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Dec 31, 2006

Top Web 2.0 Services and Resources from Listible

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Here is a list of top Web 2.0 services and resources from the site listible.com. I just found them tonight and will post all of their lists here. You can do the same for your blog once you sign up on their site. Kudos for the webmasters and contributors for giving us free content that is GREAT and RELEVANT!


Who said free music downloads were illegal?

I just ran across this site and thought it was an amazing concept.  I am not sure how or if the site downloads could be used as content for websites and blogs.  I am going to write to the staff and see if they have any plans!


SpiralFrog and Universal Music Group Partner in Advertising-Supported Legal Music Download Service

SpiralFrog is a new online music destination, offering ad-supported legal downloads of audio and video content licensed from the catalogs of the world’s major and independent record labels.

SpiralFrog will be a secure environment where music lovers can satisfy their unyielding passion and thirst for music, entertainment, and information. Our site will be as multifaceted, smart, and current as the audience we hope to attract. An audience that we believe is the driving force behind the way music is created, discovered, and consumed today.

The SpiralFrog website is currently in Beta, and will debut in Q1 2007.

  • SpiralFrog, a new online music download destination, has signed an agreement with Universal Music Group to make Universal’s extensive catalog available for legal downloading in the US and Canada.
  • SpiralFrog will offer users of its no-cost web-based service the ability to legally download music by many of the world’s most popular and award-winnings artists.
  • Legal digital files with no viruses or spyware in a controlled client-server architecture, quick downloading, and quality songs and music videos by great artists are among the primary benefits users will gain.
  • Digital rights management technology is built-in to all audio and video content as part of measures the company and its partners are actively taking to address piracy.
  • SpiralFrog’s target audience of 13-34-year-olds is an advertiser’s dream.
  • The company’s research revealed that consumers are more than willing to 'pay' for their content by watching non-intrusive, contextually-relevant, targeted advertising in an online entertainment environment where advertising is already part of the overall experience.



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Dec 30, 2006

Bravenet offers awesome FREE websites and hosting!

I have found a wonderful site that has helped me create several easy to use websites in no time. The best part is it was all for free! Bravenet is an awesome site that will get you up and running with your own personal web page that stands out from the crowd. Go beyond a web page and get an entire web site to promote yourself, your club, your business, or whatever you desire.

When you see the front page of Bravenet you know that you have found something different. They do have paid packages that start at $3.30 per month, but you will want to try out their services with their awesome free package! You can host five different domain names with 1.5 GB of bandwidth per month. Although they do register domain names for a fee, try one of their free subdomains first (yoursite.bravenet.com). In no time you will be guided through a simple wizard to design your site. The templates they offer are unique and not what you have seen on other sites. Add a blog and a forum. Better yet, add an interactive map to your front page for visitors to sign. Everything is easily customizable. Bravenet even has a community forum that helps drive traffic to your site! So what are you waiting for? Paste this into your browser (and get that site of yours up today!








myLot - A paid online community!


Here is something that won't make you tons of money but is actually quite fun and addictive. myLot is a online community where having discussions gets you some pocket change. It won't get you rich but it does pass the time. You can get paid by check or PayPal (or a few other options). The conversations range from the absurd to the academic. It's a great site to get referals to your blogs or to get advice on how your websites look! Check it out. You've got nothing to loose!




www.myLot.com

Dec 29, 2006

Feedvertising Your RSS

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds are a way to post your blog posts or website information to lots of other websites and get your site seen by literally thousands of viewers! There are certain programs that follow RSS feeds and widgets that allow you to post your feed in fun little devices that are webpage friendly... like the one in the right hand column here. This fun little piece of web technology allows you to have your posts everywhere! Sites like Technorati.com or even del.icio.us allow you to make your RSS feed available to tons of potential viewers. With all of those potential viewers it seems like a logical place to make some cash right? "Feedvertising" is quickly catching on as a new way to "monetize" your RSS feeds and help you make money. Google AdSense is currently testing a beta version of their feedvertising program but I have found a site that quite simply out shines most out there.

Text Link Ads offers the traditional ad publishing program but takes it a few steps beyond simple ad placement. You can place ads with advertisers that are already placing ads or you can reserve some ad spots for yourself. What do you do with those? Simple. You can advertise that spots are available for purchase and help generate more dollars! What amazes me about this site are the referal program where you earn $25 for each referal who is approved and the "feedvertising" program. The feedvertising program works in a similar manner as their ad publishing where you can reserve certain spots to advertise for yourself in your own RSS feed! You do have to submit your site for approval so this is not necessarily something that a beginning blog would probably get approved for. However, I thought the awesome programs this site offers were well worth a mention. I am going to try out their ad publishing on another blog to compare it to AdSense. Check them out and get signed up. You are missing valuable income by not referring people!


Text Link Ads


Dec 28, 2006

What is this AdSense business?

I found this article on ezinearticles.com. I thought it was a good start to explain the AdSense program that Google has for ad publishers (that would be you)!

Make A Great Income With Adsense
by Keith George

The Google Adsense program pays the webmaster every time a visitor of their website clicks on the ads that Google displays in their web pages. Thus it has become a truly viable and profitable option to earn a living online. So a correct positioning of your Google adsense ads can make or break your success with the Google adsense program.

Like me, many have been scouring the internet for a sure fire way of making some extra income from your content rich website. Numerous Internet marketeers have joined the Google Adsense program and placed Google ads on their websites. But many have also had the frustration of not getting enough visitors to the site and again have been scouring the internet for information on combining Google Adsense and Google Adwords to get targeted visitors to your site.

Traffic

The effective techniques for high daily Adsense cash creation must involve both traffic generation and the use of the highest paying Adsense keyword phrases in your particular industry or field. Many times you will find that the same keyword phrases that will attract the highest paying daily Adsense cash ads will also pull in significant traffic from leading search engines, meaning that your technique can aim at hitting two birds with the same stone. To increase the traffic to my website I write articles and submit to ezines to get traffic as well as external links. Many back links is one of the keys to rank your website higher.

Keywords

If you use Adwords keyword tool to select keywords you will be better off and get some valuable information. Make notes, notice the main headlines and keywords used. But, filling your advertisement page with texts to small to read, has the same color as the background and using css for the sole purpose of loading them with rich keywords content will most probably earn you a penalty.

The search engine robot picks out keywords on your page, gets a grip on what your website is about and delivers links that take users to sites that interest them. The owner of a site about acne scars then would be able to do a little research online to find the highest paying keywords in this area and then - if you know where those hotspots are - you can place those keywords in the right areas on the page. Google Adsense has very good information on how effective the placement of ads are.

Clicks

Every time a visitor to your website clicks on one of the links, you receive a small amount of revenue. The traffic flow into the Adsense site dictates the number of clicks a certain Adsense site may incur. To achieve the Adsense dream, a webmaster must produce a site that has the factors and characteristics needed to generate the traffic and clicks it needs to be profitable. The webmaster get paid a portion of the money Google receives from it's advertisers each time someone clicks an ad on your site.

Relevant

It is really amazing that all you need to do with the AdSense program is to take a small piece of code, paste it into your website and instantly relevant ads start appearing. As soon as your account is approved for adsense ads then the most relevant ads will show on your webpage. With fewer relevant ads you get fewer clicks with lower Adsense revenues. While ad formatting and placement may affect ad click through rates, they have nothing to do with the delivery of relevant ads to your site. To make the pagerank of your site higher you should update it regularly and you should also introduce a relevant RSS feed.

Keith George always writes about valuable news & reviews. A related resource is Google Adsense. Further information can be found at Economy.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Keith_George

Start Your Blog Here!

Here are some great places to begin a blog if you don't have your own webspace!

www.blogger.com
www.soulcast.com
www.livejournal.com
www.squarespace.com
www.pageflakes.com
www.minddeposit.com
www.sampa.com
www.xanga.com

First things first... Get a Blog!

When I started this endeavor, I thought it would just be great to throw a store online, advertise it a bit, and it would make money. But how would I advertise? I had the website and the product, but I needed a sure fire way to drive traffic to the site. Everything I could research said to start "blogging". What was this blog they spoke of? I had heard of it but had no clue how important it would be to the survival of my website and web presense. I dug around and found the easiest place to get started (and more importantly one that would let me start earning money almost right away) was www.blogger.com. I set up this site and here we are. But I know people want other choices, so I am going to list some other places to get a blog. Some are not as user friendly as I think blogger.com is, but I am still learning. My webhost allows me to have my own blog, but I figured this would give me a bit of experience before I made my own site! I will post the list of blog sites I find under another heading called "Start Your Blog Here!". Let me know which ones you find easy as a beginner!

Links to AdSense

Well, if you have ever tried to find the Google AdSense page, good luck. It's rather hidden. But, if you want a quick link, scroll down and look at the four buttons at the bottom of this page. It should be easier to find things and you will help me out! I will teach you in a bit how to put them on your page super easily!

Dec 26, 2006

Find answers that work with a Guide!

One of the things I am doing now is being a paid Guide for ChaCha.com. It's a new socially driven search engine where you can get help searching from a Guide who is an expert searcher on your keyword search! It's fun and addictive -- and did I mention not bad pocket change? I am going to post my RSS from there on this blog so you can see some examples of what I search for. If you are interested in becoming a Guide, leave me a comment as we get new invites all the time!

Don't be scared, jump in.

I must admit that I started this project with the wonderful idea of getting rich semi-quick. I thought I had a basic grasp of the internet. I mean I remember when there was Windows 3.1 and we thought that was advanced. Cut to fifteen years later and now I find myself gainfully unemployed yet again and seeking something to do. I had heard about this AdSense thing with Google and tried my hand at an auction or two. I could do this. I could really build a site that would earn me income and let me do the things I enjoy. Could I do it? Sure. I mean I had working knowledge of the keyboard atleast and could read information on the internet.

SMACK!

Sorry. That was the sound of reality which just hit me upside the head. So much technology exists that, well, I was aware of but never realized how much it could play into my venture of being an internet guru. I thought get site, throw together a little store, turn it loose on a few friends, and presto! Let's just say the point I am to right now. I bought some webspace and a domain name (more on that later) and here we are! No, this isn't it. This is just my blog. The blog of my journey and I am hoping it will do some other newbie some good at some point and time.

Throughout the links and pages you will find in this little chunk of cyberspace, I will assume that you have a basic understanding of the internet (or else you wouldn't be here) and that's probably about it. I will try to present somethings myself and post articles for alot of things that I think will be helpful and I simply do not have the time to write as of yet. I hope you enjoy my contribution to the internet. Leave me some feedback. Write me email. Just don't uss that RSS yet because I haven't quite figured it out! Peace!

Dec 23, 2006

RSS Technology for dummies!

I was trying to find something to explain RSS to me the other day. There are so many sites out there that use them. Compilers, Blogline... Ugh! I was so confused. Then I ran across this little article that explained it all! Hope it helps!





RSS is technology
- a simple software program - that allows you to
access web and blog content automatically. The acronym's most popular
translation is "Really Simple Syndication. Once your browser or
computer has an RSS reader on board, you can subscribe to any number of
RSS "feeds." A feed is simply a way in which a reader may subscribe to
website content - most commonly blogs or news sites. A news site, for
example, may list their latest headlines or entire articles in their
feed every time a new article is published. A blog would publish this
feed as a series of recent posts.





Feeds are published by millions of publishers, from small
individuals to large organizations like Newsweek. The value of a feed
is that it brings the most current site content to you in a format that
is easily scanned; further, you are spared the task of visiting each
source site each day. This is typically done through the use of what is
called an 'aggregator' or 'feed reader'.





Feed readers or RSS readers, are software programs that run on your
computer (or PDA or phone); let you easily subscribe to feeds, and
allow you to read through them efficiently. Some are relatively simple,
showing the headline and summary. The fancier ones often work with (or
in) your browser to make viewing the material look much like the source
page. Once you have a reader on your computer, subscribing to a feed
with is an easy click or drag from your browser. Sites that provide RSS
feeds will usually have a button for that purpose.





There are several RSS feed formats as well as one with an entirely
different methodology called Atom. Atom has become popular with some
bloggers and blogging tools. Some aggregators can read both. The other
acronyms you will see in "feedspeak" are XML, which stands for
'extensible markup language' and is the code standard for these simple
text feeds. An 'OPML" file is a format for indexing hierarchical feed
lists. If you dive into this web habit in a big way, your aggregator or
reader may keep your subscription list in an OPML file.





An RSS feed is a great method for staying abreast of issues and
topics that interest you. There are a number of feed "libraries," so to
speak, from which you can learn what's out there in your areas of
interest. Google has a built-in reader that makes the subscription
process easy, as does Yahoo. Firefox has a downloadable extension for
the purpose of aggregating RSS feeds, as well as a default ability to
save RSS feeds as "live bookmarks" that update via the RSS feed. You
can download a number of stand alone readers and aggregators; you can
find them through a simple web search.





The whole RSS "movement" is a step towards utilizing the Internet
more efficiently. The trick is to avoid overloading your email inbox
with daily reports that you end up ignoring most of the time. For that
purpose, there are sites like Feedster that will search millions of RSS
feeds for articles that are relevant to your interests. Like any search
tool, however, these services are hit and miss. They are still working
off keywords and sometimes what they find is relevant, sometimes not.
But if you want daily news broken into categories, it's great
technology once you learn how to make it work for you.










About The Author

Madison Lockwood is a customer relations associate for http://www.apollohosting.com.
She helps clients understand how a website may benefit them both
personally and professionally. Apollo Hosting provides website hosting,
ecommerce hosting, VPS hosting to a wide range of customers




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Dec 21, 2006

Choosing an Affiliate Program

By: Kevin Sinclair


What should you consider when choosing an affiliate program? You need to think about two key things: what business are you in and what can the affiliate program provide to your customers.

No matter what business you are in, the largest investment you make will be customer acquisition. If you have your own product, and have acquired a base of satisfied customers, then single product affiliate programs could work very well for you.

However, if your business is acquiring customers for other businesses, that is, purely affiliate programs, then a better choice for you could be affiliate programs with multiple products or services. This will help you to capitalise on your investment in customer acquisition.

The key to choosing successfully is to ensure that the affiliate program offers products that meet the needs of your potential customers. Coupled with this is the need for the products to be high quality and for the supplier to provide excellent customer service. Remember, your credibility is on the line every time you refer someone to buy through your affiliate relationship.

Some of the other factors I consider when evaluating affiliate programs include:

Is the affiliate program a reputable business? You can check out a business you are considering a relationship with in variety of ways. Talk to the Better Business Bureau in your local area or a similar body. In addition, I find web sites that monitor affiliate programs to be worth looking at. The best I have found is Associate Programs http://www.associateprograms.com/. Allan Gardyne pulls no punches and tells it as it is.


Does the program enable you to share in the lifetime value of the customer? Great programs will give you commissions on all future purchases of the customers you introduce. This is where the real profits are. These types of programs, in effect, allow you to partner with the supplier.
Does the program reward you for introducing other affiliates? This type of program is commonly referred to as a two-tier program. Often your customer may become an affiliate also and you will be rewarded for this.


Is the supplier interested in your success as an affiliate? The top affiliate programs engage in a process of coaching or information sharing to help you succeed. Affiliates are provided with regular newsletters outlining what is working for successful affiliates and providing updates and details on new products.


Is the commission reasonable? Commission rates on commodity products such as books and CDs are low. This is because there is very little margin in the products due to competition. Look for products that have a commission rate of 15% or more that are not commodities - that way you will be better able to recoup your customer acquisition investment.


Are statistics provided? The higher the level of statistics provided, the better off you are. This will enable you to measure the success of your marketing efforts and to determine the best places to invest your marketing dollars. Insufficient statistics is a sign that the affiliate program is not sufficiently interested in your success.


Are new products being developed regularly? To get the full value from lifetime commissions, new products need to be introduced on a regular basis. Without this, lifetime commissions can be worthless. Also, look for consistent high quality in new products introduced.


How frequently are commissions paid? The more frequently commissions are paid, the better off you are. Good quality affiliate programs will pay you monthly. In some situations, commissions are not paid until a certain level is reached. If the program you are considering has this requirement, check how many sales need to be made before the level is reached.


Have you read the affiliate agreement? This is a key area that you should look at. Some affiliate agreements are totally in favour of the supplier. Others are more balanced. Some agreements restrict your ability to promote similar products from other suppliers. Most agreements have anti-spam provisions. Look for agreements that are fair and that do not stack everything against you as the affiliate.

While there are other factors that can be considered when choosing an affiliate program, following the suggestions above will help you to make superior business choices that will lead to long-term success.



Author Bio
Article by Kevin Sinclair, CPA, of Personal & Business Success Resources. Visit his website at
www.business.ksinclair.com.

Article Source: http://www.ArticleGeek.com - Free Website Content

Blogs -- Why Weblogs are so SE Friendly and Profitable

By Joshua Spaulding

We all know that the more quality, unique content we can create the better off we will be. We also know the power of social marketing. There are many reasons for the increased popularity of blogs in the SE’s and with everyday people. But I will go into detail about the top two which are:


- Frequent Unique Content Updates: Whether you use wordpress, blogger or some other blog service; the main theme is the same, an organized way to distribute your own unique content to the masses in a journal type format. When you create new content on a normal web site you must first come up with a style then add Meta tags etc. With a blog all of this is done for you and you can concentrate on the most important thing, content. Many bloggers go a step further and place other peoples articles on their blog on a daily basis. These articles are taken from article directories and the signature block must be added along with the article body. This creates the opportunity to create a massive web site with very little work.


- Viral Marketing: Since most blogs are updated frequently with unique content, many people keep up with their favorite ones. The same people tell their friends who tell there friends and on and on. This is basic viral marketing and it is one of the best things that can happen to a web site. A personalized blog that provides valuable information on any particular thing can very easily start a viral marketing trend.


If you can make a post everyday to your blog and get the SE spiders coming back frequently; they will continue to see the new content and give you higher SERP placement. Find one of the many Google Adsense plugins and install it. Now you have people coming to your blog, clicking on your ads and making you money.


The popularity of blogs has grown at an alarming rate in the past few years and I believe that it will continue to grow for a very long time. If you are into Internet marketing and you have not yet started a blog it would be a wise decision to do so. If you do not even know what Internet marketing is, its ok. You can get your own free blog and set it up very easily to start making money right away.


Joshua Spaulding is an Author and Webmaster Providing Free Training on many things such as how to Create a Free Blog. Joshua invites you to join in on the Free Training so you to can learn how to Make Money Online. Just visit EZ-OnlineMoney.com to get started today.

Welcome to my Blog!


Hey there! I am Tyson. That's me over there on the left. Who am I? A simple guy trying to make a few extra dollars on the internet to help make himself a living in post-Katrina New Orleans. More about me later as I post. I started this blog because I got this bright idea. Build an awesome website and make it make some money. Sounds simple right? Wrong. There is so much out there about this subject that I am spending a great deal of time to find out there are alot of scams and get-rich-quick claims that abound! So, I will post the sites that I know worked for me. If you have any suggestions, send the link or post a comment. I will definately check them out. But as for now, welcome to my journey and let's get started...