Webmaster Pro Guide

Making Money from Your web site and search engine optimisation
March 7th, 2008

Godaddy .net .com renewal codes

here are some renewal code for .net and .com domain in Godaddy :

For .net: gdbb776

For .com: oyh3

Here are others which might work for renewals and registration:
cjcbentld for $7.64 .org
cjcbentld for $12.74 .mobi
cjcbentld for $6.99 biz
cjcbentld for $6.79 .us
cjcbentld for $7.81 .net
cjcbentld for $8.49 .name
gdp0119d for $6.20 .net
oyh3 for $7.20 .com
cjcbentld for $12.74 .mobi
gdp0131pl for 1.99 .info

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February 23rd, 2008

How to Make Money with YouTube

Here’s a quick guide on how to leverage the power of YouTube to cash in.

  1. Download a popular music video or viral video with YouTube Catcher (FREE) and save it in FLV format.
  2. Convert FLV video to MPEG using SUPER software (FREE).
  3. Add watermarks to your videos with your website address on it promoting your affiliate offer using VirtualdubMOD (FREE). Read this tutorial on how to watermark your videos using this software.
  4. Cash the checks and repeat!

Here’s a run down of how I personally do this in proper order (to make it easy and understandable for you)…

  • Download YouTube video and save it in FLV format
  • Convert FLV to MPEG (using SUPER)
  • Create watermark bitmap image in Photoshop (read the tutorial mentioned above)
  • Import MPEG to VirtualDubMOD, add BMP image to video
  • Export and save video as an AVI
  • Convert AVI to MPEG in SUPER

The watermark image should simply be text promoting your affiliate offer. I’ve had the most success promoting PPL (pay-per-lead) offers, such as ringtones, or e-mail submits. Make sure you hide your affiliate URL using a redirection service, such as TinyURL.com. It will make it easier for your viewers to remember the URL as well.

Upload the video to YouTube with a descriptive title of the video. In the description field, enter the URL you just created and some text describing your offer. Example: “Get a FREE Ringtone of this music video!”

It’s important to always follow the terms and conditions of each affiliate offer you’re promoting. Some offers restrict you from using the words, “free”, “best”, “guaranteed” etc. when promoting them. Check to make sure you aren’t violating any of these terms. It’s also best to use YouTube videos that are royalty free. Ignoring these rules and uploading a copyrighted video may get your video removed from YouTube and your account deleted. Your affiliate network account may also be terminated if a viewer reports you for promoting an offer in conjunction with a copyright violation. Play by the rules and you won’t have any problems. Your cash flow also won’t be cut off.

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February 16th, 2008

75 Ways to Increase Your Site’s Traffic

If you’re a normal blogger or website owner, you’re going to want more traffic. You might even search all over the web for great ways to generate or increase your traffic. I have compiled a list of 75 ways to increase your site’s traffic. This list is different from others because it contains simple, original ideas and off-the-wall, unique ideas. If you’re looking for more people to see your website or your blog, then you’re at the right article! Out of all these 75 tips, I can assure you that most of them will work for your site or blog.

  1. Write more content. If you want traffic, you’ve got to write content. People will not visit your site if you don’t write a decent amount of good quality content, and new visitors definitely won’t come back. So keep writing great posts!
  2. Have a good design and layout. If your site or blog’s design is messy, sloppy, hard to navigate, a rainbow of colors that don’t match or are hard on the eye, or full of errors, you will instantly go down the drain.
  3. Get your own domain. I promise that if you have your domain, you will get more traffic. You will linked to more and people will more easily remember your URL. Try to get your own domain and have it from the start.
  4. Start using StumbleUpon. I have had a HUGE success with StumbleUpon. When the right article from your blog meets StumbleUpon, expect a lot of people to rate your post a thumbs up, and then even more people “stumbling upon” your blog.
  5. Guest blog. Offer to write a post on someone else’s site. Even better, have the post already written up and then let the blogger know you have a post ready to guest blog on their site, if it’s okay with them. When you write your guest blog post, find a post on your own blog that’s related and link to in your guest blog post. A link for you on their blog, and more traffic.
  6. Begin tagging your images. When you have an image in your post, it should always be tagged properly. Make sure the width and height are clearly defined. But most importantly, fill out the alt and title tags with the image’s keywords. To learn further and learn how this helps,
  7. Respond to your comments and email. People love a blog whose owner is interactive and thoughtful, an owner who gets back quickly with response to their comments and emails. If you can do this, except more loyal readers who will love you.  Then expect more traffic and more linkage.
  8. Use MyBlogLog. Make sure you have an eye-catching avatar. Then join all the MyBlogLog communities you can (daily limit of 15). In no time your avatar will be all over all the MyBlogLog blog and community pages, and you’ll see more and more visitors coming to you.
  9. Don’t waste your time. Don’t waste your time with crazy “money earners” such as those that pay you to click, pay you to read, pay you to surf, pay you to search, or anything like that. Those aren’t worth anything. Instead, spend your time writing quality content and the traffic will follow.
  10. Pay attention to your stats. Pay attention to your stats and Google Analytics. See what keywords are getting you the most traffic and what posts your readers like and don’t like. Use this knowledge to keep writing more popular posts filled with great keywords.
  11. Link to other posts. When you link to posts on other blogs, that creates a trackback, or pingback. When you link to another blogger’s post, if they have trackbacks turned on, you will receive a link back as well in the comments section of the post of which you linked.
  12. In your posts, ask your readers questions. Readers like to feel important and a lot of them like to talk. The next time you write a post, ask them a question or their opinion on something. You’ll receive a lot more comments and many of the visitors will be more likely to come back.
  13. Make a lens on Squidoo. On Squidoo, you can make your own lenses, aka, pages, on their site. Make a lens that is relative to your blog or site’s topic, and then be sure to link to your blog on the lens! Did I mention you can also make money on Squidoo? .
  14. Comment on other blogs. When you comment on other blog’s 99.9% of the time there is a box you can write in your own site’s address. Then from there, when people view your comment, they can click through to your blog or website! Comment on as many different blog’s as you can. Maybe even set aside a day of the week for commenting. The more comments you leave, the more you are noticed, and the more traffic you get.
  15. Write list posts. Everybody loves list posts. This post is a list post. Examples are “Top 10 Blog Themes”, “25 Uses for Vinegar”, and “5 Helpful Website Tools”. List posts are usually linked to a lot more and get a lot more traffic than normal posts.
  16. Submit your blog to search engines. Most people get the majority of their traffic from search engines. When people search for your keyword and find your site or blog, there’s more traffic! Click here to submit your blog to be indexed in Google if it hasn’t been already, and remember to keep writing fresh content for the engines to chew on!
  17. Establish relationships with fellow bloggers. Develop relationships with all kinds of bloggers, especially those also in your niche. Comment on their blogs, have conversations, link to them, make friendships. And before you know it, they’ll be linking to you too and maybe sending some traffic your way.
  18. Use traffic exchanges. I’m not quite sure if you can be penalized for using traffic exchanges, but they can bring you loyal readers if your blog is good enough, besides the continuous traffic. See my post on the BlogMad traffic exchange.
  19. Link to your other posts as often as you can. Link internally to posts on your own blog. This helps your rankings and also helps your traffic. If people who come to your your blog have nothing else to see, they will leave. When you link to your other articles, they will most likely choose to go read those as well before leaving, and will stay on your blog longer.
  20. Sign up on Yahoo! Answers. On Yahoo! Answers you are able to answer other people’s questions, help them, and give answers. There is a box where you can write the source of where you got your answer. Answer questions in your field and link to your blog posts as the source!
  21. Sign your blog up on blog top lists. A blog top list is a chart of all the blogs that are in it. The list is numbered and your blog can go higher on the list when it has more traffic, more votes, more incoming visitors, etc. They’re very simple and easy to join. Plus, they can rake in the traffic! Click here to see some top lists you can join and learn more.
  22. Submit to site directories. Some directories list hundreds of sites, some list thousands. The backlinks are great, but the traffic from the directories will be less than a trickle, most likely nothing. However, submit with your site’s name using your keywords, and then you could be ranked more highly on Google for those keywords, which means more traffic!
  23. Don’t use link trains. This does not directly related to traffic but it’s still good advice. I made the mistake of joining in on the ViraLink and ViralTags, and you should never do that! Besides, your readers will appreciate it and they’ll stick around longer. 
  24. Reread, edit, and go over your posts. No one wants to link to a post that is poor quality. Even if the post is a brilliant idea, if it’s full of spelling and grammatical errors, it won’t be linked to. And no links means no traffic.
  25. Submit your posts to blog carnivals. Go to the Blog Carnival website and submit as many of your articles to as many carnivals related to your niche as you can. When the carnival edition you submitted to is posted, not only will you have linkbacks, but you’ll have more visits to your blog. 
  26. Hold your own blog carnival. I think blog carnivals are very fun to hold. People submit their articles to your carnival. When you publish your carnival, almost all of those people go to the carnival edition to view their link there. And you carnival can also be featured on the Blog Carnival website homepage.
  27. Link exchange with other people in your field. Whether the link exchange is on a sidebar on every page of the site, on one page of the site, or in a post on the site, it’s up to you. But link exchanging with others who have related blogs can be a big help. And when their sites grow, an even bigger help!
  28. Use Feedburner for people to subscribe to your blog. When people subscribe to you via RSS or get your blog updates in email, they’ll see your posts whenever you make a new one. This is vital for keeping people in touch with your blog and getting them to come back.
  29. Use Youtube. Make an account on Youtube, and then on your profile you can list your website address. List your site or blog’s link there. Then start making videos and when people view your profile, some of them might click through to your website!
  30. Ask the bigger blogs for a link.I can’t stress enough that you’ve got to do this right or not at all. You need to be polite and not beg. Start building your conversation with the A-lister and developing the relationship before you ask for anything. Make sure you give to them, link to them in your posts. Before you do anything, Use Technorati tags. Getting into more categories in Technorati will get you a lot more exposure, which means more traffic.
  31. Write a post about a celebrity. No matter what your niche is, you can find some way to relate your topic to a celebrity. For example. People search for celebrities all the time and love the dirt on them. Quadruple your traffic when you right a post about a celebrity right after a big event in the celebrity’s life. For example, the shaving of their head, the birth of their child, their marriage, or their death, to name a few.
  32. Encourage others to Digg your articles. Digg is a site that lets people vote on articles, on whether people like them or not. Your blogger friends will most likely Digg your work for you if you politely ask, or even better, add a Digg button at the bottom of all your posts. Make sure your best articles get Dugg and started in the right direction, and if the post is good enough, it can generate thousands of visitors a day.
  33. Get a plugin for the social bookmarking sites. At the bottom of this post you will see a line of buttons that lets people submit and vote my articles to social bookmarking sites (Digg, Reddit, Netscape, and others included). I’m using the AntiSocial plugin. If you have this plugin implemented you are WAY more likely to be submitted to social bookmarking sites, which in turn means a lot more traffic.
  34. Link to the A-listers. This ties in a little with asking the A-listers for a link, or sort of pushing them in the direction of giving you one, but this is much for subtle and much more nice. The more you link to the A-listers and probloggers in your niche, the more they will probably notice you. Then they might link to one of your posts as well, which could send huge amounts of traffic your way!
  35. Write a pillar post. This is not only a list post, but a pillar post as well. This post is a long, authoritative, instructional post (and has also quickly grown to be this blog’s most popular article). Pillar posts should take a long time, hours, to write. You should link to your pillar posts often in your blog, and make sure they get top exposure. Pillar posts will get linked to and receive decent amounts of traffic.
  36. When a major holiday rolls around, write about it. When Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or another big holiday comes, make a post about it a month beforehand. Give yourself time to be indexed and linked to. When the holiday comes, it will be searched for a lot and your site could be found!
  37. Use smart URLs on Wordpress. If you’re using Wordpress and are using their messy URLs, you’d better get this plugin to switch to the URLs that include the date and post name in the link. Using that plugin will not make you lose your search engine stats or anything, it is a redirect.
  38. Make your readers feel at home. If you are rude, never give back, don’t answer your comments or emails, don’t help other bloggers, or are always uptight and don’t make your readers feel at home, chances are they might stop visiting your blog. When you make your readers feel at home, you get more traffic.
  39. Be a human, not a robot. If in all your posts you sound extremely business-like, never mention yourself, only talk about the same thing all the time, or are 100% perfect, it could actually send people away. I’m not telling you to be sloppy, talk about yourself all the time, stray from your topic, or make a lot of mistakes. But let your readers know you’re like them too and that you have some things in common. Don’t make your site be boring.
  40. Take the ads off your site. To increase your traffic remove your ads. When you have no way of making money on your website, you seem a lot more serious and devoted. Most likely you will get more traffic and loyal readers. And then maybe in the future, you can ad the ads again to start making some money!
  41. Start your own blog directory. This is something I tried once but failed at miserably. However, I’m sure if I tried again I could do it right, and you could too! When you make your directory at first, make all the links completely free and just have a link submit form where the submissions are emailed to you. You can do a weekly/daily roundup of all the links sent to you, or you can assign the links to their proper categories. When your site gets even bigger, you can ask for a reciprocal link. Then have a “featured site” table, and link to your main website in it. I’m not sure how this would work for everyone but it’s worth a shot.
  42. Post about A-listers in your field. For me this would be people like Darren Rowse and John Chow. You can write about them as a person or a blogger or you can write about how they’re running and doing things. You can post your thoughts on something they’ve said or extend on one of their posts and then leave a comment saying you’ve done so.
  43. Interview other bloggers. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time but never got around to. Interviews of other bloggers usually generate a few links, including a link from the blogger you interviewed. And links mean traffic!
  44. Write link love posts. I try to write link love posts every couple of weeks where it is just one big post linking to articles in the blogosphere or on the web that I like, mostly ones related to my niche. Not only does this get you trackbacks, but it also gives you the higher chance of getting linked to in return, which then means traffic.
  45. Have a contest or giveaway! This is a great idea. Hold a contest or a giveaway for a very awesome prize, and people will flock to your site in hopes of winning it. If you give away something really cool, the news will spread like wildfire. Beforehand though, make sure your blog is already receiving a fairly decent amount of traffic with some loyal readers.
  46. Pretend to sell your blog. This is something you can do to get traffic but I do NOT recommend it. This idea has sprung up lately but in my opinion it’s not a good one. You can pay forty dollars to list your blog in a marketplace, and get a huge spike of traffic from potential buyers. Then, you take down the offer and keep your blog. NONE of that traffic will ever come back. It’s not targeted and it is a waste of money. But if you want to get traffic this way, go for it.
  47. Be a comedian. Make people laugh. For a lot of you out there, this shouldn’t be hard. When you make people laugh they will feel a connection to your site or blog and want to tell others and come back.
  48. Help bloggers that need you. If a beginner, newbie blogger leaves you a comment or email that is at least polite, don’t brush them off because of their lack of experience. Help them! You never know, they could become big one day and remember your kindness and assistance.
  49. Have polls on your blog. If you’re using Wordpress, get the Wordpress polls plugin. People like voting in polls and like seeing what the outcome of a poll was. Polls are popular, and popular means traffic.
  50. Start more blogs. Think you can handle it? They can be free blogs, or they can have their own domain. Whatever you want. Work on traffic for all of your blogs, and then have all your blogs link to each other (especially the smaller blogs linking to your main one). Then whoever reads one of your blogs can also be introduced to the other ones.
  51. Create or hack a Wordpress plugin. Okay, this one might be for the smart computer geeks out there, because I couldn’t do it. But if you can, then expect to get lots of links and traffic from all over the place from all the people that use your plugin.
  52. Create a blog theme (Wordpress, Blogspot, whatever). Same goes as for creating a plugin. I could probably do this one more easily than I could make a plugin, though. If you think you can, give it a shot! The traffic will pour in, as will the links.
  53. Make graphics that are useful to others. If you make some free graphics people can use on their website or blog, you’ll get more traffic from this as well, and it’s not nearly as hard. If you’re a professional at making graphics, even try charging a little bit to get money on top of it!
  54. Make graphics for social networking sites as well. People who use Myspace, Facebook, and all those types of sites love using graphics. Colorful banners. Animated, blinking images. If you can make awesome things like that, then they’ll use it. It’s worth a shot for some traffic and links.
  55. Make a Myspace and get a lot of friends. Make a Myspace and work on getting a lot of friends. This doesn’t mean adding the bands or celebrities that automatically accept you. This means the real people. Just go around adding people. Go to “Browse” and add people. Once you have hundreds of friends, link to your site or blog in bulletins and on your profile and everywhere you can. It could draw in some traffic if you do it correctly.
  56. Answer questions you get through comments or email in a post. If someone comments or emails you with a question, and you could give them a very long, drawn out answer, write a post instead. You won’t be wasting your time and then to answer that person, just give them a link to the post you’ve written!
  57. Work on search engine optimization. The better you rank and do in the search engines, the more visitors they will send you. Do your research and homework on search engine optimization and get started right away!
  58. Start an awards series. Spend some time making a little trophy or banner for an award. Make sure your award has a theme and a name, for example, “The Kind Blogger Award”. Then link to five kind bloggers. In the rules, get each of them to link and pass the award to five more bloggers that they think are kind. Many will link back to you as the creator of this award series and you will receive traffic for it.
  59. Buy ads using Google Adwords. Something I haven’t done but might prove very helpful if you’ve got the money. Sign up for Google Adwords and buy advertising. People will click on ads and get to your site. Some could become loyal readers but many will not. A good way of getting traffic.
  60. Order reviews through ReviewMe. If you order reviews on other blogs using ReviewMe or even PayPerPost, you can create a buzz on your site or blog. Reviews are probably the best form of advertising and the best way to get more loyal visitors.
  61. Use ReviewBack to get reviewed for free. Most likely your free reviews will be on small blogs, and you also have to return the favor, but you could still get some nice traffic from it. Something to consider. Check out ReviewBack.
  62. Write a press release. Click here to read how and what to do.
  63. Get on the most favorited list on Technorati. The Technorati top 100 favorited list can be viewed here. It will be very hard to get on to and require a few hundred favorites (a few thousand if you want to be at the top of the list). But you will surely get a lot of traffic if you make it on this list.
  64. Join forums and message boards. Join forums and message boards related to niche. If it is permitted, link to your site or blog when/where you can. Other people on the forum are very likely to check out your site.
  65. Add your link to your forum signature. Another idea, but also only if this one is permitted. Add your site or blog’s link to your forum signature and get active in the community. The link will show up under all of your posts. You can get a nice little amount of traffic if the forum has a lot of members.
  66. Write catchy post titles with keywords. First of all, posts with catchy titles receive more traffic than those with bland, unoriginal titles. Secondly, add some keywords to your catchy titles! You will get ranked better in the search engines. Also, when people link to your post with its keywords, you’ll get ranked even better, with even more traffic from Google, Yahoo, etc.
  67. Use images in your posts. This is something I need to work on more. Use images in your posts. When a post is full of just text, it can get boring. However, (and this depends on your niche), I would recommend using only one image. You don’t want to get too cluttered.
  68. Write a review. If you write a really good honest review of a new product or brand, it could get a lot of attention from people who are interested in purchasing the product.
  69. On high traffic days, write more great quality posts. Let’s say you’ve just written a linkbait (on purpose or by accident) that hit the front page of Digg or did awesome StumbleUpon. That same day and the next couple of days, post more great content. Let the people who’ve came across your site know they should stick around because of your quality content. Keep the traffic going!
  70. Post about important events in your niche. If something important is going to happen in your niche, post about it a couple months, one month, or a few weeks before it happens. Give yourself time to be linked to and indexed by the search engines for that post. When the event rolls around, you will get a lot of traffic if you played your cards right!
  71. Share one of your secrets. Whether it be a huge secret about your success or a personal secret about your life, nobody can resist.
  72. Do something unique. Build a brand and do something original that no one else has done. You will receive a lot of links and traffic for it and the name will stick around for a long time, if not forever. Come up with a new concept that no one else has done before.
  73. Keep improving your blog. People will keep coming back to a blog or site that is constantly worked on and improved. Set aside daily time to plow down and tweak your blog. Also try to write that daily content.
  74. Be yourself. The internet is a great place to be anonymous, but if you are, no one will feel a connection to you and want to keep visiting your blog. Just be yourself, don’t pretend to be someone you’re not, and people will love you for it. I promise.

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February 1st, 2008

Microsoft bids $45 billion for Yahoo

Microsoft Corp. made an unsolicited $44.6 billion cash and stock bid for Yahoo on Friday, a deal that could shake up the competitive and lucrative market for online advertising.The deal would pay Yahoo shareholders $31 a share, which represents a 62% premium from where Yahoo stock closed on Thursday.

Shares of Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) were up 47% with less than an hour of trading left, while shares of Dow component Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) had tumbled more than 6%.

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, called the move the “next major milestone” for the software giant.

“We are very, very confident this is the right path for Microsoft and for Yahoo,” he said.

Microsoft hopes to close the deal by the end of the year. Ballmer said that Microsoft has been in “off and on” talks with Yahoo for 18 months and said he called Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang Thursday night to tell him the bid was coming.

A Microsoft-Yahoo combination would create a powerful number two player in the online search business, which Google commands. It would also be one of the biggest tech deals ever, on par with Hewlett-Packard’s $25 billion acquisition of Compaq in 2002.

Microsoft announced the bid early Friday. In a statement, the company said the offer allows Yahoo shareholders to elect to receive cash or a fixed number of shares of Microsoft common stock, with the software giant’s offer consisting of one-half cash and one-half Microsoft common stock.

In a statement, Yahoo acknowledged receipt of the offer and said its board would evaluate the proposal “carefully and promptly.”

Searching for solutions

Both Microsoft and Yahoo have fallen far behind rival Google  in the lucrative field of Internet search. Yahoo’s earnings and share of the online search market have badly trailed Google.

Google reigns over 58.4% of the U.S. market, while Yahoo has 22.9% and Microsoft’s share is just 9.8%, according to comScore, a research firm that tracks Internet traffic.

The combined forces of Microsoft and Yahoo would also make a stronger force in online display advertising - the type of targeted banner ads Yahoo is known for.

In a letter it sent to Yahoo’s board of directors, Microsoft disclosed it had explored a Microsoft-Yahoo deal a year earlier, only to be rebuffed by Yahoo, which said at that time it was confident of the “potential upside” for Yahoo from operational changes it planned.

“A year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved,” said Ballmer.

On Thursday, former Yahoo CEO and current Chairman Terry Semel, who opposed an earlier approach Microsoft made last year, resigned from the Yahoo board.

Yahoo announced Tuesday it would lay off 1,000 employees by mid-February, citing what CEO Yang described as “headwinds” facing the company. It also reported lower fourth-quarter earnings that still beat Wall Street’s now modest expectations for the firm, but it gave a 2008 revenue forecast that disappointed analysts.

“Last year, Yahoo told investors it needed more time to get on the right track,” says UBS analyst Benjamin Schachter. “But you only get a certain amount of time to turn things around.”

Gunning for Google

But even Google has run into recent problems. After the bell Thursday it reported earnings that fell a penny a share short of forecasts. The company reported a slowdown in its fourth-quarter revenue growth, attributed partly to difficulty selling ads on social networking sites.

A Google spokesman, Matt Furman, declined to comment on Microsoft’s move on Yahoo. “It would be premature to comment at this point,” he said.

Google shares have fallen 24% since hitting a record high $747.24 in early November. But Yahoo shares have lost more than a third of their value over the same period.

Still, online advertising, particularly ads tied to Internet search, is by far the fastest growing part of ad spending. That’s caused problems for traditional media, which have seen ad spending fall.

Microsoft said it projects the online advertising market to grow from over $40 billion in 2007 to nearly $80 billion by 2010.

In the letter to Yahoo’s board, Microsoft said a tie-up would achieve economics of scale while allowing combined research and development efforts to achieve breakthrough products, particularly in the growing areas of online video and mobile Internet connections.

Microsoft said it intends to offer significant retention packages to Yahoo engineers, key leaders and employees across the firm. It said it believes the proposed combination would receive all necessary regulatory approvals.

Shortly after the announcement, a U.S. Justice Department spokesperson said that its “antitrust division is interested in looking at the competitive effects of the [Microsoft and Yahoo] transaction.” But with Google’s strong lead in the search industry, analysts said it is highly unlikely Microsoft’s proposed deal would violate antitrust laws.

Stifel Nicolaus analyst George Askew gives the deal an 80% change of being completed.

“This acquisition offer is a bear hug - and the two companies may well come to terms on a deal at a modestly higher price than the $31 offer,” Askew said in a written note.

But some analysts say the integration of the two companies could be tricky to pull off. For one, Microsoft and Yahoo use different platforms to run their search engines, and they would have to decide which one to use.

 Source : CNN.com

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January 31st, 2008

12 Different Types of Links and How To Get Them

 Andy and Aaron just put out an excellent guide of 101 link building tips, and it kicked me in the butt to get it done, so I could give their article the proper link love it deserved.

Types of links and how to get them

Using a arbitrary ficticious example of an informational site about real estate law. **I do not currently work with any sites of this type.

In this example, we have two specific themes to dive deeper into that are relevant to our search - real estate and law. Starting at this level gives us hundreds of thousands, if not millions of sites to start to filter from (not to mention the backlinks of THOSE sites), and sites that share similar themes.

1. Authority links
How to obtain them: Start with your related category in the Google Directory
What to look for:
-Top rankings for big terms - city or state + real estate, vertical category + lawyers
-Sites that currently offer links out
-Sites that would benefit from offering users your content
Examples: real estate law
Other Notes: Authority links are an absolute must for improving your trust score these days. This is a MUST for a new site, and should be where you start your efforts, and always be dedicating SOME time. Suck it up, and take the time it takes to get some quality, trusted links. The existence of trusted authority links will make or break your site. Find the 800 lb. gorillas in your field, and **find a way to get on a dozen or so of them. Failing that, hunt their backlinks, and find a way to get on some of those pages. Use some creative queries with the combination tool. Give the tattler a shot.

2. Directory links
How to obtain them: Pony up some cash
What to look for: Generally easy to find niche directories, don’t go overboard with more than a few directories per month, quarter, etc.
Examples:General directories, real estate directories
Other Notes: My gut feel is that too many directories triggers a filter. I wouldn’t go over 10 - 15% of my total link ratio on my own sites for my own sites at any given time. Start with a few highly trusted directories. (Yahoo dir, business.com, MSN SBD, BOTW), and add some others after you have many more links added to your profile.

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January 31st, 2008

10 windows vista tips for a better experience

 If you hate the look of Aero, click Start/Control Panel/Themes and you can choose a non-Aero theme, such as Windows Classic.

2. Windows Vista’s installer can detect serial-ATA (SATA) drives without the need to provide a driver diskette. Don’t bother creating a diskette for your SATA drives before you install Vista.

3. If, for some reason, the Vista installation gets interrupted due to an unintentional shutdown or reboot, start the computer without booting the Vista DVD. Windows Vista’s installer should pick up where it left off. If it does-n’t, then restart the installation over from scratch.

4. When you perform a search with Vista’s new, instant search feature, you can save the search in a special folder. This powerful feature allows you to create a virtual folder which, by default, is saved in your \\Searches\ folder. Every time you open such a folder, the search results are updated.

5. In Windows Vista, you can add additional clocks to the system tray. Click the clock, and then click Date and Time Settings. Click the Additional Clocks tab. You can add one or two additional clocks to the tray and select their time zones.

6. You can save your progress in most of the games included with Windows Vista—even the carry-overs from earlier versions of Windows.

7. You can create XML documents, which are more secure than regular text files or even word processor docs. Just create a document in a word processor, print it via the options menu, and select the XPS printer.

8. If you upgrade your graphics card in preparation for Windows Vista, be sure to get a new card with as much local memory as possible. Since Windows Vista renders everything—even the desktop and windows them-selves—as 3D surfaces, local 3D memory greatly improves performance…sometimes even more than a more powerful GPU.

9. Use the Ctrl + Alt + Del to open a window where you can access the common functions including the task manager, this will let you close programs even when the computer is sometimes frozen.

10. When you open new folder use the navigation items to be able to access more folders within the same window, moreover you can go back/forward to a folder/file you accessed earlier without closing the last window.

hope this will give you an enhanced experience

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January 31st, 2008

13 Interesting Facts about Google

1. Google receives daily search requests from all over the world, including Antarctica.

2. Google’s Home Page Has 63 Validation Errors. Don’t believe me?: Check Google Validation

3. The Google search engine receives about a billion search requests per day.

4. The infamous “I’m feeling lucky” button is nearly never used. However, in trials it was found that removing it would somehow reduce the Google experience. Users wanted it kept. It was a comfort button.

5. Due to the sparseness of the homepage, in early user tests they noted people just sitting looking at the screen. After a minute of nothingness, the tester intervened and asked ‘Whats up?’ to which they replied “We are waiting for the rest of it”. To solve that particular problem the Google Copyright message was inserted to act as a crude end of page marker.

6. The name ‘Google’ was an accident. A spelling mistake made by the original founders who thought they were going for ‘Googol’.

7. Google has the largest network of translators in the world.

8. Employees are encouraged to use 20% of their time working on their own projects. Google News, Orkut are both examples of projects that grew from this working model.

9. Google consists of over 450,000 servers, racked up in clusters located in data centers around the world.

10. Google started in January, 1996 as a research project at Stanford University, by Ph.D. candidates Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were 24 years old and 23 years old respectively.

11. Google is a mathematical term 1 followed by one hundred zeroes. The term was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasne.

12. Number of languages in which you can have the Google home page set up, including Urdu, Latin and Klingon: 88

13. Google translates billions of HTML web pages into a display format for WAP and i-mode phones and wireless handheld devices.

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January 27th, 2008

[Guide] How To Make Money Using a Blog

Many friends have asked me whether we can make money online from blogs or not. I told them you can make money even by selling lemonade at the corner of your school but the main problem is that you must have passion and time for what you will be blogging. Many people fail because they are starting blogs just to make money , they are writing 2 or 3 articles and they are using different affiliate links and other advertisement programs to catch any cents.

You must know that in order to make some money , at least you should know what you are talking about and not post just crap in order to increase number of posts in your blog.
Many newbies on the internet doesn’t even know how to get a free blog online so in this article I will explain step by step what you have to do in order to make some cash from your blog

There are 2 big blog providers online which are

  • WordPress.com
  • Blogger.com

- WordPress has a lot of templates and widgets so you can use for your blog , you can create categories and you can even purchase more space and other cool features if you upgrade
- Blogger was purchased by Google so the best part is that you can get accepted to Adsense through Blogger. The bad part is that you cannot create categories but you can give Labels to your posts as they were categories (Im doing it)

You must know that creating a blog is really simple but updating it everyday with new and unique content is really a hard work (its not so hard if you speak about your favorite niche like I’m doing) So content will be the judger whether you will be a successful blogger or not, if you will update it once a week chances will be very low but if you will post good and unique content every day then you will be in the right road

So ok so far , you have created the blog , you chose your template and you are posting some articles. You will ask how will you get the traffic ?

There are tons of ways to drive traffic to a blog , I will explain some of the techniques I’m also using

  • Register at FeedBurner.com
  • Register at TechnoRati.com
  • If you are a member of DigitalPoint Forum add your RSS Feed to your profile (it will be shown under your username everytime you post a new reply or thread)
  • Write some unique articles and upload them at Article Directories (See this post for more explanations)
  • Register at MyBlogLog.com
  • Add your blog url to your signatures in every forum you are (if possible add also an avatar with your blog’s address)
  • Add your blog url to high pr directories

So with 7 easy and free ways you can start seeing some increases in your traffic (Note that if you dont post regularly your traffic may decrease again)

Now I know that all of you are thinking , how will we be making money from our blogs ? Its really simple but I would strongly recommend use just 2 or maximum 3 advertisments and do not put the advertisements from the beginning (wait until you have some traffic then you may add them) Make sure your advertisements and other widgets are like your template so you wont have a lot of contrast.

Here I’m listing the ways how you can make money from your blog once you have some decent traffic and some readers

  • Adsense (CPM & PPC which pays differently for each niche)
  • Text-Link-Ads (Get Money if someone buys a link to your site from TLA)
  • ReviewMe (Get paid for different reviews you make , more traffic you have more you will earn)
  • PayPerPost (same as ReviewMe but it has more advertisers in their network)
  • Money4Banners (Doesn’t matter if you have a small or big blog , you get 10$ when you sign up and 5$ every month just to display their advertisment
  • WidgetBucks (this seems to be most promising program which pays very high rates but nobody has received any payment so far as its a new company)

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January 27th, 2008

How to Make Money with WidgetBucks

Recently, an advertising network known as WidgetBucks launched and began their quest to revolutionize the world of online marketing. In providing their pay-per-click shopping widget programs, WidgetBucks seeks to make advertising a much easier process for just about everyone involved. Traditional advertising is effective in some cases, but often times, it fails to meet the needs of companies. It just doesn’t reach customers in the right way. WidgetBucks is a different kind of online advertising, though.

Depending upon your role in the entire operation, WidgetBucks provides a different experience for various webmasters. The advertisements seem to reach customers in a different way. The latest marketing research has indicated that, on the whole, internet browsers are extremely fickle and they’re able to pick up on the tricks that marketing professionals bring. With WidgetBucks, the advertisements read more like content. Internet browsers see the WidgetBucks advertisements just like they do the articles on a webmaster’s site.

Webmasters have found that WidgetBucks can be very profitable when compared to other forms of affiliate marketing. Most website owners report a very high click through rate and from that, a solid CPM. What is the primary reason why this is happening? WidgetBucks serves the hot niches in the website industry. Among the popular niches are video games, sports, jewelry, health topics, and plenty of other things that are currently hot in the industry.

If you are a webmaster and you plan on making the big bucks using this advertising program, you better have a website in one of the popular niches. Otherwise, their advertising seems to fall short of the mark. Their advertisements are well written and are designed to make people really want to explore the product being advertised, but some webmasters find that their site is not one that benefits from such marketing.

The referral program is also very popular and is a good way to make some income using the program. At last check, WidgetBucks had an offer of $25 for any person who registers their high traffic site. From there, webmasters aren’t finished making money through WidgetBucks. You can earn 10% of the total lifetime earnings of all of the people you refer through your personal referral link. Depending upon who clicks on your site, this could end up being a very profitable aspect of the entire operation.

As far as payments go, there is a little bit of a waiting period. This can be frustrating at first, but after a while, the cycle begins to catch up to itself and you’ll be receiving regular payments. Just 45 days after the end of the month, WidgetBucks will send payment through either the Paypal system or through a personal check.

On the whole, WidgetBucks is a pretty good new system and they stand to revolutionize the market some. The advertisements are well written, which is the main difference between these ads and some of the other ones that you might see online.

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January 27th, 2008

Google Tries To Make ‘Tasting’ Of Domain Names Unpalatable

 NEW YORK (AP)–The online advertising leader Google Inc. (GOOG) said Friday it would help make it less lucrative for users to tie up millions of Internet addresses through a loophole, as the compnay wants to keep those domain names available for legitimate individuals and businesses.

Over the next few weeks, Google will start looking for names that are repeatedly registered and dropped within a five-day grace period for full refunds.

Google’s AdSense program would exclude those names so no one can generate advertising revenue from claiming them temporarily, a practice known as domain name tasting: the online equivalent of buying expensive clothes on a charge card only to return them for a full refund after wearing them to a party.

“We believe that this policy will have a positive impact for users and domain purchasers across the Web,” Google spokesman Brandon McCormick said.

The company said it notified participants via email Thursday.

Name tasting exploits a grace period originally designed to rectify legitimate mistakes, such as registrants mistyping the domain name they are about to buy. But with automation and a burgeoning online advertising market, entrepreneurs have generated big bucks exploiting the policy to test hoards of names, keeping just the ones that turn out to generate the most revenue.

The practice ties up millions of domain names at any given time, making it more difficult for legitimate individuals and businesses to get a desirable name.

Jay Westerdal, who earlier wrote about Google’s change on his DomainTools blog, said in an interview that the ban should make domain name tasting far less lucrative. He noted that Google’s chief rival, Yahoo Inc. (YHOO), already tries to ban tasted addresses that infringe on trademarks and account for much of the problem.

“If Google and Yahoo are not monetizing these types of sites, I think domain tasting as we know it will come to a screeching halt,” Westerdal said. “The alternative advertising is just not as effective.”

In October, Yahoo sued several domain name registration companies over tasting, accusing them of targeting trademarks owned by Yahoo and other leading brands. The lawsuit is pending in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Dell Inc. (DELL) and BMW (BMW.XE) have filed similar federal lawsuits in Florida.

The Internet’s key oversight agency, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, already is looking into name tasting and will soon ask a committee to review the issue and craft recommendations. A public comment period on draft procedures closes Monday.

The operators of the “.org” suffix already won approval to charge companies that make too many returns. The number of deletions dropped to 152,700 in June, compared with 2.4 million in May, after the new fee took effect.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

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