Putting Wikipedia to Work for You!

Wikipedia is an online open source encyclopedia.  Users from around the world submit information about every topic under the sun in every written lanuage.

Source of Information

Wikipedia can be an excellent point of reference information when you are writing articles.  The informations accuracy is sometimes questionable as users can submit inaccurate information.  Overtime the online community will usually edit this information until the reference is solid.

Submitting Information

If you searchWikipedia and fail to find a topic covering an area that you would like to reference, you might consider your own knowledge of the topic.  You can create an index for a topic and kick things off.  Its important to try and use the most accurate information possible or else the details will be edited out and your contributions will be lost.  Plus, like an ebay sellers credibility this could harm your own credibility so keep it factual.

Covering your Web Pages

Among other things you should consider building out a repository of reference information about yourself and the sites you write about.  This will among other things provide links to your sites, but more importantly it will make your work more transparent and credible.  Again do not put bad information into the system or else it will likely be deleted or edited out doing you absolutely no good and wasting your time!

More Great Resources for Wikipedia Maximization

Top 10 Wikipedia Tips

 

Technorati tags: Online Marketing, Building Links, Wikipedia Marketing

Fixing PayPerPost Opts that have been Rejected watch out for the double button

I noticed a small thing, not so much as an error, but could be misinterpreted as one.

If you get a post rejected and go in and fix it. You will want to submit the opportunity for reconsideration.

I do not recall how it looked in the old version, but now you get to the bottom of the screen and you receive to button options.

1. Take Opportunity
2. Save Changes

When you create an opportunity you click on number 1.

When you fix a rejection, you can only click on number 2 even though the take opportunity button image is presented and it looks and feels like you should be able to click on number 1.

I'm not sure what type of page design or coding is used to make the Save Changes link show up, but I think it would help the interface if either the two buttons were consolidated or if the Take Opportunity button were hidden for posts that are being rejected.

If you miss the Save Changes button , it is possible that a user will think that the system is erroring out when its not. Just not real user friendly.

 

Technorati tags: payperPost

Validate that Free Theme

Here's a handy tip that sometimes is forgotten.  WordPress users and bloggers both often go out and find great looking new themes and upload them to their bogs.

These themes often have excellent graphics and some terrific tools and widgets. 

Unfortunately they are not always validated.  Make sure you validate your blog html or XHTML, your CSS file and your feed after you update your theme.  This will insure that your site is optimized such that robots can successfully index those portions of the site that you want them to cover.

Technorati tags: validate new themes, validate new blogs, validate rss with new theme, validate css file with new blog

If you mis-spell a keyword in your title - delete the post and publish again

The last thing most bloggers want to do is delete a post.  They may edit it, they may move it they may change it but they do not want to delete it.  On blogger when you post an article Blogger creates a file name based on the words in the title.

What do I do if my file name has a mis-spelled word?

If you happen to mis-spell a keyword in the title that means it will be mis-spelled in file name as well.

I did this with a recent post, which inspired the article.

I left my mistake published for the sake of education.  If you go to the link for the article Adsense ranks Number Four on Google for Adsense Tips, you will see no mis-spellings in the title.  however if you look at the URL, you will notice that the word four is spelled for.

My spell check missed it, I was tired and missed it until I published.  Then I saw it in the title and fixed the title.  I then realized immediately after that I still had a mis-spelling in the file name!

Now I should delete it, but I won't this time.  Whenever you make this mis-stake, if you catch it before you post another article and before your site can be pinged, fed or indexed, delete out that mis-spelled file and republish it with the correct spelling.

 

Technorati tags: URL bad spelling, bad spelling in url, when to delete a blog article

Adsense Ranks Number four on Google for Adsense Tips

Here's an interesting factoid to consider as you are structuring your articles, article titles and file names to promote better and more effective Adsense Ads.  Did you know that Adsense ranks number one for the keyword Adsense?

Yes, OK, I thought you would know that one.

Did you know that the Adsense site only ranks number four on Google for the keyword Adsense Tips?

Yup its true

Even Google sometimes has a hard time staying on top of its own search engine for web pages about itself.  The key point to consider here is that finding the right combination of keywords, like Adsense Tips instead of just Adsense can make a big difference to your placement.  Get those keywords in the file separated by hyphens - and get them in the title and get them in about 5% of the words in your text.  That's a good place to start.  After that you will need to promote, promote, promote!

Technorati tags: Adsense ranks number 4 on Google for Adsense Tips

Setting up a Google Group

So let's say that you are working to build up a new company or website or group or political community, there is nothing better than establishing a forum to create more conversation.

You will immediately be confronted however with the choice between going with a free group hosted by a monster company like Google or Yahoo or running your own forum on your domain.  If you run it on your domain, you get more options more control and you can earn money from the forum.  However, it could take you a long time to generate enough traffic and community for it to matter.

Setting up a free Google Group and making yourself a moderator is a very good option.  You get a number of great resources automatically, the group gets indexed by Google and many of the other communities and their members will be more likely to stumble into your group and join in the conversation.

Unless you think you will be collecting proprietary information for some potential later resale, I definitely recommend Google Groups as a sound solution to hit the ground running fast!

I have recently started one myself called the Writer's Collaborative where I am setting up a group to bring freelance internet writers together to share tips and knowledge and know how!

Technorati tags: when to set up a google Group, writer's collaborative

Promote Your Blog Articles with Top10Tech.com

Softduit Partners, the company that runs Adsense for Idiots and offers a great listing of blog directories is preparing to launch a new website.  The new site will be at Top10Tech.com and will feature many sub categories of tech related information from Web Tech Tips to Top 10 Gadgets, or Top Military Tech or Top Auto tech and more.

Promoting Original Article Reviews to Your Blog

Their new site will feature summaries from bloggers that have written reviews on any tech related item that falls within their categories or sub categories.  The site will help bloggers promote their individual articles through direct links to their blogs and by sending readers to the site from top10tech.  If you write tech reviews occassionally or on a regular basis, this new service could be a great way to help promote your articles and drive more traffic to your own site!  Check it out ahead of time and let us know if you have additional tech related categories that should be covered. 

Soon Looking for Writers

Top10Tech will also be looking for additional writers in the future.  A job board will be launched within a few weeks, so be sure to book mark the site and check back!

Technorati tags: top10tech.com, Blog Article Promotion, Promote tech review blog articles

Dreaming of a Florida Vacation

Its been a long hard week.  I have been putting in 20-30 hours a day one several different projects.  Its Friday evening close to 10 PM. I had about 3 and a half hours of sleep last night and all I can think about when I close my eyes is packing up the kids and renting a Vacation homes near Disney.

Our sponsor OrlandoVacations provided me with a copy of their press release this week.  There are many aspects of the release that I just can shake from my mind.  Driving to the beach, walking in the sand, chasing the kids in the Gulf of Mexico waters.  Running the kids through Disney World and seeing the looks on their faces when they see Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck.  Swimming with the dolphins at Discovery Cove or catching the shoes at Sea World.  It also sounds terrific at this point. Now its time to act and quit writi . . .

Earning and Promoting Your blog with DigitalJournal

DigitalJournal is the latest revenue sharing website to pop up in a rapidly growing market.  Instead of paying money up front in the form of a flat fee, DigitalJournal pays on the back end after they have earned their own advertising revenue. 

At that point they will share part of that ad revenue with the authors of the content.  The site is still relatively new and thus ad revenues are a little on the small side, but the model does have potential and could grow very nicely as the sites PR increases and its ad revenues increase with it.

Hidden Benefit

There is a gem of a benefit at DigitalJournal.  If you sign up for an account and post an article, you will be allowed to provide a web address for your profile, so you will get a linkback out of the arrangement regardless of how much money you earn from the actual article.

For more information on DigitalJournal and other Free lance writing and Prolonging opportunities, please visit Softduit's section on Freelance Writing and gaining sponsors for your blog.

Earn Money Surfing the Internet

Here's a novel concept.  Why not earn money while surfing the internet?

Anyone that understands Adsense can understand how this wild idea is actually feasible.  Agloco basically shares their advertising earnings from many different advertisers (not necessarily Google) with all of its users.  They give you a search tool bar.  You then search the internet just as you always wood.

They earn money from advertising and share it with you based on how much you surf.  Paid to surf the internet!

Oh and what's more, you can combine your research efforts with your blogging efforts.  So you can earn money while you search out topics to write about and earn money writing!

Technorati tags: earn money surfing the internet, earn money writing, bloggers for hire, freelance blogging

Spring Break in Orlando

Sponsored Article

Spring break is coming in just in a few more weeks and now is the time to start thinking about where you are going to head for the holidays.  Its been a brutally cold and snowy winter and going somewhere warm is high on everyone's list.

Orlando is a great place for spring break.  Our sponsor OrlandoVacations just provided a release detailing the great things that can be done in Orlando. They provide Vacation homes near Disney, which is great for families, but come spring break they need to be rented out too!  That means you are likely to find some great deals, plus have access to Orlando's night life and all of the nearby theme parks surrounding the Orlando area.

Technorati tags: vacation homes near disney, vacation homes in orlando, spring break rentals

Blog Directory - Boost Page Rank, Earn More

Page Rank is worth Money!  The higher your page rank is the more money your blog is worth and the more revenue you can earn from your blog.  We have a listing of over 125 blog directories at Softduit.

Why do you need to consider listing in free blog directories?

It raises your page rank and that makes you eligible for more money!

PayPerPost for example is currently offering article opportunities that pay $35 - $125 for medium ranked blogs.  Blogs with a Page Rank of 5, 6, or 7 can qualify for these opportunities.

For a PR 5 blog you could earn $35 for writing an article of a couple hundred words and providing a link to their site.

For a PR 6 blog you could earn $75 for writing a couple hundred words in an article and linking to their site.

For a PR 7 blog you can earn $125  for writing a couple hundred words in an article and linking to their site.

They had an opportunity earlier today paying $1,000 for blogs with a PR 8.  That's for an Article!  Not even a link that will always remain on the front page of the blog.

How do you build your Page Rank up?

One way is by increasing the number of links to your blog.  A free and easy way to do this is to list your blog in a number of blog directories.

Better yet, list your blog with the best directories of PR 9, 8, 7, 6, 5 on down.

Start with the high ones and work your way down.  You can get a free link to your site on a directory with a high PR, when people are paying $35, $75, $125, $1000 for links from sites with the same weight.

So check out Softduit's Directory of Blog Directories,  Sorted According to the highest ranked directories first and start submitting your blog today.  The sooner you do the higher your PR goes and the more money you will be able to earn!

Plus there are over 100 directories listed at Softduit.  That's 100 more links than you have today, so what are you waiting for???

What's My Page Rank?

Not sure what your Google Page Rank is?

Check out our Page Rank Tools at Softduit.

1. Check your Page Rank
2. Take a screen shot of it with the date included
3. List your blog in the directories
4. Check it again after the next Google Update
5. Send us the details of how much your page rank increased and we'll write an article about you from our blog and post your details at Softduit, sending you 2 more links from a PR 4 site and a PR 3 blog!

Technorati tags: Build page rank, Blog Directory, Page Rank weighted Blog Directory, Over 100 Blog Directories here, Page Rank Challenge

Blogspot May not Give You Credibility but Associated Content Will!

Here is a very valuable lesson that can literally open doors for you.

As a blogger you are a defacto journalist.  You are part of the media.  Being part of the media is very powerful and you can use that power for good and to found a career as a writer.

Writing a blog on Blogger or Blogspot or livejournal or Yahoo360 or a free Wordpress site will not give you journalistic credibility.

Writing for Associated Content will give you that credibility in many circles.  You may not get invited to the yearly White House Correspondents dinner, but referring to your Associated Content Byline can provide proof of your credentials as a writer and a journalist.  (See what is a Byline.) 

Last January I traveled to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.  My Byline from Associated Content provided access to media credentials, events and access to people in various companies.  With this access I was able to hold interviews, gather information and put together a writing game plan of content that I would cover after the show.

A fortune 500 representative may not pay attention to you if you tell them that you blog at somegreatnamethatsAllMine.blogspot.com but when you are wearing a media badge and have many articles to back you up, they'll pay attention.  Companies are looking for good press and you are looking for content, so do consider writing for AssociatedContent.com.  You may not get rich from that effort alone, but you will earn some money and get access to some great stories.

Great stories on the internet can make you rich and with time and practice you can do some very great things!

Technorati tags: Blog Journalism Credibility, Associated Content, Media Access, Press Badges for Bloggers

Ashop Shopping Cart Software

You can make money all day long from Adsense and other ads monetizing your site, however there is also money to be made selling your own products.  Once you have a sizable reader or visitor base, it might be time to consider if setting up a shopping cart on your site and selling products will be a good way to benefit from all that hard earned internet traffic.

Our sponsor Ashop.com provides shopping cart software solutions enabling companies to build their own highly optimized and validated e-commerce solution that will give your customers the sense of security they need to complete a transaction.  They have recently sent out a press release taking about their strengths in this area that include their abilities to:

• Streamlined layouts and designs
• Sticky layout capable of walking a visitor from the landing page to the check out page. 
• Affiliate program management tools leveraging the traffic of websites around the world to help sell your products or services through your shopping cart. 
• Low setup price that is under $100 and a monthly service licensing fee that is also $100! 

Technorati tags: shopping cart software, Ashop, e-commerce software, sponsors

When to kill Spammy Comments and when to Kick the Spammer

Eventually you are certain to receive some spammy comments.  Depending on when you receive these, they can be very bad, slightly bad, and sometimes a little helpful.

Do not let a spammy comment kick off your comments as this will discourage dialogue. 

If your post has already received a dozen or so comments, you might act a little slow to delete a spammy comment, letting your readers attack the spammer is good for impressions also and helps them to take a part in protecting your blog community!

Long spammy comments with dozens of links are the worst as they take up the most real estate on your page.  Do not delay to delete these fast as they make your readers scroll more while they sit there.

Short spammy comments are not as egregious, and sometimes might even spur some attacks from your readers.  Sometimes its almost healthy to let your readers attack the spammers likes sharks to chum.  Better they attack the spammer than take their web rage and hostility out on you, your site or your article.

Don't let this happen to often, but occasionally a little game of kick the spammer can let everyone release a little tension.

Technorati tags: spammy comment strategy, kick the spammer, delete spam comments but not too fast all the time

Comments, Comments and more Comments

Comments are very good for your blog, but not always easy to attract. That is especially true if you are looking to avoid spammy comments, which you should.

Comments enable your readers to enter into a discussion with you on your website.  If they follow the comment and come back to respond that is even better.  At this point the comments become part of the overall content on your site.  Content translates into impressions and people that return to follow up on a comment are returning customers providing you 2 and 3 and 5 and 10 impressions possibly per article as they come back over and over again.

Try and let the conversation run its course.  Defend your original article.  Do not let the comments get to your personally as any and all controversy will translate into more impressions and possibly some hits or conversions. 

 

Technorati tags: coments are good, comments equal impressions

1300 Title Magazine Selection

Sponsored Article

Our sponsor MagsDirect recently came out with a New Years web release reminding all of us that if we have big projects or great hobbies or have the desire to read more they probably have a magazine to serve the purpose.

MagsDirct.com offers over 1300 unique magazine subscriptions all sold with no sales tax and a money back satisfaction guarantee.

So if you are looking forward to the spring planting seasons for your garden, or you are rapidly crocheting your way through another ball of yarn to finish that sweater and you need some new inspiration, Magsdirect can definitely provide you with something good to read.  Stop by, check it out and subscribe away . . .

You can even pick up Wired for ten bucks!

Sitemap Generation Tool

I have been negligent on updating my Sitemaps on several sites.  Most of my blogs are done automatically as the sitemap is the feed.

The problem (or my laziness stems from) the fact that I have been migrating computers and had not yet pulled in my super duper Sitemap Generation tool.

I use GSiteCrawler.  They offer a free tool for download.  It will crawl your entire domain and search out your files and you can select which pages to include or not include.  Then it will generate a sitemap for Google or Yahoo depending on who you are trying to please.  Then you can upload those files to your website or to Yahoo.

It can also help you generate an actual HTML sitemap or an RSS feed or more.

Oh and did I mention that its Free!

Technorati tags: gsitecrawler, sitemap download, sitemap tools

Contrary Hook - Types of Linkbait

There is a type of linkbait that may be one of the most devious or most cunning forms of linkbait that there is.  Its not as mean spirited as the attacking linkbait where you go after the writer of an article with everything you have, but its similar.

All you have to do is play devil's advocate and Take a Contrary Position!

Here's how you should do it according to the Linkbaiting article we have been using as linkbait.  You find a blog or news article that has a track back functionality built into the site.

You copy down the permalink.

Then you write an article that is contrary to the position of that original article and if possible give it a catch headline.

If you can publish that article quickly enough, you might be the first person listed in their trackbacks.  Then as people come to the end of the article you will get an opportunity to capture some readers with your dissent.  Works just like politics on the night of the State of the Union speech!

Technorati tags: linkbait contrary articles, backlinks, linkbait series

Why Pay Retail Indeed?

Sponsored Article

One of our sponsors provided us with a release about their recent coverage on CNN.  Ebates is a service that allows you to shop online through companies and stores and retailers that you would use anyway.  However, they give you access to rebates through those same stores that you would not otherwise be eligible for.

As a real example they will give you 25% back on your purchases from Circuit City.  Do you think circuit city will do that in the store?  Not a chance an that is why CNN said that using Ebates was "A No-Brainer."  Its a simple enough process.  You sign up with them for an account, and then shop through their links to the retailers, that pay Ebates a commission.  Then Ebates gives you a portion of their commission.  Simple enough, no gimmicks, just an easily earned rebate!

Long Lists - Types of Linkbait

As we start to get close to the end on our coverage of the different ways to linkbait an article.  One great way to attract back links is to go out and create a long list.  I'm not talking about the top 5 or the top 10, I'm talking about the top 25 or top 50 or top 100.

Plus, its not good enough just to list a bunch of hyperlinks to other sites.  These lists need descriptions under each item.  Lots of content per item, lots of detail per bullet.

The list needs to be long enough such that it becomes hard to imagine copying the whole thing by someone that might visit, so they do the natural thing and just link to it or maybe even bookmark it as a ' good resource! '

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)

This is the second to last topic on the subject of linkbait as baited by Yellow House on Linkbait.  We have just one more to go!

Technorati tags: linkbait, linkbait lists, backlinks

Pictures - Types of Linkbait

If you can come up with some unique pictures or better yet design great or funny images or even photo shop something that is ridiculous looking but captures a great deal of attention, then you will likely have found yourself throwing out some link bait.

As we continue to bite on the linkbait hook offered by the Yellow House Hosting article on Link baiting this week we are looking at pictures and how they can get the job done.  If you have been around the blogosphere for more than a couple days, possibly a couple hours, you've probably seen links back to all sorts of crazy pictures and sometimes pictures on a blog that are actually sourced to another blog or website, which becomes apparent when you click on the picture.

A picture can say a thousand words and its also worth a thousand worms as a form of linkbait!

Technorati tags: linkbait, picture linkbait, backlinks

Risk Management Placement Services

Sponsored Article

Our new sponsors A. E. Feldman Associates specializes in Placing talented people in many positions from finance to technology to management services and more.  They focus on covering positions from the middle management to the executive level to the top "C level" positions.  Their recent press release high lights their ability to cover positions from the partner level down to the associate level and back up again.

They have years of experience and have been in the business for years.  For companies looking to place candidates in the field of risk management AE Feldman Associates can provide excellent results.  They don't work to push people into the first available slot but look to find the best fit for the position.

Use Your Google Analytics Stats to Generate Traffic!

OK, here is a simple idea and application that you can use to drum up some more traffic.

At the end of the year or end of the month or during any period that you want to choose, check your Google analytics and run down the top 10 viewed pages on your blog.

From this top ten list right up a short article on your blog and list those articles, and call the article something like Most viewed pages for 2006.

Then put a link in your sidebar to make it easier for your readers to find those most viewed pages.

You can see how I applied this on a Video Blog I put Viral Videos or here is the direct link Most Viewed Viral Videos for 2006.

In a couple weeks when that article moves further down my list, I'll add a permanent link in the sidebar.  Then year after year, I'll pick up additional top ten listings for each year.  This will make my site stickier and encourage visitors to go deeper into the blog and view more pages. 

More page impressions means more $$$$ :)

So put your Google analytics to work to generate some more impressions for your site!

 

Technorati tags: Google Analytics to drive more impressions, page impressions, top viewed pages, Most viewed Viral Videos 2006

htaccess 301 Redirects

Often times my tips are a little on the basic to intermediate level. I'd like to offer up a tip that is more on the upper end of the intermediate level in terms of importance, but actually pretty basic to accomplish.

Its the 301 Redirect.

Often times web sites or pages will be redirected from one to another, however, if you use the wrong type of redirect, the search engines might penalize you for duplicate content or not provide you the credit you deserve.

A simple area to consider is in setting up a domain. Often times when a domain is setup we don't think twice about whether the official domain is www.mybrandnewdomain.com or mybrandnewdomain.com

However, from the search engines perspective they are two different locations. If they both shuttle visitors to the same content then you might not get as good of a PageRank rating as you would like.

Plus if other people link to your site and use the non-www version and you consider your primary domain to include the www domain then you will not get full credit for the incoming links.

Solution - Setup a 301 Redirect

So all you need to do is setup a 301 redirect within your .htaccess file telling the search engines which domain is the primary and which one is just properly redirecting to the primary.

Now I came across this suggestion from SmartLabSoftware in their htaccess Tips.

They offer a simple additional line of code that you can add to your htaccess file.

I went with a variation on that theme that looks like this:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mydomain\.com$ [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Basically, this will redirect my domain name without the www to my chosen primary domain with the www.

I could have just as easily have done this in reverse.

So now if someone links to my side without the www, I will get the linkback credit against the full domain!

Hello, More PageRank World!

Technorati tags: 301 Redirect, htaccess tips, smartlabsoftware, pagerank tips