Tips and Tricks: Internet

Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts

'Net bosses set to approve .xxx for porn sites

'Net bosses set to approve .xxx for porn sites - The company that oversees Web addresses is expected to give the go-ahead on Friday for the creation of a .xxx suffix for websites with pornographic content, company officials indicated on Thursday.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees the Internet on behalf of the U.S. government, has in the past resisted creating a .xxx generic domain name system akin to those for .com and .net.

It has in recent years repeatedly rejected a request by U.S. company ICM Registry Inc. to sign off on the .xxx domain.

But members of ICANN’s board have argued that in order to maintain neutrality in dealing with domain name assignations, it should create .xxx and allow websites with sexually explicit content to start using the suffix on a voluntary basis.

“If expedited due diligence results are successful, then staff will proceed into contract negotiations with ICM (over .xxx),” ICANN’s general counsel John Jeffrey told delegates at a week-long ICANN meeting in Brussels on Thursday.

Online pornography is a vast industry. Figures collated by Internet Pornography Statistics suggest more than $3,000 is spent on Internet pornography every second, with “sex” the number one search term in the world, accounting for 25 percent of all Internet searches.

With an estimated 370 million pornographic websites on the Internet, .xxx could become one of the largest domain name repositories, as big if not bigger than .com.

But some members of the adult entertainment industry oppose .xxx, saying it will invite censorship and harm their business. Members of the American religious right also oppose its creation on moral grounds.

ICANN is expected to make a formal announcement on its decision on Friday.

(Reuters Life!)

Technology use up in kids, parents losing ground

Technology use up in kids, parents losing ground. Like many working parents, Beverly Flaxington armed her daughter with a cell phone in fifth grade, when the time came for her to venture out alone. At first, it was a great way to stay in touch.

That was then.

Now 13, Samantha's grades have slipped drastically and she's obsessed with texting, Facebook and her laptop, sometimes falling asleep in her clothes clutching her phone. When her texting exceeded 2,000 messages a day, her parents shut off the function from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. on school nights, and Sam "just went nuts."

"She slammed doors. She accused us of being overly conservative when all of her friends are able to do things at night," said the mom in Walpole, Mass. "She didn't speak to me for three days. She broke things. You're left with the choice of do I make her a leper because she's not a part of this or do I just spend all of my time fighting."

Smart phones, MP3 players, laptops and other devices are the air kids breathe - perhaps too deeply, judging from a new study that shows children ages 8 to 18 devote an average of seven hours and 38 minutes a day consuming some form of media for fun. That's an hour and 17 minutes more than they did five years ago, said the study's sponsor, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. And they're champion multitaskers, packing content on top of content for an even heavier onslaught.

"This is a game changer," co-author Donald Roberts said during a panel discussion when the survey of 2,002 young people was released Wednesday. "We're really close to kids being online 24/7."

Kids, the survey showed, now spend more time listening to music, playing games and watching TV on their cell phones than talking on them. Perhaps more surprising: Only about three in 10 said their parents have rules about how much time they can spend watching TV or playing video games.

Not all parents consider all that time spent on technology a bad thing. Craig Kaminer's 19-year-old and 16-year-old boys have laptops, high-speed Internet connections, Xbox, HDTV, iPhones, video chat, iPods, GPSes, DirectTV with DVR, Kindles and digital cameras.

"They're connected to the Internet, each other and us from the second they wake up until they go to sleep," said Kaminer, of St. Louis. "In general, they're very grounded and handle the balance well."

Others, though, find balance elusive. Things changed for Betsy Tant in Knoxville, Tenn., when her 11-year-old daughter received an iTouch for Christmas.

"She's obsessed with it all of a sudden," said Tant, 40. "That really caught me off guard. She's had a computer for a while, but now she wants to check her e-mail all the time. We've had to set limits."

Tant considers herself an exception in the limit-setting department, refusing to provide her daughter text service, for instance. Many parents she knows don't bother.

"It gets them out of their hair, I think," she said.

With so much temptation - Internet-equipped mobile devices, better home connectivity, video gaming online and off, social media and TV-like content on any device - many parents say schoolwork is suffering.

The researchers warned that further study is required to link media use with any impact on the health of young people or their grades. But 47 percent of heavy media users among those surveyed said they earn mostly Cs or lower, compared with 23 percent of light users. The study classified heavy users as consuming more than 16 hours a day and light users as less than three hours.

Flaxington, 49, learned in November that her teen went weeks without turning in homework in math and other subjects, so they arranged for her to complete assignments at the end of the day at school, where cell phones are banned and computers weren't available.

"It was impossible to get her to focus at home," Flaxington said.

Dr. Russell Hyken, a therapist who specializes in tweens and teens, is seeing a growing number of young patients with obsessive interest in gaming and computers, including a high school junior who took to urinating in a bottle while playing online and a college kid who shaved his head to save time on hair washing in the shower so he could return to the computer more quickly.

Both, he said, were sent to residential treatment programs for those and related problems.

"It's almost an obsessive-compulsive desire to be the best. One client had to be in the top five scores on a Web site at which half a million people were playing," Hyken said. "They're using it as a way to escape reality."

Marci Gerwe in Nashville, Tenn., considers herself among the lucky: Her boys, ages 13 and 15, abide by family rules. No laptops after 10 p.m. No video games during the week unless they're exercising at the same time. And absolutely no texting during meals.

Still, she says she has watched their habits change dramatically in the last two years.

"With texting and Facebook, I'm seeing there's a whole loss of ability to interact or talk on a more personal level, especially for my older one," she said. "There's a lot of confusion over what people mean."

And many parents report less than stellar success with imposing restrictions on mobile devices and computers. Young people are genius in finding ways around them.

Beth Shumate, who lives near Dallas, said her 13-year-old and 15-year-old boys are so obsessed with the massive online quest game RuneScape that she locks the laptop, keyboard and mouse in her car at night. Before she took that step, "I caught my 13-year-old playing it at 5:30 in the morning."

Hyken said there's no way around the need for parents to take charge. He suggests setting up a central location far from bedrooms at night to plug in all devices, and holding firm on no TV or computer use after certain hours, with absolutely none during meals. Encourage extracurricular activities away from home, where use of mobile devices would be impossible, like sports.

"It's never too late to start but much harder when they're 15 or 16," he said. "If a kid is making good grades and is in some extracurricular activity or working part-time, and they're nice to their parents, you've won the game." ( washingtonpost.com )

This is absolutely delightful news

This is absolutely delightful news - The nonprofit body that oversees Internet addresses approved Friday the use of Hebrew, Hindi, Korean and other scripts not based on the Latin alphabet in a decision that could make the Web dramatically more inclusive.

The board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers — or ICANN — voted to allow such scripts in so-called domain names at the conclusion of a weeklong meeting in Seoul, South Korea's capital. The decision follows years of debate and testing.

The decision clears the way for governments or their designees to submit requests for specific names, likely beginning Nov. 16. Internet users could start seeing them in use early next year, particularly in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts in which demand has been among the highest, ICANN officials say.

"This is absolutely delightful news," said Edward Yu, CEO of Analysys International, an Internet research and consulting firm in Beijing, emphasizing that the Internet would become more accessible to users with lower incomes and education. Yu spoke ahead of the approval, which had been widely expected.

Domain names — the Internet addresses that end in ".com" and other suffixes — are the key monikers behind every Web site, e-mail address and Twitter post.

Since their creation in the 1980s, domain names have been limited to the 26 characters in the Latin alphabet used in English — A-Z — as well as 10 numerals and the hyphen. Technical tricks have been used to allow portions of the Internet address to use other scripts, but until now, the suffix had to use those 37 characters.

That has meant Internet users with little or no knowledge of English might still have to type in Latin characters to access Web pages in Chinese or Arabic. Although search engines can sometimes help users reach those sites, companies still need to include Latin characters on billboards and other advertisements.

Now, ICANN is allowing those same technical tricks to apply to the suffix as well, allowing the Internet to be truly multilingual.

Many of the estimated 1.5 billion people online use languages such as Chinese, Thai, Arabic and Japanese, which have writing systems entirely different from English, French, German, Indonesian, Swahili and others that use Latin characters./AP

Google Ditches PageRank in Webmaster Tools

Google Ditches PageRank in Webmaster Tools. Google has quietly gotten rid of PageRank in Webmaster Tools. Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable points to a thread featuring an explanation from Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Susan Moskwa.

"We've been telling people for a long time that they shouldn't focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it's the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true," says Moskwa. "We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it."

Barry Schwartz Search marketers are wondering why Google tells people not to focus on PageRank and removes it from Webmaster Tools, but still keeps it in the Google Toolbar. "Back in 2007, Google wanted feedback on removing PageRank from the Toolbar," says Schwartz. "I felt it was a good idea but the idea died out. Google cannot remove PageRank from the Toolbar, it is too much of their branding. No matter how much Matt Cutts and the Google search quality and webmaster trends team want it removed, I cannot see Google's executives allowing it."

Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim says the role of PageRank has been reduced to nothing more than a "comfort blanket for SEO Noobs." He adds, "I say this, with a high degree of confidence that most experienced SEOs pour over the data in Google Webmaster Tools, whereas those new to the industry likely let the toolbar be their only guiding light."

He also notes, however, that PageRank data can still be useful. For example, it can be a good indicator of a site's behavior in Google's index. "Any green means 'go.' No green, means there's something to investigate," says Beal.

Despite this usefulness though, Moskwa pretty much closes the case on Google's position on it. In fact, she even points to a FAQ page about crawling, indexing, and ranking, which says that webmasters shouldn't even bother thinking about it. It also says that PageRank is just one of over 200 signals that can affect how your site is crawled, indexed, and ranked.

The conundrum facing publishers

The conundrum facing publishers. With their advertising revenue drying up, newspaper publishers spent much of the spring and summer debating whether to cut off free online access to some of the material they run in their shrinking print editions.

It looks like the talk will turn to action this fall, when some large newspapers are expected to put up Internet toll booths.

They'll be testing readers' willingness to pay for information and entertainment that mostly has been given away online for the past 15 years. That happened largely because most publishers could afford to subsidize their Web sites with profits from their print franchises. But now those profits have crumbled, just as the prices for online ads are tumbling, too.

A recent study by the American Press Institute found 58 percent of the responding newspapers are considering online fees. Of that group, 22 percent expect to introduce the fee before the end of the year. The findings drew upon 118 interviews of newspaper executives in the U.S. and Canada.

The free-to-fee transition likely will occur in tentative steps rather than bold leaps that would lock all online content behind a pay gate. Publishers are taking this cautious approach because they are still trying to devise online payment plans that will generate more revenue without alienating too many of their readers.

For instance, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, a newspaper with a weekday circulation of about 206,500, recently launched a Web site that includes coverage and commentary on sports, politics and entertainment that isn't in its printed product or free online edition. The service costs $36 annually or $3.99 per month.

Other newspapers that have talked up subscription plans remain reticent. Newsday of Long Island, N.Y., still hasn't rolled out fees for its Web site, even though the newspaper's owner, Cablevision Systems Corp., said it was going to do so this summer. Newsday spokesman Paul Fleishman declined to comment.

The conundrum facing publishers: It's hard to figure out how much, if anything, readers will be willing to pay. Internet search engines and digital communication tools such as Twitter and Facebook ensure people still will be able to find and share plenty of free content.

But running totally free sites hasn't been paying off for most newspapers. Even before the online market began to slump this year, Web ads were generating only a small fraction of the revenue that print ads do. The disparity has made publishers realize they need more ways to make money on the Internet, but few of them have been able to figure out how.

"This is like a four-dimensional chess game. It's really complex," said former newspaper editor Alan Mutter, who is now an industry consultant when he isn't writing "Reflections of a Newsosaur," a free blog.

The Associated Press also has been part of the online fee movement. The not-for-profit cooperative, which is owned by newspapers, is setting up a system that will track the usage of its stories. It's a crucial piece of a plan that could improve the AP's ability to run ads next to news stories and perhaps even lead the AP to charge readers to see major scoops or other "premium" content.

"The value of content has to rise," said Tom Curley, the AP's chief executive. "We are all looking how to make that happen."

Even as newspapers mull just how much to commit to charging readers, a competition is already brewing to provide the technology to enable it.

Four of the world's largest technology companies — Google Inc., Microsoft Corp., IBM Corp. and Oracle Corp. — have expressed an interest in developing an online payment system for publishers. Mutter also has been promoting his own approach to Internet fees, a concept he calls ViewPass.

Separately, more than 1,000 newspapers and magazines have signed nonbinding letters of intent to join an Internet fee system being assembled by Journalism Online LLC. It intends to begin collecting money on behalf of publishers before winter.

Backed by former leaders from Court TV and The Wall Street Journal, Journalism Online wants to run the cash register for a digital news smorgasbord. Readers will be able to buy stories from a wide range of participating publishers without having to repeatedly provide their credit card numbers and other personal information at each Web site. The content would be distributed on the Web and electronic reading devices, with each publisher dictating its own terms. As a commission, Journalism Online plans to keep 20 percent of the revenue collected through its system.

Although he isn't jumping on board with Journalism Online, News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch is sold on online fees.

News Corp. already owns the newspaper industry's most successful Internet subscription model in The Wall Street Journal, with more than 1 million customers who pay for online access. The annual rates vary from $103 for an online-only subscription to $140 for a package that includes delivery of the print edition too. Now, Murdoch hopes to make online fees pay off for his other publications, which include the New York Post and The Times of London. Murdoch hasn't provided a timeline or specifics about his plans, however.

The New York Times is considering charging online readers a membership fee, with more details promised in the fall. It's a road the newspaper has been down before, only to reverse course after management concluded that the online subscription it required to read the Times' top columnists was crimping its Internet ad sales. The subscription service, which cost $50 per year, was scrapped in 2007 after a two-year run. It had 221,000 customers when the Times tore down the toll booth.

These days, the printed versions of newspapers are suffering so much that publishers appear determined to find a way to get readers on the Internet and mobile devices to pay something, even if it's just a few bucks per month. The question is mainly which publisher will jump off the sidelines first.

"There's still a lot of `wait-and-see' attitudes out there," said Randy Bennett, senior vice president of business development for the Newspaper Association of America. "I think a lot of publishers would like to see some empirical evidence of what happens to other publishers who dip their toes into the water."

In a worst-case scenario, imposing online fees would drive away so much of a newspaper's Web audience that publishers would lose more in Internet ad sales than they would gain in new revenue.

In a best-case scenario, newspapers charging their online readers would still retain enough of the audience for their Web sites to remain attractive marketing channels. What may be even more important, the fees might make readers more willing to pay for the print editions if the same content isn't on the Web for free, especially if print subscriptions include free or discounted Web access.

Preserving the value of their print franchises is one of the main reasons for publishers to charge for Web access. That's because newspapers still get most of their money from print ads, which accounted for $35 billion of the industry's revenue last year. Newspaper print ads are on pace to fall below $30 billion this year.

Online ads, in contrast, contributed just $3.1 billion in revenue last year. And while that category had been growing until this year, it wasn't fast enough to offset the erosion in print ads. From 2005 through 2008, the industry's annual revenue from print ads dropped by $12.7 billion. Meanwhile, newspapers' annual revenue from online ads increased by just $1 billion.

Journalism Online's co-founder, Steven Brill, believes newspapers can still hold on to most of their online readership by charging for only their best work — information, images and audio unlikely to be found anywhere else on the Web. This presumes publishers will be able to prevent the content from being copied and pasted or even just summarized at other sites, a potentially daunting task.

Some publishers still have no intention to charge for online access because they have concluded online fees are bound to backfire on the newspaper Web sites that adopt them, Mutter said. The American Press Institute study found 44 percent of the respondents don't think Internet fees will provide a significant lift to newspapers' future revenue.

"The guys who hold off (on Internet fees)," Mutter said, "could get a have a huge windfall in new traffic." [ AP ]

Annoy Visitors At Your Website

Easy Ways to Annoy Visitors At Your Website. this is a satirical look at usability. Although it reads like a "Do" list, it is really a "Don't" list. If you follow it literally, your site is history.

1. Place some (or all of) your content in a small frame and force your visitors to read the content through that window. Don't worry about what constitutes "small" here, since most of the time, even if you create a big frame, it'll be considered too small by most visitors. This trick has a high annoyance value since your visitors have to view the information through that small little box and scroll continuously to see the text while the rest of the browser window is filled with information they don't really want to read at the moment. With this strategy, visitors cannot resize or maximize the window to make their reading more efficient or pleasurable. This method will allow you to frustrate those hapless souls and, as a bonus, make them leave your site.

2. Disable the right click menu of the browser. Nevermind that people need the right click menu for many purposes, and that they can access the same functions through the main menu bar even after you've disabled it. After all, if your aim is to annoy, you might as well make their visit to your site as unpleasant as possible.

3. Play background music when they arrive at your page. If that's not enough of an annoyance, make sure you loop the music so that the visitors are plagued by it continuously while they are on your page. If you're feeling particularly sadistic, place automatically-playing music on many (or even all) pages of your site. You don't have to worry about choosing a horrible tune - choose your favourite piece if you like. Since one man's meat is another man's poison, any sort of music tends to annoy most visitors.

4. Make every link on your site opens in a new window when your visitor clicks on it. That is, put a target="_blank" to every link. This will annoy visitors since every time they click on a link in your site, a new window or tab will open. Another benefit of this technique is that it makes your site look amateurish.

5. Force your visitors to navigate your website using Flash. That is, place all your content in a Flash file - text, pictures, links, etc - even if Flash is not ideal for such content (a straight HTML page is best for those types of content). Make sure that visitors who don't have the Flash plugin enabled or installed cannot see anything or do much on your website. This effectively drives away all mobile users, a group of users that is growing in size, as well as cripple your visitors who have come to expect certain facilities to always be available in their browsers (such as the BACK key and the ability to bookmark specific pages) when they visit websites. Now they will be forced to work through the more limited Flash plugin of their browser with whatever subset of features you deign to provide. In fact, exclusively using Flash for your site content might even help you to drop to the bottom of search engine listings too, thereby reducing the number of visitors to your site. After all, if you don't have visitors, you don't have to think of new ways to annoy them.

6. Load your site with pop-up windows that open when your visitor reaches your page as well as when they leave the page. In fact, if you want to annoy them even further, open a pop-up window when they click on links on your site.

7. Reduce the navigational usability of your website. Don't put site maps or navigation bars with shortcut links to pages that your visitors will usually want to go such as the "Download" page if you're a software author. If you can annoy your visitors by forcing them to read whole pages of your text before they can find a link to move on to do what they really want to do, so much the better.

There you have it. Seven quick ways that you can use to annoy, frustrate and irritate your visitors. They may even be effective in driving them away permanently. There are undoubtedly many other ways, but the methods listed above are easily doable by new webmasters.

WARNING: remember, the above is satire. It is a "reverse tutorial" if you will. You don't want to follow it.

[ thesitewizard.com ]

Search Engine Traffic Percentages

Search Engine Traffic Percentages. A recent post in a discussion list suggested that Google is becoming the Microsoft of search (dominating web search as Microsoft dominates PC operating systems). So I decided to research a theory - one I'd developed about search engine traffic. I dug into the traffic stats on three of my own sites and those of several clients that I monitor traffic for.

While this case study is tiny and certainly NOT conclusive, I'll wager it has strong parallels across small business web sites. The conclusions drawn are admittedly opinion, based on very limited statistics, but those are all that matter to those of us seeing tiny search engine traffic from supposedly monstrous portals.

The participating clients from this case study ALL submit their sites to paid inclusion programs from AltaVista, Inktomi and AskJeeves/Teoma. Two use LookSmart LookListings and all but one are listed in YAHOO! Directory. All are listed in the Open Directory Project and all submit to smaller industry specific directories and smaller search engines. One uses Overture PPC on a limited basis, while none use Google Adwords. All were optimized by yours truly and each represent varied industries in retail, professional services and one is an information site only, is non- commercial and sells nothing. Each of them ranks well at most search engines, but see little traffic from those good rankings.

The research I did confirmed what I'd only assumed before by backing it up with solid numbers. On my own sites and those of clients that I reviewed, Google sends over 70% of all search traffic to every one of those domains in every case. This includes Google foreign variants, Google Directory and Google image search (image search numbers are tiny). The foreign Googles send tiny numbers of visitors from non-English speaking countries, but English speaking Google traffic from the UK, Canada and Australia drives more traffic than either Yahoo or MSN according to traffic statistics of those sites reviewed for this case study.

With the highest difference between compared search engine traffic of 8 percent variation between studied domains, I've compiled a list of average traffic delivered by search engines for those sites to which I have access to traffic logs. The Google percentages are inclusive of those portals that use Google results such as iWon.com and Yahoo web results. Direct Yahoo results are for sites listed in their directory.

Google 74% Yahoo 14% MSN 9% Ask 2% All other SE's 1%

I'm concerned, not that Google is too big, but that the other search engines just don't get it, don't deliver it and don't want to give it up. What is IT? Traffic!

I attribute this to one thing. Those search engines don't want to give up visitors to FREE search results. They are happy to send visitors off if they gain income from that traffic in either PPC ads or advertisements of ANY sort. Knowing that those free results will lose the "eyeballs" of searchers, they struggle to deliver both PPC ads and sponsor ads that most closely approximate the search phrase entered by the searcher. Thankfully, all have dropped banner ads from the SERP's (Search Engine Result Pages).

They cannot stand the idea they will lose the visitor and seek to entice them to click on something, anything that'll earn them income. Even if it means delivering NON-relevant results to entice the searcher to use a different search phrase seeking to gain more relevant results, thereby viewing more ads and additional PPC ads the visitor may click on to deliver income to the portal.

I believe these search engine traffic percentages are a direct reflection of relevance delivered by those search engines. The more relevant the results, the more likely they'll send a higher percentage of traffic to your site.

74% of search traffic referred: Google offers their own PPC results, offers no outside banners, Amazon links or effluvia related to the search. They deliver relevant results and visitors love that, then leave freely to return next time they want relevant results.

14% of search traffic referred: Yahoo offers Overture PPC results (which they'll soon own), Amazon links and sponsorship links, along with that "Also search in: Yahoo! Shopping" link at the bottom of every result page, hoping you'd rather shop than to actually find what you were searching for!

9% of search traffic referred: MSN offers Overture PPC results, "Broaden your Search" (LookSmart) links, "Shopping Results on MSN" links and a sponsor text link at the bottom of every page as though you didn't really want to find anything but their ads.

2% of search traffic referred: Ask offers more paid results than any other search property with 5 sponsor links at the top of every search result page and TEN links to further paid sponsor results in a "Related Searches" footer to every result page. Ask sponsors provide search ads. Doesn't Ask understand that most searchers see right through this?

Relevance at each of these search engines declines further with progress down the list of traffic referred. Is it any wonder Google is the leader? They lead in relevance, therefore in search engine referred traffic. All any engine need do is provide relevant results with limited sponsors and no excessive "shopping" or multiple source PPC links and book links. If they do that, they'll compete effectively with Google. More relevant search engines deliver the traffic to web sites, NOT to their advertisers.

I have a bold suggestion to make to MSN as they develop their new in-house search engine. Drop the ads, sponsors, book links, shopping links and resist the temptation to bring back banner ads. Searchers want to find what they are looking for and easily see through transparent attempts to sell stuff to them and keep them from leaving. Let go of searchers by delivering highly relevant search results while clearly labeling limited numbers of sponsor or PPC ads! The result will be devastating to Google by giving searchers a real alternative that they may prefer using!

YAHOO! has a huge task ahead of them - to integrate the recently acquired Inktomi, Overture (and Overture's recent acquisitions Altavista and Fast/AlltheWeb) search technology into their search mix. Clearly they've plenty of technology now and won't need Google when they add all these ingredients to the search soup they are cooking up. Yahoo will possess all the best technology and must only decide to provide relevant search results WITHOUT shopping links, excessive sponsor links, book links and other clutter to the SERP's. I suggest that if they show only limited Overture PPC ads and clearly labeled sponsor ads along with the relevant results - that they can also threaten Google's lead.

If the re-born, re-cooked and massively complex YAHOO! or the "new" MSN resist the temptation to send searchers to advertisers rather than sending them to relevant results, then we will have three very strong competitors in the search market. The numbers of search referrals will level off at about 30% per competitor and Google will have to fight to gain back their current dominance. If YAHOO! or MSN seek to favor advertisers over searchers, Google will maintain dominance - clear and simple.

I encourage all webmasters to do their own comparisons of traffic referrals now and then again when YAHOO! and MSN weigh in over the next year with their "new" offerings. It could get very interesting if there were some true competition in search, so referred traffic from YAHOO! and MSN starts to deliver to webmasters rather than advertisers.

Success and Money

Blogging For Success and Money. Blogging seems to be the prime topic of everyone's discussion these days. Blogs appear to grow more popular by the month, as they continue to expand across the internet. A major reason for this increase is due to the prosperous benefits that come along with blogging. When done correctly, implementing this popular method of online communication into your website could bring forth much success. Many of the internet's most prominent businesses realize the importance of a blog; some say it is a must. This powerful tool is much more dynamic than the traditional website. What has made it so attractive is the convenience and freedom of user interaction. It is practically an open forum where individuals get to express their opinions and receive a wide range of feedback If you are familiar with the concept, then blogging may seem simple. While starting a blog is no difficult task by any means, turning yours into a money-making machine requires a dedicated effort.
Managed Search Engine Submission - "Now With More Engines"

Monetizing your Blog

In order of a blog to generate income, you must develop a strong strategy for monetizing it. There are several different venues which you can employ to monetize your blog:

* AdSense
* Advertising space for banner ads
* Donations
* Affiliate programs
* Paid third-party product reviews / pushes
* Selling your own services or products

Deciding on what monetizing strategy you employ depends upon the goals for your blog and its target audience. Each target audience will respond differently to your different monetizing strategies; for example, a humanitarian blog audience may be more receptive to donations, while a cooking blog audience would click through your banner ads for an organic recipe cookbook. You should develop an initial strategy, keeping your targeted audience's psychology in mind. The design and layout of your blog should reflect your monetizing strategy; for example, if you will be employing AdSense, then you may want to use a column layout with clean colors and lines. You want to ensure that your monetizing efforts are optimized in the layout of your website. As you progress with your blog, do not be afraid to test the water and adjust your monetizing strategies based upon feedback and performance results.

Generating Traffic

You may have the best blog and monetizing strategy in the world, but without traffic, your bank account will not grow. To begin making money with a blog, one must first generate traffic. Establishing a stable list of loyal readers has been easier for some than others, but it is the key to running a successful blog. When you are first beginning your blog endeavors, it may seem daunting to generate traffic when there is not a single visitor to your website. However, with a bit of strategy, you can quickly build traffic and a returning base of readers.
Write What You Know

You should consider writing your blog on a topic of your specialty or passion. The more you know about the subject matter of your blog, the better; you will be able to establish yourself as an authority and readers will come to learn from you. Content and traffic have a very strong symbiotic relationship.

Remember what you learned about in advertising class in college? Viral marketing is the most effective form of advertising - period. If people like your blogs, they will refer it to their friends, and in the internet, friends can add up to millions of people.
Regularly Updated Content

Yes, you have heard it before, and you will hear it again - content is king! Readers will flock to your blog if you provide them with insightful, unique, and relevant content that is updated regularly. In addition, when you consistently publish quality content that is rich in keywords, the search engines will frequent your site to update their indexing, which then leads to more traffic coming into your blog. The better, more frequent posts you publish, the more other sites will link to you, thus again bringing in more traffic and increasing your search engine rankings.
Managed Search Engine Submission - "Now With More Engines"

Linking With Related Blogs

Linking is another way to generate traffic and add to your blog's success. You want your site to be viewed by as many readers as possible.

Exchanging links with another blogger is a great way to make that happen. Surf the web for similar blogs that relate to your specialty and host the same audience you are seeking. Linking relative sites on your page also displays credibility to readers.

They will view you as a main source, referring other interested parties to your blog for that relative info. Friendly links also improve search engine ranking and increase the chances of someone stumbling across your blog. All novice bloggers looking to make money should know this: success is hard work. Devotion and great patience is required if you want a blog to work for you. The most comforting fact is that many people are taking advantage of this tool and creating mass revenue. While nothing is promised, applying sound search engine optimization strategies to your blog speaks volumes in the way of success.

Combining this with good old fashion communication can help return profitable results in the long journey with your blog.

Tips and Tricks to Optimize Your Website Content

Tips and Tricks to Optimize Your Website Content. We all know that search engines are very important for the success of a website. Almost 85% of new internet users find good websites by using a reliable search engine like Google.

Search engines like Google fight to index thousands of pages of content found on the internet in the right order depending on several characteristics.

Search engine algorithms may vary with time but you can ensure that you have a website that is filled with SEO optimized, original content so that your page ranks as high as possible on the search results.

The following explains best 5 tips about SEO optimizing your web page:

Appropriate landing page

Apart from finding a great niche and product, it's also necessary to have a targeted landing page to encourage paying customers. And one great tip I've found is that to ensure your landing page does not sell anything at all!

In fact, it should give a valuable resource away for free like a niche e-book, newsletters, mini-course and even tele-seminars that will educate the customer about the value of your product. Not only does it raise customer awareness but it also encourages customers to buy what you will eventually show them!

Fresh content

Fresh and new content updated daily is one way to ensure that Google keeps returning to your page again and again. Once the search algorithms are trained to realize that the content on your page changes daily and is completely original you are more likely to see your website higher up in page rankings.

SEO optimizing!

You also have to ensure that the content is SEO-optimized. This is possible by using Keywords that are recognized by search engines as related to your product.

Fill your content with an average of 2% of Keywords per page of 100 words. That means your page should run an average of 10 Keywords in a page of 500 words. Do not put in more than that as search engines tend to classify high keyword pages as spam or duplicated content.

Create a lot of internal links where a single article links to another archived articles in your blog or the site itself. This will increase site recognition and page rankings.

Keeping them simple

Don't flood your site with complex codes like Flash, Ajax, etc. Of course, the site will look great but this just tends to slow down your site and as a result might prevent search engines from crawling and indexing your website properly.

Arranging the Keywords can make or break a website!

Start strong by adding your keywords in the first paragraph and the very first line and the first line of the last paragraph. Search engines like this as it makes it easier for them to classify the article, site and content.

Try to use lateral semantic indexing where you use the same keywords in the form of plurals or related variations. The more the number of variations you put in, the better the page ranking.

There you have it.. The most important thing of all is to take action.

Step by Step To Use Facebook for Business

Step by Step To Use Facebook for Business, Facebook’s not just for keeping tabs on friends and filling out quizzes — it can also be used as a highly effective business tool. It’s great for marketing your products, landing gigs and connecting with your customers.

Here are 32 ways to use Facebook in your business.

Manage Your Profile

Fill out your profile completely to earn trust.

Establish a business account if you don’t already have one.

Stay out of trouble by reading the Facebook rules regarding business accounts.

Install appropriate applications to integrate feeds from your blog and other social media accounts into your Facebook profile. (Although you should be careful before integrating your Twitter feed into your Faceboook profile, as a stream of tweets can seem overwhelming to your contacts.)

Keep any personal parts of your profile private through Settings.

Create friends lists such as “Work,” “Family” and “Limited Profile” for finer-grained control over your profile privacy.

Post a professional or business casual photos of yourself to reinforce your brand.

Limit business contacts’ access to personal photos.

Post your newsletter subscription information and archives somewhere in your profile.

Connect and share with others

Obtain a Facebook vanity URL so that people can find you easily.

Add your Facebok URL to your email signature and any marketing collateral (business cards, etc.) so prospects can learn more about you.

Post business updates on your wall. Focus on business activities, such as “Working with ABC Company on web site redesign.”

Share useful articles and links to presentation and valuable resources that interest customers and prospects on your wall, to establish credibility.

Combine Facebook with other social media tools like Twitter. For example, when someone asks question on Twitter, you can respond in detail in a blog post and link to it from Facebook.

Before traveling, check contacts locations so you can meet with those in the city where you’re heading.

Research prospects before meeting or contacting them.

Upload your contacts from your email client to find more connections.

Use Find Friends for suggestions of other people you may know to expand your network even further.

Look for mutual contacts on your contacts’ friends lists.

Find experts in your field and invite them as a guest blogger on your blog or speaker at your event.

Market your products by posting discounts and package deals.

Share survey or research data to gain credibility.

Use Facebook Connect to add social networking features to your web site.

Suggest Friends to clients and colleagues — by helping them, you establish trust.

Buy Facebook ads to target your exact audience.

Read up on Facebook Beacon to see if it might be useful for you.

Use Network, Group and Fan Pages

Start a group or fan page for product, brand or business. Unless you or your business is already a household name, a group is usually the better choice.

Add basic information to the group or fan page such as links to company site, newsletter subscription information and newsletter archives.

Post upcoming events including webinars, conferences and other programs where you or someone from your company will be present.

Update your group or fan page on a regular basis with helpful information and answers to questions.

Join network, industry and alumni groups related to your business.

Use search to find groups and fan pages related to your business by industry, location and career.

How do you use Facebook for business?

Develop a Content for Your Professional Blog

Develop a Content for Your Professional Blog. Many web workers have their own blogs, which are usually shared with colleagues and clients. But a good professional blog is not just a matter of just setting up your blogging platform, typing whatever comes to mind, and clicking “Publish.” Most professional blogs would benefit from a well-planned content strategy. So, how do you develop one?

Know your objectives.

Your objectives will determine all the choices you make regarding your blog, from the design to the content. What do you want to get out of blogging? Do you want to communicate your ideas to a broader audience? Are you planning to use it to attract more clients? Be clear about your objectives before planning your content.

With that said, it’s possible to have too many objectives. Narrow your focus on one or two objectives to keep things simple. Otherwise, you’ll spend too much time on your blog, and not enough time on your work.

Determine scope and themes.

What topics are you going to write about? A good starting point would be about your industry or the work that you do. This is something that you have a lot of knowledge and experience with. For example, graphic designer David Airey discusses the different aspects of graphic design on his blog — from how to work with designers to logo design to typography. These are all topics that are relevant to his work, and writing about them displays his expertise.

But this doesn’t mean you should limit yourself to writing about one topic only. As long as you can make connections among varied topics, you won’t confuse your readers. For example, Chris Guilleabeau successfully writes about travel, writing, goal setting and even marketing. His unique angle is about “unconventional thinking,” so all his posts use that approach, even if the topics covered seem broad.

Use an authentic voice.

How you write is just as important as what you write. If you try too hard to sound like someone else, your posts are going to seem contrived. Because of this, it’s best to stick with writing the way you talk. Write the way you’d discuss the topic with a friend or close colleague. Don’t use words that you have to look up in the dictionary. By sticking to your own voice, you’re letting your personality shine through. Also, it’s easier!

Schedule.

When and how often you post is important. This sets reader expectations and allows you to plan for posts accordingly. For my professional blog, I only update it once a month. This may sound extremely infrequent, but the theme of my blog is about low-noise productivity. It would be hypocritical of me to write about that if I posted twice a day. I’d prefer that my readers spend their time working on exciting projects and putting my advice into practice.

Choose your format.

Although blogging was originally a written medium, you don’t have to limit yourself to written content. As an artist, Michael Nobbs has illustrations and comics as the highlight of his posts, and he also uploads podcasts. Choose the formats that you’re most comfortable with.

Make conscious improvements.

If you have an existing blog, look at your archives from last year. I bet there’s at least one post that makes you cringe. As the years go by, you’ll gain more professional experience and become a better communicator. Make a conscious effort to reflect this improvement in your writing (or video blogging, or podcasting).Your audience might not notice it at first, but when someone — including yourself — looks at your track record, the improvement will be obvious. And who doesn’t want to work with someone who keeps getting better at what they do?

Here’s the secret: you don’t have to obsess about your content strategy, especially when posting regularly becomes a habit. You just have to do what feels natural to you. But taking time to prepare your objectives, intentions, schedule and scope allows you to clearly set out and remember what is natural for you, before you get sidetracked with what other people are telling you to do with your blog.

Do you have a professional blog? How do you plan for your posts?

Sony CEO Does So Get The Internet

Sony CEO Says He Does So Get The Internet. Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton fired back at critics roused by his statement that nothing good has come from the Internet with a lengthy column published on the Huffington Post. For all the backpedaling in the piece, Lynton’s defense remains peppered with exaggeration, slippery slopes, and heavy-handed rhetoric, and still concludes the Internet is a major threat to every kind of content creator.

Lynton’s piece is remarkable also for what it doesn’t have: the credibility the entertainment industry and Big Content as a whole has lost. No reasonable person would support or condone piracy, which is the issue at the heart of Lynton’s argument. Stealing is wrong, we all can agree.

With the same amount of reason, though, a person can think the invasiveness, extremism, and disproportionate influence the industry prefers and wields is also wrong, and it is its vested interest that robs the industry of its credibility.

At the heart of it, the industry is propping itself up on the piracy issue and pressuring open-pocketed politicians to achieve ends counter to their own customer base’s ideals. People care less about the pittance a few pirates cost the industry and more about how much their government will allow itself and its constituents to be bullied and scared into submission to the will of the industry.

Here’s what the people don’t want and should vehemently fight: ISPs sniffing their packets on behalf of government or the entertainment industry to root out a few lawbreakers by violating the whole’s right to privacy; ISPs and entertainment companies deciding based on their own interests what websites and content subscribers have access to; content companies, or any industry or government entity (industry and government are one and the same anymore) squashing fair use and freedom of speech because of copyright law abuse or to quash dissent; copyright lawyers wreaking financial ruin on minor offenders (their parents and grandparents) via litigation over a few dollars worth of pirated content; entertainment industry lawyers snaking their way into the DOJ, Congress, and now the Supreme Court (Sotomayor’s private practice life was as an intellectual property lawyer).

If letting a few pirates, or a bunch of teenagers, beat the system prevents all of that, well then who, other than the entertainment industry and Big Content, cares? Lynton is wrong when he says there are no guidelines in place or rules of the road regarding copyright. There are plenty of them, and violation carries stiff, stiff penalties. Sony, and the entertainment industry as well, are not the victims they’re making themselves out to be.

Lynton opens with the story of how X-Men Origins: Wolverine was leaked onto the Internet a month in advance and was illegally downloaded four million times. First, it sounds like a big internal problem that the movie was leaked in the first place. Second, Wolverine made $87 million at the box office despite that. Everybody still gets rich. Tell me again who suffered? One might argue that was great free promotion.

Lynton would say all artists, writers, actors, musicians, all content creators suffered. One might also say they already suffer by making a fraction of the money their art has made for these companies. Maybe the Internet, via new self-publishing and self-marketing venues, makes it easier for them to get their fair share? Yeah, that would be a problem for the industry, wouldn’t it?

This argument could go on and on, and I could do a bullet-point-style rebuttal of Lynton’s comments, which are designed to get Sony ahead and nobody else. As a writer (yeah, in case you wondered, I’m working on a novel—and I think it’s really stinkin’ good), I know I’ve got copyright law on my side to protect my work. When Sony buys the movie rights (see, I’m an optimist), I may even let them screw me over to further my career. Whatever happens, we’ll both need to evolve, but neither of us needs stronger copyright laws. The copyright laws are already stacked in our favor. [ http://www.webpronews.com ]

Tips and Tricks