not updated recently.

WidgetBox.com and Snipperoo Widget Directory are websites that can help you find widgets. You can see our shorter list of blog add-ons (widgets) here. Hot Scripts provides a list of remotely hosted web scripts. HowToWeb.com's Widget Search also helps people find widgets.

Widget Buzzkill: Before you get too excited about widgets Valleywag has listed five reasons why the "level of enthusiasm for these modest add-ons -- services such as Blinkyou and Coolmyspacecomments which can provide photo galleries or other baubles to otherwise basic web pages -- is entirely out of proportion to their importance."

Will Click Fraud Shrink Blogger Revenues?

2007-01-25T19:31:00.000+02:00

The San Francisco Chronicle (SFGate.com) reports on a click fraud study by Outsell Inc. that indicates click fraud is a serious and growing problem. Here are a few details reported by SFGate.com.

Clicks believed by advertisers to be fraudulent: 14.6 percent
Money paid by advertisers for bogus clicks: $800 million (2005)
Advertisers who said they were victims of click fraud: 75 percent
Advertisers who said they reduced click-based advertising or plan to: 37 percent
Revenue lost by Google, Yahoo and other Web sites, as a result: $500 million
Advertisers who request refunds because of fraud: 7 percent
Average refund: $9,507

Chuck Richard, vice president of Outsell, told SFGate that pay-per-click advertising is destined to be replaced.

"Pay per click is a really rudimentary advertising -- a baby step -- and it's destined to decline and be replaced by other advertising methods," Richard said.

Some blogging for money bloggers could be hurt financially if pay-per-click advertising is reduced because of the click fraud threat. Most bloggers don't make much money from AdSense or any other third-party advertising program. The exception are blogs with very high traffic and a targeted audience. If the Outsell study is accurate then some bloggers relying on pay-per-click money could be in for a shocker when their monthly checks shrink. However, it probably would not change blogging much overall because many bloggers are not in it for the money.

Potential Employee Blog Dangers

2007-01-25T19:30:00.000+02:00

Internet Business Law Services has a detailed article explaining the risks employee blogs have on employers and ways employers can lessen this risk. The article includes the following list of employee blog dangers.

Defamation Claims. Defamation claims represent a growing threat to employers as a result of the increased popularity of employee maintained blogs. To the same extent that an employer may be liable for defamatory publications of its employees, an employer may also be liable for an employee's defamatory private blog on topics that fall within the scope of the employee's employment or within the employee's actual or apparent authority. Even if an employee's statements are outside the scope of employment, an employer may find itself named as a defendant in a defamation suit if the blogging employee is the supervisor of the defamed individual or the employee's blog references the employer. The chance that an innocent employer may be a defendant in the latter situation is increased because bloggers often blog anonymously, leaving the employer as the only readily identifiable potential source of the defamatory blog.
Harassment Claims. An employer may also be subject to liability for sexual harassment and hostile work environment claims based on an employee's private blogging activities, if a supervisor authors inappropriate comments about an employee or if the employer had knowledge that an employee authored harassing blogs about a co-employee. For example, in Blakey v. Continental Airlines, a pilot filed a hostile work environment claim against Continental Airlines arising out of derogatory comments posted about her on a pilots' electronic bulletin board operated by a third-party service provider. The court held that Continental Airlines has a duty to take effective measures to stop co-employee harassment when it knows or has reason to know that such harassment is part of a pattern of harassment taking place in settings related to the workplace. The Blakey decision confirms that employer liability may extend beyond mere employer-provided blogs.
Economic Damages to Employers. An employer's business itself may be harmed by defamatory comments on employee blogs. Employees may use blogs as a means to anonymously defame employers, supervisors, or other employees which may harm employee morale, result in a loss of good will with patrons, or damage the employer's public image. In the late 1990s, for example, Southern Pacific Funding Corporation filed for bankruptcy after its stock prices fell from a high of $17 to $1 - a spiral triggered by blog postings claiming that company executives were covering up multi-million dollar embezzlement, exaggerating economic forecasts and putting the company up for sale.
Disclosure of Confidential Information. Blogging activities may also result in the unauthorized release of company information and data into the public domain. Whether published by a disgruntled employee or a loyal yet naive worker, a blog that discusses an employer's confidential, business or financial information may have far-reaching and harmful consequences for the employer, such as the dissemination of trade secrets. Similarly, the unwanted release of business or financial information may result in securities law violations, such as unlawful release of inappropriate information in advance of an initial public offering.

These employee blog dangers, such as disclosure of confidential information, can also be done using older technology like paper or phones but blogs do have the potentially to rapidly spread information on the Internet. While these dangers are all very real the article did not list the risks of a company having no employee blogs at all. One growing risk of having no employee blogs is that you might be missing out some beneficial exposure for your company to bloggers and new customers. To be fair the article is really talking about the risk from personal blogs written by employees and not corporate blogs employees write for the company.

AOL Releases Tons of Personal Search Data

2007-01-25T19:28:00.000+02:00

What are they thinking at AOL corporate headquarters? Over the weekend AOL placed an enormous amount of private customer search history onto the Internet. Customer search records for 650,000 customers from the last three months were released onto the Internet. A total of 20 million search queries were released. This was a huge free gift for marketers and spammers but a big slap in the face to AOL customers. AOL usernames were replaced with a number but some of this information might be able to be tracked back to a real person who made the searches. For example, people often search their own names in search engines. Elliot Black shows that a huge amount of social security numbers were included in the AOL data. Some more examples of the search keywords and phrases that could cause privacy problems can be found here. More bloggers covering the topic can be found here and here.

People should not enter their social security numbers into search engines but AOL also should not be releasing information to the public that contains them. People also search for career, financial, health and relationship information online that they want kept private. This is a great way to get people to fear using the Internet and search engines. AOL's poorly conceived public data release also comes during a time period when many services are launching where privacy is a huge concern -- online word processors and spreadsheets, desktop search engines, instant messenger software, web-based email, etc. AOL's reckless behavior could make people less likely to use these kinds of services.

Update: Reuters reports that AOL has admitted the enormous data release was a screw-up.

"This was a screw up, and we're angry and upset about it," Andrew Weinstein, an AOL spokesman said. "It was an innocent-enough attempt to reach out to the academic community with new research tools, but it was obviously not appropriately vetted, and if it had been, it would have been stopped in an instant."

Unfortunately, since the data was released mirror sites have popped up and the file has been download countless times. It is now impossible to make this customer search data private again.

China Wants Real Names of Bloggers

2007-01-25T19:27:00.000+02:00

China is moving closer to a ban on anonymous blogging. Reuters reports that the Internet Society of China is recommending that bloggers use their real names when they sign up for a blog account.

The Internet Society of China has recommended to the government that bloggers be required to use their real names when they register blogs, state media said on Monday, in the latest attempt to regulate free-wheeling Web content.

The society, which is affiliated with the Ministry of Information Industry, said no decision had been made but that a 'real name system' was inevitable.

"A real name system will be an unavoidable choice if China wants to standardise and develop its blog industry," the official Xinhua news agency quoted the Internet Society's secretary general, Huang Chengqing, as saying.

"We suggest, in a recent report submitted to the ministry, that a real name system be implemented in China's blog industry," Huang said.

The article says bloggers can still use a pseudonym but only after registering their real name with the blog service. Word of Mouth thanks Google and Microsoft. Outside the Beltway compares it to the U.S. military's recent crackdown on blogging.

Spin Thicket

2007-01-15T19:24:00.000+02:00

Spin Thicket is a new site launched by Idea Grove that is styled after sites like Fark.com and Fazed.net. The focus of Spin Thicket are topics like advertising, marketing, media and politics. Some of the link categories include Cool Campaign, PR Nightmare, Blatant Propaganda, Bad Pitch and Politics As Usual. The launch post was posted on the Media Orchard blog.

Spin Thicket, as should be apparent, is patterned after one of my favorite Web sites, Fark.com, along with similar sites like Fazed.net and others. The difference is that it's specifically geared to people with an interest in the image-making professions -- advertising, PR, marketing, journalism, and politics.

Spin Thicket has no agenda. It's as much for people who read PR Watch as PR Week. It's as much for fans (or haters) of Michelle Malkin as Kos. It's as much for people who see bias in the NY Times as Fox News. Throw it all in the wash and turn on the spin cycle; that's the idea behind Spin Thicket.

Tech Blogs Bump Conservative Blogs From Technorati Top Ten

2007-01-05T15:33:00.000+02:00

he top blogs on the Technorati 100 have changed significantly since this time last year. Technology blogs have basically bumped conservative blogs like MichelleMalkin.com and Instapundit.com out of the top ten. Looking at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine listing for the Technorati 100 for January 1, 2006 you can see this list for the top ten slots.

January 1, 2006 Technorati 100

Since last year four blogs have fallen out of the top ten: Malkin's blog has dropped to #13, Instapundit has plummeted to #25, Crooks and Liars is at #14 and Dooce is ranked #37. Today, five tech blogs (Engadget, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Lifehacker, Ars Technica) and one multi-purpose blog with a tech slant (Boing Boing) are in the Top Ten along with two liberal political blogs, Post Secret and a foreign blog.

January 1, 2007 Technorati 100

One might have thought the Technorati 100 would become more mainstream over tiem but instead we find technology blogs topping the top of the list. It still takes a considerable number of inbound links to get into the Top 100. Gothamist, which is currently ranked 100, has 2,877 inbound links according to Technorati.

Kineda Launches Blogger Ranking Widget

2006-11-25T19:35:00.000+02:00

Kineda has launched a linkbait widget that spits back your blog rank and a funky pink badge. The concept is similar to the other tools that determine a blog's ranking -- like the Blog Juice Calculator (more on Blog Juice here). However, Kineda's tool does not use as many pieces of data as Blog Juice. Kineda's tool just uses Technorati and the authority groupings David Sifry provided in the most recent State of the Blogosphere to determine whether a blogger is in the A-list, B-list, C-list or D-list.