Starting out – beginner to expert quickly
All of us have to start from scratch in most areas of life. If you find that web design for example is complex, then online website building tutorials will be a great starting point for this. However, if you are frightened to show anyone that you are indeed a total newbie, don’t fret as there are ways for you to go from beginner to expert in quickly and painlessly.
Before you read this, if you are hoping to do this with no endeavor on your part, think again. To be well-informed on any topic you need to spend some time getting familiar with it.
Often a practical approach works best, for example to become a competent web designer, you need to get crafting up some simple websites to get familiar with coding techniques. Initially you will make many mistakes, but after a period of time things will start to make sense and ultimately the prize will be yours.
Besides following a practical method, there is a lot you can do to become more conversant on any subject.
The first method – Google Searching (Doh!)
I Google for any information any that may to give me some answers to the subject I’m researching. A large percentage of the time I find my answers on the spot. It might not work on the first query I do, but refining the search or trowling through some returned links point me to valuable tutorials or answers to get what I was looking for on my subject.
Ask Google and you shall be given enlightment!
Second method – asking a guru for help is often a great way to get your answers and get it explained to a comprehensible manner. But before you ask, make sure you tried everything possible to learn the answers without help.
One common theme the experts recommend is the conviction that too many people are too lazy to help themselves, so most people turn to the expert instead to find the answer the lazy way. This isn’t the best way to learn.
No expert will turn you down if you can prove to them that you tried find an answer to a problem by first trying to Google it, or at least spent hours trying to figure out a technical problem. Besides, most experts love to share knowledge.
Third method - Read industry books
Visit the local library or purchase some good books on your topic of interest, ensure they are focused on your area and explain the concepts at your current level of understanding.
There are lots of books which can help you to design your first site, learn a new programming language in days or even make you an expert WordPress user (maybe I better start reading).
Fourth Method – Share your tips with others
Let others benefit from you areas of experience, sharing knowledge is a great way to learn from others.
Got writers block? Well why don’t you recycle
Some days the creative juices are really flowing and ideas come from nowhere. On others, it’s a drought, what ever you do nothing comes out. Writers block?
It’s time to check your older posts for some cool content, search for the ones that for some reason strange or wonderful reason the whole world ignored, and recycle them. Here’s some tips on how to do it:
- First off, change the publish date to today, simple one
- Then, update any broken links and images, making sure it all looks good
- Refresh any content areas that are outdated, times do change
strengthen your content to make it more readable and improve related tags - Check your post title, is it catchy – if not how can you improve it?
- Video content is really cool, so add a YouTube video
- Link keywords between the refreshed post and other articles, this assists with improving your sites SEO
- Tart it all up by adding an few images, wrapping the text around them
- Re-Publish it!
Don’t be afraid to re-use some of your old but great content. Perhaps it wasn’t the right time previously but I’m sure it is now.
How To Monetize Your Traffic to benefit you
Establishing your own web site is not like what it used to be, the Internet is full of thousands of competitors that is all too willing to get a bigger share of the income pie. Every scheme and method you can find to expand your sales would be very advantageous.
Let’s face it; most of us are doing this because we are into it for the money. We are not going to waste our time and effort just for the fun of it. Most web masters want to see a return for their efforts, show me the money! While there are some who takes things lightly there are many of us that would rather see profit any given day.
It is common knowledge that without traffic we have no business. Like any business, without any customers you don’t get sales. Traffic represents all the potential customers that opportunity to see what you have to offer. The more potential’s who see your products the more people there would be to buy them.
We have a start-up capital that needs to be regained (with interest). With a consistent traffic, we at least have a fighting chance to achieve that probability. Monetizing your traffic would optimize your chances of making the best out of it.
The Pitfalls of Trading Links
As your site continues to grow and you build a reputation in the online world, you’ll inevitably find invitations for cross-linking start to appear. The offer seems sensible: link to their site and they’ll ink to yours. It’s a win-win situation, where you both get links and search engines like links since they help exhibit a certain level of site status.. At least it seems like that to the untrained SEO eye.
There are a number of reasons why you should be wary of these link exchanges. Many of these sites that offer to link to you aren’t at all related to your site (these are called link farms in SEO idiom) which means that while you do them a service by linking to them, they aren’t offering anything valuable to you, if fact it can be quite the opposite, these sites can harm your site reputation. Usually, these pages have excessive amounts of outbound links and search engines ignore them! Additionally, many of these sites are designed to fool you, they automatically remove links a few days after they invite you to cross-link, you are left pointing to them but they have backed out of their end of the bargain. My advice to you is always confirm every couple of months that your ‘partners’ are still linking to you!
On the other hand, if the site looks interesting, is specialized, nice-looking to your readers and only points to other valid and related sites, then by all mean, swapping links with them is an excellent idea!
Get your Website Designed by Experts
Are you planning to get a website of your own to get your business that online advantage? Although there are very many options available, you will need to consider certain basic stuffs before getting started on your own website.
One most important feature that you will need to spend a considerable amount of time is web design. You should either consider hiring an expert in web design or can try to buy those readymade websites which can be easily brought online along with all the scripts and details and just uploaded on to your hosting company’s server to bring your website live. All you need to add is the written content and other details and you will be ready with your brand new website without much strain.
Before hiring a web design company or freelancer you should always ask to show their portfolio and browse them to decide whether they are indeed capable of designing high quality websites or not. After requesting for portfolios, some web 2.0 design companies even give you a free quote if you can give the details of your web design needs along with the budget and you will be getting the quote within two to three days.
You can bank on such services even for redesigning your existing website or can even get them to add shopping cart to your existing website for a nominal charge. And thus you will be ready in no time to start your online business venture.
You can also buy some readymade websites which actually are pre-designed and you can choose from them the ideal website for your need. You will be getting the domain name, full script, template design as well as PSD file.
If you are looking for web 2.0 design for your website then the readymade web 2.0 templates are the best choice, which you can buy and this also comes with the plug and play option and hence you can get it loaded easily onto your website and add the necessary written content and script to it, it’s as easy as that. The benefit of these templates is that you don’t have to tamper your website for better designs. All you need to do is to give the specifications of yours, like color and designing options, sizes, etc and you will be getting the unique template of your choice in no time.
Or as always can browse through the collection of premium templates available from them and buy the one which you feel would be best suited for your business. Another important but often ignored option when it comes to web designing is the shopping cart which many tend to overlook when building up the web design or online business model.
You can get the online shopping cart for your business or ecommerce website easily by way of such cheap services where you, not only get great designs but also excellent after sales service which sometimes would be exceptional till you are completely satisfied.
Submitting your blog to PingBack services
Some blog scripts like WordPress notify the Search Engines and Blog Networks whenever your blog has new content. If you aren’t using one of these blogging scripts, you will need to notify them yourself manually. To do this, go to the websites below and submit your website to them. A bot will come to crawl your site within seconds. Pretty cool..
- http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
- http://1470.net/api/ping
- http://api.feedster.com/ping
- http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
- http://api.moreover.com/ping
- http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
- http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
- http://bblog.com/ping.php
- http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
- http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
- http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
- http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
- http://coreblog.org/ping/
- http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
- http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
- http://ping.amagle.com/
- http://ping.bitacoras.com
- http://ping.blo.gs/
- http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
- http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
- http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
- http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
- http://ping.feedburner.com
- http://ping.myblog.jp
- http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
- http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
- http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
- http://ping.weblogs.se/
- http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2
- http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
- http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
- http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
- http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
- http://rpc.newsgator.com/
- http://rpc.pingomatic.com
- http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
- http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
- http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
- http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
- http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
- http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
- http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
- http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
- http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
- http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
- http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
- http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
- http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
- http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
- http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
- http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
- http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
- http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
- http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
- http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
- http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
- http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/
To SEO or To PPC?
The online community is definitely a large market place that you cannot ignore, especially if you have an internet business. There are millions of potential customers that you can tap waiting on the Internet. SEO is a long term strategy to drive customers to your site, however other methods exist that can be just as fruitful.
PPC stands for Pay Per Click. It gives way advertising on a search engine. These are sponsored listings that you see whenever you make a search. There will be a charge whenever someone clicks on any of your ads. Once the visitor clicks, there is a bidding process. The highest bidder for the price per click will get the chance to be first listed in the search engine – hence the term “Pay Per Click”.
With this kind of advertising, you can still on the whole control your campaign as you get to create your own ad and target it at a certain audience via keywords or location. It also stays within the bounds of your budget, only allowing you to bid up to a certain amount (on a click).
There are some guaranteed benefits when you get to maximize the PPC strategy.
- PPC lets you advertise to all search engine customers. It is also relatively easy to set up and get going.
- At first glance, PPC advertising may seem expensive. Could it possibly happen that someone out there will go on clicking on your ad? This will definitely give you a large bill without the expected profit on your part. If this provides a lot of uncertainty, be assured that there is a protection for you. The search engine networks are able to recognize fraudulent clicks.
- You can also set a budget for a certain period. The moment your budget has been used up by the target number of clicks, your ads will no longer be displayed until the next period or you make another budget.
- You will also be able to adjust well to changes in market demands and trends.
In deciding which of the two strategies will work right for you, think of your goals and of your resources. Take the PPC course for your short term goals and choose SEO if you have long term ones. You can always do both, this usually provides the best long term sustainable results.
More WordPress Plugins..
As a follow-on to my previous post on WordPress Plugins, some of my friends pointed out I missed a few. A word of caution – select your plugins wisely, don’t go nuts as too many can slow your blog down.
Akismet
The must have spam catcher and it’s included in the WordPress distribution. If you haven’t activated it, do it ASAP before the spammers start hitting your site.
This plugin is responsible for placing the link to your latest posts on comments. Nice plugin, it crawls your site (from the info you submit while commenting), and get’s the latest URL, parse it as HTML beneath your name.Bad thing – To tweak the text that appears with it, there are no options menu, and you have to edit the code. Not too many are comfortable doing it.
WordPress 2.6 and higher, one new feature that has yet to bite too many people is post revisions. Whenever you save a change in a post in WordPress 2.6, it saves a copy of the old version as well as your changed version. If you hit ’save’ a lot while writing, that can add up to a lot of extra crud in your database. It was alot sloppier to fix it before this plugin. You simply install and activate:
Again, make sure you’re turned on plugins are actually useful, either for the additional functionality in your blog or your visitors pleasure. The more work your blog has to take when loading plugins, can slow down it’s performance.
Great plugin thats default configuration is good to go out of the box. Some capability to customize every part of what related posts automatically generate. You can insert related post in your posts, pages, and RSS feed. Great tool for building your blog’s internal linking, but also to increase reader loyalty.
RSS for Blogs
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a tool useful for saving or storing updated information on websites that you regularly visit or websites that are your favorites. RSS utilizes an XML code which scans continuously the content or subject matter of a certain website in search for new information then transmits the information updates by way of feeding the information to subscribers.
RSS feeds are generally being utilized in blogs or news sites, although any website wanting to publish information to their readers should use them. Once new content is sent, it will contain a headline, a small portion of text, and either a rundown or a brief review of the news or story. A link is needed be clicked upon to read further.
RSS feeds are widely used everyday by individuals who understand and appreciate the accessibility of fast reports and news that can be readily read and only read certain updates that appeals to them.
Why make a feed available?
You will have more readers of your site, since now, your viewers can conveniently see your site without even going out and looking via browser bookmarks etc.. While at first, it may seem shady, it will in fact enhance the visibility of your site; this is so because users can easily keep up or keep tract with your site, to allow them to view in a way that they want to; it’s more likely that guests are aware should something that is in their interest is available or accessible on your site.
For instance, every month your website broadcasts a new feature. Having no feed, your readers will always have to keep in mind to go to your site in a certain time to see if they discover something new; that is, if they can remember, and if they still have the time. However, if you supply a feed for your readers, they can just point to their preferred aggregator and it will instantly provide them a link along with a description of happenings or events at your site immediately.
SEO Sitemaps Give Websites a Boost
A lot of web pages will find a Search Engine Optimization “SEO” sitemap useful in improving their sites performance.
One of the more successful techniques of SEO is the creation of a well-organized sitemap for a web site. Since the site’s main page and other content are directly linked to a site map, spiders can more easily move through the website, identify the key words of the content, and index these for a search engine. This is where the SEO sitemap helps the website creator or administrator.
Writing code for SEO sitemaps is very easy and simple to format and maintain. These are ideally basic HTML pages with default tags, logical titles and keywords scattered in the Meta description. Introduction areas can contain more of the keywords. The site should have a main heading for every directory.
A simple list layout helps reduce redundant tags that might “hide” your keywords. Some spiders give more weight to the following, than text in the normal body of the webpage: heading text, content within link elements, text nearer the top of the page and the text written for a link. Therefore, writing the keywords and links in these areas could in someway move up the web page’s ranking. This goes for SEO sitemaps as well.
Web sites should be designed consistently, so navigation models should follow the flow of the site map. Therefore, the first section in the sitemap should be the first link in the navigation bar.
In an SEO Sitemap, and most pages, the headings contain title attributes where more key phrases in the site map can be added. Keywords are generally well chosen and written in the body of a webpage. However, in an SEO sitemap with little text, key words should be added as much as possible. As much as possible, web links should follow web page titles, and must undergo SEO during coding. Care must be exercised not to cram the page with keywords and links, or the page will be interpreted as blatant spamming and not receive any traffic at all.
There is no way to guarantee that a website will be shown in the topmost ranking of “organic” search results for an extended period of time. However, smart and responsible SEO sitemap techniques can be used to place the website high up in the search position. Regular monitoring and adjustment of the SEO Sitemap and search results would ensure that a website is kept near the top ranking and receiving lots of web user traffic.
Can you make money with Articles?
Simple answer, yes!
Write Articles & Earn
The good way to make money is by using your knowledge and write articles for blogs and websites that deals to finance; It could be the best and profitable way to make money online without any of the financial investment.
You don’t need to be a professional writer with special and unique skills; you can always get some research from the internet where you can find great articles related to business and finance for you to acquire and improve your knowledge about the subject. All of your articles will be paid well by financial internet sites because their buyers are eager to accumulate a lot of data from the internet site. Remember information is best selling product on the internet, These financial web sites need your articles on various topics such as insurance, retirement planning, saving and family finances etc at some specific period of each year.
Article writing is not only the best way to make money it is also is the best way to improve your knowledge particularly in the field of finance. Some of the financial web sites also do contests for authors to publish good articles that could teach business and finance, money, insurance, and investments etc. The important thing you have to consider is to offer quality articles so that you make money, as you will also get good compliments.
Another great and profitable way is to earn money by flipping real estate (websites). You’ll be able to get more profit provided you have to do the repairing and improvement work by yourself in case you need to do it before selling. If you choose to take care of the project and depend on others to do the work your profit margin obviously will be very small.
You should be very careful, if you have decided to do the work yourself because any of the mis-estimation of judgment of the value of the property or any unexpected expenses could put you under some loss.
The best and profitable way which I like to make more money in flipping real estate is to sell it after some small repair and improvements, spruce up the site, make it look good.
Though you can easily find a lot of best and profitable ways of making money, it is advisable that not to believe much in getting rich by faster ways. Whatever you bring in these days is not sufficient to meet both ends. There are so many best ways available for you to make extra income so that you need not solely dependent on your main income. Your hobbies can earn money for you.