e enjte, 5 korrik 2007

3 Quick And Easy Ways To Provide Your Website With Fresh Content - Every Time!

Written by Fabian Tan

The phrase 'content is king' has been said so many times that is a cliché. Yet it is true! The Internet is purely an information based media. Users look for it while publishers create content. Having regularly updated and fresh content is one of the toughest challenges of online entrepreneurs. So how do you automate your content creation as much possible?

Here are 3 amazingly simple ways...

1) Use RSS on your website. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS displays fresh RSS feeds every time your user visits your website. It does this via an RSS aggregator. To do this, you just have to subscribe to an RSS syndication service, and copy the source code over to your website. This is one of the easiest ways to create instant content every time, with or without your presence!

2) Run an article depository. Allow users to submit articles that may be published in this depository. This is another great way to create content that you did not write! You'll be ensured of a great supply of content, since people like being published!

3) Create an interactive forum. A forum allows users to make posts and chat with each other about relevant topics. Again, this is user-created content at it's best! You'll be guaranteed of a fresh supply of constantly updated content every single day, and the search engines will also love it!

So there you have it. These strategies are being used by Internet website owners everyday. Not only does it provide useful content for users, you will also nip your content creation problem in the bud!
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About the Author:

Fabian Tan is the author of the free 51-Page Report:

"Murder Your Job: How To Build Cash Sucking Autopilot Businesses In 30 Days Or Less!"

Head over to MurderYourJob.com to get your free copy now before it's gone!

e martë, 3 korrik 2007

More Ever-lasting Habits of Highly Successful Webmasters

Written by Daniel J. Briere

I didn't see this one coming, but the popularity of my article entitled Ever-lasting Habits of Highly Successful Webmasters caused me to take a look and see if there were any other "habits" I could share that are used by successful webmasters. And indeed there are, as I share here today:

1. Making Use of SEO

Every good webmaster should use search engine optimization techniques for their website. At first glance, this can seem to be an intimidating area to get into, and when you don't have a very large budget, you may think that it is impossible to use SEO to your advantage. However, there are several free, and/or low-cost, tools on the Internet that will help you out. In addition, websites such as PromotionWorld and SEO-News offer a wealth of content on the subject of SEO. And even Google offers up some candid advice on giving your site an advantage in its results pages. Yes, SEO work takes a large investment in the way of time, but the results of continuous hard work will pay off - there are many companies today that do not use any form of paid advertising because all of their website traffic comes exclusively from non-paid search engine links. I suggest that you give search engine optimization a try for awhile, and see what happens.

2. Exchanging Links with Related Websites

Much has been said lately about the benefits of links, both outgoing and incoming, on the overall marketing success of a website, especially since Google's Jagger update. The common perception has always been that you need as many incoming links to your website as possible, and that you should spend all of your time exchanging links with everyone you can think of. While I could write a whole article on the myths of links and link exchanging (and I probably will at some point), I'll try to stay basic here. The main thing to know is that if the site that links to you - or the site you are linking to - has nothing to do with your website, it will do you no good, and may even penalize you in search results. Exchanging links can not only bring you actual traffic, but a link to your website can also act as a "vote" for you in the search engines' eyes. So choose your link exchange partners wisely. Do not use link farms. Do not blanket the Internet with links to your website. Instead, choose quality, non-competing, content-related websites that are willing to link to your site, either for a fee, or in exchange for a link from your website back to theirs. A strategic link-sharing campaign will be of much greater value to you in the long run than a poorly-planned "blitzkrieg".

3. Examining (and Conforming to) Customer Needs

Of course, you do know what your customers want, don't you? So often, entrepreneurs jump into business without even asking potential customers what they really want. This mistake can be deadly, and certainly won't earn you any friends. And just because you are currently successful does not mean that this will always be the case. Constantly ask your customers what they think about your products and services. Get their suggestions. And if a customer complains to you, or offers up a suggestion on their own, take it to heart - they have gone out of their way to communicate with you, meaning they want some sort of resolution for the situation; this is a golden opportunity to keep them as a customer for life.

4. Keeping Things Simple!

My own company, GlobalWebBrands, made the near-deadly mistake of "over-expanding" in two-thousand-and-five. I will always remember last year as the year that we tried too hard. Things have since settled down, but I will never make that same mistake again.

Please allow me to offer any startups or struggling businesses a very important piece of advice: when you start in a certain line of business, stay in that line of business! Until you have actually been there, you cannot imagine just how much trouble you will get into by rapidly expanding the number and type of products and services you offer, or the number of payment methods you offer, or the number of brands you have, or in the cases of some - the number of physical locations you have.

Diversify - ah yes, the golden word of the past fifteen years. Everybody has been chanting it: business 'gurus', personal investment 'gurus'. Folks, these people are not really gurus at all; rather, they're goons looking to make a little bit of money!

Customers today want simplicity. They want stability. They do not want everything from one person. Wal-Mart is failing, and they are proving that you just cannot be everything to everybody. Become the expert in your field, and not the Wal-Mart. Be one thing to everybody, and you will be successful beyond your wildest dreams.

In other words: Keep it simple, stupid!
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About the Author:

Daniel J. Briere is the CEO of Netpreneur Host, a Web hosting and domain registration company for Webmasters and Internet entrepreneurs.

e hënë, 2 korrik 2007

Ever-lasting Habits of Highly Profitable Webmasters

I've got a two-part article series by Daniel J. Briere that I think you will find as informative and inspirational as I did.

This article details a few simple things that seasoned webmasters do that allow them to pull ahead of their competition. As a savvy web hosting customer and webmaster, these are steps you can take yourself.

1. Off-site Backups - It amazes me whenever I hear of a website hosting user complaining about "that great twenty-dollars-a-year website host I was using that disappeared and took all my files with them!" This is a consistent complaint in the industry, and it is so easily prevented. How do savvy webmasters avoid losing their files? Keep a backup either at your physical location, or on a web server in a different geographical region than the one your website is hosted on.

2. Independent Domain Registration - The second most-common complaint is a domain name that is held hostage by a web host, either because of misunderstanding between the client and the host, or because of an underhanded host. How can you prevent this? Register your domain name at GoDaddy.com, Netsol, Register.com, eNom, or one of the other domain registrars. Then, just point the domain to your hosting account. This way, if your host goes under or you decide to cancel your hosting account, you won't have to worry about losing your domain.

3. Good Client-Host Host-Client Relationship - As lame as it may sound, it helps to have a positive relationship with your host. You need to trust them 100%, and they need to trust you 100%. If this is not the case, neither one of you are benefiting the other, and it is a relationship that should be broken off.

4. Regular Website Updates - Want to know what irks users more than anything else? A website that never changes! Even if you have only five minutes a day to devote to managing your site, you should have some little tidbit of information that changes on a daily or weekly basis. Site visitors like to know that there is really a living, breathing thing on the other side of that website, and one way to convey this is by showing change.

5. Prompt Reply to Emails - Well, maybe this irks users more than anything else. It's probably a toss-up between points four and five. But the point is this: When someone sends you an email, they expect it to be answered right away. So answer it right away! If you can't do this, hire someone who can. One of the best things you can do for your company's image is to answer every single customer inquiry in a super-fast manner. Not only does this impress your customers, it also shows them that you truly care.

Follow this advice, and I guarantee you'll see more success from your web-based business!

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About the Author

Daniel J. Briere is the CEO of Netpreneur Host, a Web hosting and domain registration company for Webmasters and Internet entrepreneurs.

e diel, 1 korrik 2007

Auctions are a great way to make money online with some investment

Online auctions have incredible potential to make money online. The most popular of course is eBay. But there are others you might not be aware of such as Amazon.com Auctions, Yahoo! Auctions, uBid, and eBid. Since most of my experience is with eBay, but I could write a whole other article about it, I'll briefly talk about it.


Many people have made their fortunes on eBay. There was actually an article in this month's Entrepreneur featuring success stories and eBay tips from successful eBayers. I would link you the article but it doesn't seem to be online. There is, however, an article with 51 eBay tips from PowerSellers and eBay instructors. A tip that isn't included in either article is one that is very useful not just for auctions, but when researching niches in general. You can find out all the latest, hottest items out there in any category on eBay. First and foremost, there's eBay Pulse. It shows you the most popular searches on eBay. There is also a monthly report called "Hot Categories Report" and it comes as a pdf file. It has all the hottest items in each category all laid out for you. Copy and paste it: http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/hotitems.pdf


I'll get into more detail on how you can use this in more ways than one another time because I don't want to turn this into a 5000-word eBay article. So how do these guys make money? Some of them go wholesale. Some use dropshippers. Finding good wholesalers is difficult, though, because many are just "middle men." Middle men in the context of wholesaling are companies that buy items from a real wholesaler or the manufacturers, then raise the prices a bit and pretend they're a wholesaler. The result is diminished margins on your end. You can also use dropshippers. When I used eBay I loved dropshipping. If you don't know, dropshippers have the item you're selling and when you make a sale, they ship it for you on-demand. No need to fill your garage with boxes of Bluetooth headsets! If you've ever bought an electronic item like an mp3 player or a headset or similar item and it unexpectedly came with a manual written in Cantonese or Mandarin, your seller probably used a dropshipper! Anyway, there are many places you can go to find cheap items to sell. Two good places are Overstock and Liquidation. If you want to get into finding manufacturers, a good place to start is Alibaba.

e shtunë, 30 qershor 2007

Advertising to Make Money

Advertising is huge on the internet. Some people hate it, others (like you after you read this) love it. If you remember my posts about traffic, this is one of the easiest ways to make money with lots of traffic. Some of you out there avoid ads like the plague, but I assure you that a lot of people do click and are making publishers a lot of bank. Here are the major ways you would be compensated through online advertising:


  • Pay-Per-Click (PPC) / Cost-Per-Click (CPC)

  • Cost-Per-Impression/Thousand (CPI/M) / Pay-Per-Impression (PPI)

  • Pay-Per-Action (PPA) / Cost-Per-Action (CPA)

  • Individual Advertisers



  • CPC is the most common form of advertising these days. Ever notice those links on websites with "Ads by Google" somewhere pasted around them? Those are Adsense ads and they are CPC. Every click generates the site owner some money. Each click could generate a few cents, to tens, to hundreds(?) of dollars. There are restrictions, such as you can't have a page with just ads, you can't click on your own ads, and you can't coax, cajole, or otherwise entice your visitors to click on the ads... otherwise you can say bye bye to your account. From what I hear it's almost impossible to get unbanned from Google Adsense. But Google isn't the only CPC advertiser out there. Yahoo! got into the CPC game with Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture), and Microsoft very recently (2006) has been using Microsoft adCenter, which works the same way as the other two. There are also other similar ad services, like AdBrite. And don't forget banner ads that are PPC. In most cases, these are contextual ads, meaning they change dynamically to match the page's content.


    CPM, or Cost-per-Thousand (M is the Roman numeral for 1000), is also fairly common. You get paid per impression or more commonly, per 1000 impressions. An impression is a "view," so for every 1000 people who view the ad, usually a banner, you get paid a certain amount. Obviously, this is a great idea for high-traffic websites, although in my experience, it was never as profitable as CPC or affiliate marketing.


    PPA is great if you're the advertiser. Publishers are paid per action, which usually means signing up for something or using a search engine. Clicks don't cut it with PPA. It's harder to make money because surfers are generally a lazy bunch, but you're usually paid higher per action (high-paying keywords in PPC are the exception).


    You can also get money directly from individuals for ad placements. This is actually a lot more common than most people think. Say you have a site with over 4 million unique visitors a month. A banner in a hotspot on your front page would be an attractive piece of virtual real estate for an advertiser. In most cases you would agree to a fixed price and keep the banner in place for a certain length of time (weeks to months). I wonder how much money MySpace is getting to host those ads at the top of every user page...