Sunday, January 28, 2007

Fishfinders and other Marine Electronics

And now a word from our sponsors, NorthEastMarineElectronics.com

Next to loving to write, I am a technology lover and possibly a guru.  I like any type of technology that makes my life easier or more interesting.  I like to fish, but I just do not have the amount of time I used to when I was a kid to spend time on the water and get a good feel for when and where the fish are biting.

Fortunately our sponsor NorthEastMarineElectronics.com recently provided a release detailing their great Marine electronics products including GPS systems, radar, chart plotters and Fishfinders!

Their gadgets can help even a super part time fisherman like myself enjoy the sport and my time on the water even though my time available to spend on the water is too short.

Resource Hook- Types of Linkbait

We are talking about types of Linkbait, articles written to attract backlinks to your blog or website, and the conversation has been started appropriately with a Linkbait article written at Yellow House Hosting about linkbait!

One of the best types of linkbait is the Resource Hook.  This is typically a factual list of resources.  It often includes links to other resources on the net (like this listing of over 125 blog Directories sorted by PageStrength and focused on Blogs). 

These resources are typically long.  They are long so that they will not be easy to copy and will push or force a linkback to the linkbait source.  Often time Resource Hooks are split up on multiple pages even with medium sized lists on each page.  They usually include at least summaries and purposes for their use aside from just a cold link with little additional information as those can usually be found through a search engine.  So Gather up some useful lists, add some value to those lists that can't be readily found in a search engine and upload it and you will have your own Resource Hook.

If you have done this or found good examples of Resource Hooks, Please drop us a comment with a hyperlink to the linkbait example.  (please just one hyperlink per comment so that we can identify and reject spammy comments)

Humor Hook- Types of Linkbait

Put something funny on your site, your article or your blog and you will stand a good chance of attracting links.  In large part this is also one of the foundations of YouTube, but a better example is probably The Onion.

The Onion generates lots of unique and funny content and that pushes people in droves to link to it.  If you are a Photoshop hobbyists or pro, mashing together pictures to come up with something funny is a great way to pull in links.  Even posting a YouTube video on your site can draw other people to link to you if they don't go direct to the source.

That brings up another good point.  Linkbait can attract links that turn into linkbait themselves.  If you link to this article, then you will be proving the point!  This article was written using an article from Yellow House Hosting as a source, they wrote link bait and so is this article and series.

Saturday, January 27, 2007

Full Service Law Firm for big and small

I would like to offer up a few words for our sponsor, a great law firm serving all types of clients, big and small.   simmons jannace & stagg a law firm that offers up a wide range of legal services for small, medium and large companies.  They serve many fortune 500 companies from Best Buy to Kmart to Coca-Cola and Washington Mutual.

They started over ten years ago with a smaller practice and have grown significantly since with practices in New York, Connecticut and New jersey.  They push their attorney's and legal teams to think out of the box and when possible find creative solutions to client problems to avoid or minimize conflict.  Their release indicates that they provide high quality representation for very reasonable rates.  They represent clients on matters that range from consumer litigation, securities law, municipal law, bankruptcy, environmental law and even creditors rights as they represent credit card companies, banks and investment firms.

Attack Hook- Types of Linkbait

Next up, We will look at the Attack Hook.  Yellow House Hosting's Link Baiting Article covers a type of linkbait that shows how devil's advocates and contrarians can make good on the internet.

If you see an article that you disagree with or that is wrong, you can call it out and attack the article.  You can also attack the writer, the site or the company.

In essence the attack becomes the unique content.  This is not for the faint of heart.

As a practical example, let us say that I wanted to attack the article Why Apple shouldn't have announced the iPhone by Karen Haslam.

Karen talks about how Apple seems to have broken every rule in the Apple Media book and pre-announced the iPhone when it obviously wasn't ready for prime time.

Now if I wanted to attack this article, I might start with a catchy title that will show up in a linkback option on the original page like Karen Haslam Completely Missed the Point of the iPhone Pre-Announcement.

Then I could launch into a tirade about how Apple had to launch the iPhone because their iPod product line is aging very rapidly, Leopard won't be ready till next summer at the earliest and Steve Jobs and the Board are having their sphincters examined by the SEC and they had to do something to get the press away from the scandal and the fact that Karen is to blind to call these reasons out and deal with them as opposed to speculating about whether Apple has a future goody up their sleeve is kind of like speculating 2 months before the implosion that maybe Enron will come out with a great new Energy trading option shortly after they announced their financial scandal.  Karen is obviously to much of a fangirl to realize that the company has serious problems and this was a shot in the dark at a red herring, blah blah blah.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against Karen and my example is actually a little too nice, but if you go and attack someone or their product or their company it will get you lots of traffic.

If you want to see how a Pro creates good Attack Hook Linkbait read the article

PayPerPost.com offers to sell your soul

Now That's good linkbait!  It received 241 comments, many of which from people that like PayPerPost!

News Hook - Types of Linkbait

I am continuing my series covering the types of Linkbait that can be created on your blog or site to attract people to link to your site.

Yellow House Hosting's Link Baiting Article called out several types of linkbait and one of those was the News Hook.  Basically speaking a News Hook is a unique article or news story.  If you have news that no one else has then it can definitely become good link bait.  To put it into journalistic terms your unique news becomes a primary source. 

Some nefarious types may steal your content with out attribution or links to it, however many blogs will want to link to your site and show you as the source as they can not verify the news and its accuracy.  The fact that you have put unique news out there makes you a primary source and this is an excellent form of linkbait.

So get the scoop, write an article and you have instant news hook linkbait!

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Blogging Anniversary Approaching

Sponsored Article

Adsense for Idiots one year anniversary will be coming up soon.  My desk is looking pretty barren and I think I will reward myself with some anniversary flowers

We have a great sponsor at Flowershop.com that provides flowers for all occasions, and I think I will treat myself.  If you have an anniversary coming up you may want to take a look at FlowerShop.com.  Their recent press release indicates that they have just celebrated their 35th anniversary in the flower industry.

They can help you put together a great anniversary present whether or not you are giving the gift to your wife or husband, your parents, or business partner or even to yourself.

Video - Types of Linkbait

In my previous article, I indicated that YouTube is basically established on the concept of LinkBait.  They are special in that their user base provides the content that becomes linkbait.

One of the keys to their success is that any visitor can essentially promote the content and promote YouTube by linking to a YouTube video and to the YouTube website, either by grabbing the html URL or by embedding a flash player into their own site or blog.

How to Build Linkbait

I found an excellent blog article last night that details some excellent strategies for building linkbait.

What's Link Bait?

Linkbait is typically an article or an item of content created to baiting other websites and blogs into linking to that content. 

Videos on YouTube are linkbait.  Wikipedia articles are linkbait.  Both offer a way for people to reference their content. 

You can use these same principles in your own blog and websites to attract people to your site through Search Engine Searches.  Once they are there if you offer something unique, they may then in turn write an article or a web page and link to your site to point out that useful content.

I'll cover some of these concepts in individual articles, but if you want the full version fast check out the blog article at YellowHouseHosting.com.

Keep it Short and Simple

SEO strategists recommend bloggers to keep their articles short and to the point.  Your prose may equal Tolstoy's, but that won't sell on a blog.

Too much writing can turn off your readers.  Keep your articles short, provide a few links to related topics for further exploration, and pack in keywords to attract readers through search engines and keep your Adsense ads focused.

Personally, this is one of my biggest weaknesses as a professional blogger as I tend to write too much and with an attempt at too much flair, as you may notice as you contrast this sentence with all of the sentences to be found above. 

Don't copy my style if you want to be successful, but do know that too many words may cost you!

Keyword Heavy Articles

Here's a quick 101 level tip for earning more with Adsense.

Make sure your articles are dense with keywords.  You want keywords in your title.  You should put keywords in the file name.  You should cover those keywords multiple times in your article.  These keywords will be the items or text that the Google script will identify.

As the script reads the words in your article the words that appear the most often will be designated as the keywords. (I am describing this in a very basic manner, but you get the idea.) 

Once the keyword has been identified, Google can then match that keyword identified in your article,

Ergo the Keyword -> What your article is about

and Google matches that keyword to all the advertisers that have signed up to advertise contextual ads against that keyword.

So if the keyword of your article is "keywords", then its likely that you will get google Adsense ads that have something to do with the topic of "keywords."

Pop Quiz

How many times does the word Keywords and keyword appear in this article?

Rodeo Drive Tummy Tuck Boutique

Sponsored Article

So you are following my get rich slow advice and building up an internet fortune, what are you going to use all that new found wealth to do?

When I think about such things, I think:

  1. I need to live longer to enjoy life more
  2. I need to be healthier
  3. I want my loved ones to be healthier and live longer too

One of the ways to achieve these goals is with a little good old American cosmetic surgery.  A new boutique opened up offering a los angeles tummy tuck on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.  They have are promoting their tummy tuck surgery which will decrease your weight, make you healthier, and look better too. 

Dr. Krieger is the founder and his medical center offers everything from tummy tucks, to liposuction, breast implants and facial rejuvenation.  If you are going to amass wealth, you might as well enjoy it for the long haul.

Its all about the Boxes Stupid

So there is a school of thought out there that says that Google Adsense Banners and Skyscrapers are dead.  Ergo no one is clicking them any more because they know they are advertisements and they just completely ignore them.

I do not have a definitive answer on this, but suspect that it has a measure of truth in it, especially for many types of blog websites.

Personally I favor the large box following a post and the Google Search option for Adsense revenues myself.  The Google referral programs seem to have reached a saturation point as well.  So you may want to consider dropping the Google Banners and reconfiguring your site for the New Year, if you are not seeing any action.

Maybe skyscrapers and banner ads will come back into vogue someday if enough of us lay off for a while.

PageRank Predictor

Several people are indicate that the next Google PageRank update is coming as soon as 1-28-07, just three more days.  Now is the time to make some of those last ditch blog promotion efforts to improve the ranking of your site.

Softduit Partners provides a list of over 125 Blog Directories listed in order of the directories PageStrength.

Get listed in these directories and it will increase the number of incoming links to your blog, which can increase your PageRank.

If you are wondering where you PR is now, or where it is projected to go, Softduit also has a PageRank Predictor available where you can get an idea of where you stand today, and how much work you may have to do to insure that your PR is where it should be.

Check your PR, Check your projected PR, and Fix it Up today!

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Blog Topics and Blog Promotion on MyLot

Just wanted to mention that MyLot is an excellent place to promote your blog, your articles or even just come up with some topics.

I just spendt 15 minutes there and found a topic on doomsday via a plankton/ant revolt against humans and a new paid to post discussion forum called Payposter.

The first would make a nice addition to one of my comedy blogs and the other will make a nice review option here on Adsense for Idiots.  If you have not yet found some useful material from MyLot, it might be worth checking out.

I wouldn't count on earning a huge amount there.  I've posted 200 discussion responses and have earned $7.60 to date.  But I have picked up several hundred topcic ideas that have earned me several hundred dollars there, so the $7.60 is just icing on the cake, the real cake is in the topics and discussion and in the promotion when you drop a link on occassion that is relevant to the topic of discussion.

Blog Explosion is Just Getting Better

I'm not sure what it is, but Blog Explosion is continuing to return me some great results.  I have used several other blog exchanges and do like their services as well, but BlogExplosion delivers much higher quality traffic.

(Note You can sign up for BlogExplosion through the hyperlinks in this article.  These hyperlinks were created with an invitation code that you can use to setup your own account and add as many blogs as you like!)

If you have a strong blog and one that has some great content, especially in the funny, or editorial or tech perspective (as opposed to the blog marketing perspective like this site) then Blog Explosion can help you get some great impressions.  Now do not run your blog through Blog Explosion if you are running Adsense!

That is a huge mistake and can get you kicked out of the Adsense program.  If you have Adsense on your blog, then you need to setup a blog mirror or remove the Adsense from your site all together.  If you need more information about blog mirror's you can contact Softduit.com one of the innovators in the Blog Mirror creation and maintenance industry.  They were the first and can definitely help you promote your blog and get some quality eyeballs on your content!

 

Another Blog Mirror Up and Running!

I setup a new blog mirror tonight.  I had worked on this one for several weeks back in December and kept running into a few CSS issues.  I had just developed a mental block I guess or maybe I just needed to learn some additional javascrypt.  Plus, I ultimately scrapped the original layout inherited from blogger and went instead with a three collumn design of my own.

You can see the resulting mirror at There's Something About Harry or you can see the original blog that is being mirrored at There's Something About Harry.  :)

I have seen a new thing starting to pop up.  Some YouTube videos are not translating in the mirror, but I think this is just a simple feed issue.

Regardless the mirrors are delivering excellent results and I can't wait to open up the beta to all comers!

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Saturday, January 13, 2007

Introducing a Blog Mirror

I am testing a new service that creates a Blog Mirror.  A blog mirror creates an image of your blog that is not a copy.

The image is distinct and not something that will penalize you for duplicate content. A blog mirror strips out advertising or any items that you want removed from your blog for various reasons.

In my case I am using the blog mirror for blog promotion.  I have a blog at Maven Mapper's Information - http://mavenmapper.blogspot.com .

This blog has Adsense ads on it.  I can not promote this blog through services like Blogmad or Blogexplosion (see sidebar) without breaking the Google TOS.

Instead, I have established the Blog Mirror through services at Softduit Partners.  The blog mirror resides on Softduit's domain at http://www.softduit.com/blog_promo_directory/mavenmapper.html 

This is the address that I list on the blog surfing exchanges.  This is then displayed to visitors on those exchanges.  They can still view my blog and even click through to visit my real blog, but I do not have to fear losing my Google Adsense account.

I keep in line with the Google TOS.  I am not generating duplicate content (as the service prevents indexing) yet I can still benefit from promotional efforts to get and attract new readers!

 

Write that Content Like a King

One of the best ways you can boost your Adsense results and all of your visitor results for a blog is to keep writing more content.  Content is king on the internet and fresh content is sometimes even better.  The more you write the more that the search engines will have to find.  This increases the chances that you will write something somewhere that someone is interested in someday.

You cold write an article tonight that might be found by someone tonight, tomorrow, next week, next month and next year.  That's 5 impressions, 5 chances to convert a subscriber, 5 chances to help someone find one of your sponsors or advertisers, which could earn you money.

Now multiply that by 5 new articles written in a week.  Now you have 25 chances.  Multiply that by 50 weeks and you have 5,000 chances.  Write more than one article per day or more than 5 chances per week and your odds get better and better.

Plus, these are all new chances, new readers, new visitors from Google Adsense or other search engine results.  Add these chances to your existing and growing reader base and it starts to become apparent how writing good content alone can help your web business results all by itself.

Improve this with promotion, marketing optimization and much much more and the odds get stacked even more in your favor.

So write something today, and look at it like a deposit in your future.  A dividend that keeps on providing returns.

Sunday, January 07, 2007

Beyond Blossoms Flowers

Sponsored Article

We would like to welcome Beyond Blossoms as one of our sponsors and encourage our readers to consider bookmarking their site.  Valentine's Day is coming very very soon.

Beyond Blossoms offers amazing flower arrangements baskets and more.  Their flowers are imported from flower farms from all around the world.  They work on marketing and positioning themselves as the Ben & Jerry's of flowers, offering great deals on a dozen roses for less than thirty dollars or providing flowers that are harder to find.

Beyond Blossoms has two founders, Josh Grossman and Gina Maschek.  They recently provided a this release on their flowers.  Their site offers a great rewards program.  It allows buyers to earn points from buying flowers.  These points can be redeemed with free flower purchases from their website. 

MetaTag Generator

Here's tonight's tip or tool from iWebTool.  They offer a great Meta-Tag Generator.  You can plug in your Website Title, a Website Description, Keywords and the author or authors for your site, hit a button and they will generate an updated section of code that you can copy and paste to your blog.

Many design tools like dreamweaver offer this built in,however sometimes having a freebie close by is easier for blog template work on the fly.

I tend to use the tools in dreamweaver for larger sites, and simple tools like this for blogs on blogger and other places, especially when its time for a quick update on keywords or something.

 

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Saturday, January 06, 2007

A Short Little Break Next Week-WebDeveloper Add on for Firefox

Next week, I will be traveling to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show (aka the CES Convention).  I'm hoping to cover a few articles next week while traveling, but will probably save some of my articles up for when I get back.

Don't worry we will resume publishing next week. As we go into the new year we have lots of exciting information and tips to share with our readers.

In the meantime, have you tried out the WebDeveloper Add On for FireFox? 

The tool helps you inspect your blog and web pages for many possible errors.  These tools can definitely short cut your time, work and effort as you work to validate your site and optimize your images.  Check it out at the Firefox site.

 

Friday, January 05, 2007

SecondLife is a Great New Medium to Promote Your Site and Earn Money

I have been exploring an entirely new medium (its been around for a while and written about for almost 20 years but its new to me.)   Its called SecondLife and its basically a virtual reality game world online. 

Its really a virtual overlay on top of the internet.  It makes for an infinitely more interesting user experience in many ways.  You literally are a person in this world and explore the net by walking, flying and teleporting.  Plus you can talk to other web surfers.

There's a business angle to it as well.  You can earn Linden dollars in SecondLife and convert them into real cash.  Its free to set up a user account, but you will need a basic level graphics card to run the program (browser like interface for this online medium).

Once you get the hang of it, you can learn how to cross promote your old fashioned online web pages to the surfers in SecondLife.  I'll be covering this cross promotion more in articles to follow.

 

Exodus3000 Pays You to Play games Online

OK, we all need a quick little break from blogging, web design, seo, sem, key word analysis, html coding and more.

I typically take a 15 minute time out to play Exodus3000. The site has an ingenious business plan behind it.  Basically, people play a game with a complexity level of something between Stratego and Risk.  Each move they make, generates a new web page and ca-ching, that's an impression.

The game motivates people to accumulate Martian Dollars, to buy more stuff, to earn more dollars faster.  The cool thing is that you can convert the Martian Dollars into real US dollars via PayPal.

You should check it out.  Look at it from the keen practiced eye of someone that understands a little bit about Adsense and see if you can spot some flaws or ways that the business model can be improved.  Look at it like a little research project.  There are other sites that essentially pay people to play games as well.  I'm always trying them out myself. 

I do like the idea of earning money while I take a break.  Glad I don't smoke anymore, I'm sure someone will come up with a PayToSmoke business model someday soon.

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Looking for an Additional Contributors to blog for AfI

Do you have experience with Adsense, Adwords, earning money online or Search Engine Marketing?

We're looking to ad a contributor blogger to the site here at Adsense for Idiots.  Contact us if you are interested.  We're looking for posts from 50-150 words covering best practices and services available on the web.  We'll pay for good content, but it must be unique and written by you.

We're looking for a few posts per week to start, so you can give it a try and see if its something you are interested in doing.  In addition to paying you via PayPal, we'll work with you to promote your own blog or site.

Is Your Domain Banned?

Here's another great tool from the team over at iWebTools.  Its a simple tool that analyzes your site to determine if its banned or likely banned by Google.

Its not 100% accurate, but worth taking a look at especially if you are planning on purchasing a domain from someone and you are not sure if it may have been abused in the past.

The Google Banned Checker is pretty simple, just key in your URL and run the tool.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Activity Based Costing Software options getting cheaper

These days the price of bringing it great software is rapidly decreasing.  This is enabling many small and medium companies to utilize software solutions that would have cost a Fortune 500 company millions of dollars just a few years ago, not to mention consulting bills costing even more!

Prices are coming down significantly and this is allowing companies to run better performance analysis software on the cheap.  The thing is that companies must first setup their system to go in and identify the most appropriate metrics and systematically pull that information out and pipe it into the cheap software.  Then business owners and managers can get their hands on truly insightful information that can drastically help them to make better decisions.

Our sponsor Acorn Systems provides solutions according that offer businesses access to great activity based costing software along with the support and guidance necessary to successfully get the software up and running and triggered by the most appropriate numbers and metrics that are meaningful for the company.  Their solutions can help a company get a finger on the pulse of the business and navigate, inspect and analyze every inch of the cardiovascular system of that company in detail or zoom out to look at global trends.  Businesses need to take advantage of these types of solutions to keep their overhead down and make better, faster decisions.

Page Rank Prediction Tool

Here's a great tool at a very useful site.  Its a GooglePageRank Prediction tool.  Google PageRank is an extremely important metric that is used by many advertisers to assess the merit of advertising on your blog.

I won't cover in this article what it takes to boost your PR(pagerank), but you can monitor how it might work out with this tool the next time Google does an update (currently people are thinking that this will not happen prior to the beginning of February.

The Google PageRank Prediction Tool is located at iWebTool.  They have a number of other great tools and services that I will cover more thoroughly in future posts, but this one is definitely worth looking into.

Be forewarned that its not the gospel, but it can help.  For example one of my blogs, Maven Mapper's Information, was projected to increase from a PR 4 to a PR5 3 weeks ago, now that's showing that its holding at a future prediction of PR4.  That tells me that I need to get back to work on that site and make some improvements fast!

Cross Promotion and Doing Business in SecondLife

This week I have been exploring SecondLife.  For those of you not familiar with SecondLife its an online virtual reality.  If you have ever heard of the video game called the SIMs, this is similar, but has a real currency that can be interchanged with real hard cash.

I am finding many companies that are moving into SecondLife and setting up virtual reality store fronts, offices, houses and environments to meet and interact with people online.

Hundreds of thousands of people login to SecondLife every day and Merchants there create, buy sell train and earn money.  Much of that also works to cross promote websites.

Signing up for an account is free.  Your new account will automatically be credited with $750 Linden dollars.  In the exchange market, that's worth about $3 US.  :)  Check it out an let me know what you think and what you find. 

So I am working to learn more about this concept and figure out how to apply it to my Web businesses here in the old fashioned internet!

Monday, January 01, 2007

Old Man Time is Reborn-Refresh Your Content Too

The new year is here and in some fables, old man time has aged all year long, passed away and has been reborn as a New Year baby.  He's refreshing his content!

You need to keep your content fresh as well.  Bloggers usually find this easier to do than typical website owners.  A blog is setup under the principle of adding a new fresh content all the time, every month, week, sometimes day, sometimes multiple times per day.

More content will attract more readers to your website.  Great content will bring them back.

Don't dump content out there just to have content, but make sure you don't paint a white fence too long seeking perfection either. 

You should find that good balance between regular updates and perfect.  You can always make tweaks and improvements after the fact, but if you are blogging be aware that this can mess with your feed if you republish an older article.

Regardless, you do not want published errors, so either consider fixing it or putting in a correction in a separate article later.

For website owners, if you are not running a blog, you should definitely consider adding this useful marketing tool.  It gives your site or business a reason to publish new and fresh content and attract more visitors.  Some websites need to remain clean, clear and simple and there is no room for content on some of those pages, but adding a blog section can give you a place to put that knowledge, and information.  The regular additions and updates to the blog will attract more people to your blog and if you build it well, they will funnel over to your web site too!

New Years Resolution-Validation validation Validation!

Welcome everyone to the new year.  It's 2007 and a very promising is 365 days ahead of us.  There is a great deal to do and accomplish and we are all in a very good position to have a great new year.

My new years resolution is to keep all of my blogs and websites validated as completely as possible.

Many blogger bloggers will know that this is not always easy as the blogger templates and code do not validate well.  Plus many tools that are used to upload articles will push in garbage code that prevents the validation of the individual article.  For many reasons this is bad.  To put it simply, code that does not validate makes it very difficult and sometimes impossible for search engine crawlers and bots to index your site, find the content and make it available to searches from people looking for your information.

You should spend some time getting your blog validated and then work on keeping it validated!

In addition to the validator that comes with Dreamweaver, here are two validators that you should be familiar with when validating your blog and sites.  Not all validators will find all of the errors, so it is a good practice to check your code on multiple validators to get the code as clean as possible.

W3.Org's Validation tool

WDG HTML Validator