Small Business Resources

Have you ever gone down a list of resources for 'make money', 'investing' and 'business start up' only to find that the good ones are gone? Here are a few friends I've made over the summer. Each one has taught me something.

Learn how to start an email marketing campaign that works - for less than $100. www.waystogetnoticed.com is full of articles to help you build an email list, and market emails. This isn't another email list generating company or an affiliate website. The owner of this site actually owns an email marketing host site. He teaches the 'inside' info on email marketing.

Marc S. is a creative director in a NY advertising agency. He has three websites. If you want a NY ad agency to make your logo, website or help with a marketing campaign then visit www.virtualadagency.com, if you have a new business and want to network
www.scrappyupstarts.com , and if you want the inside scoop on advertising then visit www.madisontomain.com.

Learn more about blogging and making money online at the wealthy-writer website. Find Resources, Reviews, and News. The website was 'down' for the summer but it is back up now.

If you want to learn the 'ins and outs' of investing in Forex, property, or stocks without feeling pressured to buy, then visit www.getrich.net. Ray has a great website with more than 100 articles to help you learn 'how to invest smart.'

These will help you get started. If you want to follow me, I am SmBiz99 at twitter.

We are tearing the walls down on our house. I can look right out the walls in some places. I have no storage. I can't wait until the insulation is done and we have drywall gain. Then I'll feel like I am living in a house.

Logo Design for Small Business

A business can be started free, but it takes money to run a business. In Theory, all successful businesses invest a minimum of 20% of their budget into advertising. The higher this number, the more money is made. But, there are some base elements of advertising that must be considered before starting an ad campaign.

Logo Design

Step #1 is the logo design. Now, this blog helps writers get started for free, and that is okay. But, there are some things you should never do free, and the logo is one.

The logo design speaks to consumers using the same communication styles as body language. It creates an image and list of expectataions that the consumer either needs, or will ignore.

Take a look at this professional logo design company. Take a good look at each of the logos. Some build credibility. Others are friendly. Some ask for the sale. You won't like all of them, but each will cause an emotional response, even if it is to ignore the logo.

Now, go to a free logo design service, and see if you get the same reaction. The thing with a professional logo design is that it doesnt' appeal to everyone - just the company's target Consumer Audience, and potential customers.

Review: Host Gator

I've spent more than five months looking for a new place to put my blogs. I have more than 20 blogs on blogger, wordpress, and drupal. I wanted a place where I could put them all - even the ones with their own domain names.

At siteground I needed a new account for each blog. It wasn't really that I hated paying $300 a year for hosting. I made that back in 2 weeks as a Paid Blogger. The problem was that I had to access 20 different statistic sites, and manage 20 different dashboards.



I moved to hostgator. They allow unlimited domains, so all of my blogs and websites are on one Cpanel for $7.99. That is a $292 savings a year. Plus, I have unlimited sub domains, for improving search engine optimization. And I can also establish more than one PHP list, so I can satisfy all my members.

I have been at siteground, Netfirms, and on a couple of small hosting companies over the last year. I give HOSTGATOR

10/10 on knowledgeable service

10/10 on ease of set up

10/10 on 'keeping site up' (a website needs to hog 25% of the CPU for 90 seconds before they bring it down.)

10/10 on price
10/10 service
10/10 support


Learn more about blogging and making money online at wealthy-writer website.

Avoid Free Domain Name Offers

Almost every web host, forum host, or blog host now offers free domain names. Even other sources such as Paid Post services offer free domain names. I’ve been hit hard 2 or 3 times by these free domain sites.

The deal is great for the first year. After that, you’ll pay much more to review the domain than godaddy.com will charge. I’ve had bills as high as $40 per year to renew.

I learned the second lesson the hard way. When you leave, the domain doesn’t leave with you. I worked hard to promote one domain. The company promised to transfer the domain for months. After a year I gave up trying to get the domain that I’d worked up to PR4 and was now ‘aged.’ I continued to try and buy the domain and watched for it to expire. Eventually, it was sold for $4000 to a company in Italy.

All my link building work was lost. My loyal visitors were going to another site. My friend’s links lead to another website.

There is a saying that nothing is free. This goes for domain names. A website’s entire success can hinge on its domain name. Losing this because you need to change web host, or need a larger host, can cripple a website, or even force a webmaster to start over again.


Learn more about blogging and making money online at wealthy-writer website.

Socialspark: Three Types Advertising

Posts: The posts work in the same way as all posts – sort of. The entire system is designed to balance the number of bloggers looking for a post, and the price offered. The objective here is 100% on the advertiser’s side. The only ‘bonus’ the blogger receives is the ability to sign up to wait for that advertiser’s next campaign or release of posts.

When signing up for SocialSpark, use an email addy that accessed every day. The email states that you have 6 hours to finish the post. Many posters are finding that you have 12. That is fairly tight, and may be designed to give the advantage to pro bloggers.

You’ll still need to ‘haunt’ SocialSpark and catch the new opportunities as soon as they surface. There are not many yet. Hopefully the number will grow.

Sponsored: These are the pop-up boxes that appear when a website is first opened. The price fluctuates, but the blogger is paid daily. This type of format is optional, so no blogger has to stay away from SocialSpark because they fear the pop-ups.

I don’t think that the sponsored ops will cause problems for anyone but bloggers who buy traffic. I know that my traffic generating venue does not allow pop-ups.

Spark: This is one of the biggest bonuses. Sparks create a blogger network.

Bloggers can post their own ops to bring it to the attention of other bloggers. Some of the opportunities are BlogUback, which trades links. Some of them are just typical cyber-spam, but there are some great chances to earn some good back links.

This is a great way to get reviews of your blog in return for reviews of other blogs. The problem? Are these considered posts? Will the Advertisers consider them paid posts? If so, then they kind of lose their value. I have contacted support. I’ll post their answer shortly.

It is important to note that Sparks are unpaid. They are great for people to ‘learn the system’ and get into practice without risking a negative vote.

FREE Place to Advertise Your Business

Everyone knows that building links is one of the hardest parts of ecommerce business management. Anyone who wants their domains to receive traffic need to earn a profit and watch your business grow, knows that web advertising can be impossible. This problem doubled for tens-of-thousands of business owners when Google doubled their price.

Google hates paid linking, but for many websites, the only way to build the thousands of posts necessary for success is to pay bloggers to write a post for your business. It doesn’t really matter if they review your product or service. All that matters is whether they include a keyword anchored link.

Until now, the ad agencies controlled all the campaigns. IZEA recently released a new platform that lets Advertisers control the campaigns. An advertiser may put a campaign out for bloggers to vote on. Or, they may hand pick bloggers. Do you only want bloggers who will write reviews? Do you only have enough money for 50 posts? Do you only want your link on blogs that are in your niche? It doesn’t matter anymore. You can pick and choose. It doesn’t cost anything to sign up for IZEA’s SocialSpark. The system (the evolution of PayPerPost) is one of the best on the net. www.socialspark.com

There is a type of advertising where you can get FREE ADVERTISING by exchanging reviews with bloggers. Take a look

Great New Page Rank Building Tool

Have you ever wanted to go blog hopping without the guilt? Smorty has created a new system that allows you to do just that. Much in the same way Diva Network is designed to let bloggers work together to build links, Smorty has added a tool that lets bloggers review each other's work. Best of all, it is free.

It is about time someone created a system where bloggers could support other bloggers. This is a great system. For every review you do for another blogger, someone does one for you. You do not need to activate all the blogs that are listed with smorty. All you need to do is activate the ones that you want to promote.

If you want someone to write a blog review your home blog then you will put the review on your home blog. To make it more 'fair,' smorty also matches blogs by Page Rank. This way, a blogger will not find themselves writing posts for PR0 sites and then posting a review on a PR4 site.

This is not a reciprocal links system. Smorty set up the system so that Blogger A reviews Blogger B. Blogger B reviews Blogger C. Blogger C reviews Blogger A. This keeps all the SEO and Page Rank algorithms clean.

Tutorial: Search Engines Won't Index My Website

Search Engines Won’t Index Your Blog

I have a couple of blogs that the search engines will not index. I can run the site through my WEBCEO software program and it shows the sites indexed on Google and Yahoo, plus a few others, but when I check out the site, it is not indexed.

In fact, there are websites with PR3 which are still not indexed. Not being indexed does not necessarily mean the webmaster has done something wrong.

SiteMap

There are several ways to index a site. One way is to add a site map to the website. This might not always be possible. If you have a Google account, try adding your FEED file and let Google use that as the site map – as with all Google tools, it doesn’t always work. I find that it works on two-thirds of my blogs.

Google has a hard time verifying Google’s own blogger. I’ve followed 3 sets of instructions and none of them worked. However, I verified Drupal and Wordpress without any problems. If you can get your site verified and use the sitemap tool to get indexed.

I did a little twist and got one of my sites indexed. The site was http://work-at-home-guru.blogspot.com/ WEBCEO said 61 pages were indexed. I did a site and link search and found almost 70 pages. But, when an advertiser did their search they didn’t find any search engines had indexed the site. Google wouldn’t let me ad /feed to the sitemap. I tried to verify the site – wouldn’t work.

So, I made a RSS feed at www.feedburner.com and let Google search that. Do not worry about errors. The objective is not to get the site indexed well, but to make Google take a look at the site.

AdWords

If the site is commercial and the site needs to be indexed quickly, then join Google’s PPC program. Their rules state that there is no minimum, but people I know who have AdWord accounts state that the minimum is $50. This is not bad because you get advertising for it.

The benefit of this program is that Google must index the site before finding websites to advertise on. That means an instant index.

Problems

There are a few reasons why a website may not be indexed. First, is broken links. Search engines may stop at a broken link and assume the site is down. They may remove a site that was previously indexed.

Some websites such as Google and HotBot will not index sites with no inbound links. One way to get indexed is to link to a website or blog on a page ‘other’ than the index page.

Flash intros, videos and images may result in the spiders skipping a website. The index page must link to the rest of the site, if not – as in the case of flash intros – there is no links to the index page from the inside pages. Result, search engines will not index the site.

Most search engines will not index a free site.

Linking to a banned or benched website may result in the search engines refusing to index a site.

Submitting the site monthly can result in the site being ‘pruned’ from the database, or just not indexed in the first place.

Dynamic URLs are often overlooked. Any domain name that contains symbols and ? and &, are often ignored.

Only text is indexed. If the page has no text, then there is no index. Search engines cannot enter passwords, fill in forms, sign up for RSS, or newsletters. If the website asks people to do any of these before continuing – the sub pages will not be indexed.

Search engines will not index large pages, or ones that load slow. No web page should be more than 50k

404 message. Web hosting companies are not 100%. If the site is down when the robot comes looking then they will ignore the website.

Scripts cannot be indexed. A scripted menu is harder to index than a static one written in HTML.

Sometimes frames and scripts can make a search engine think they are at the end of the site and leave.

Template may be so complex, with far too many tags. This can make it difficult to get indexed. The webmaster may need to change templates.

What Next?

If the site is still not indexed and has a blog in it, try to manually ping the blog to a service such as pingoat.com or some of the others.

How to Submit

There are right ways, and wrong ways, to submit to search engines. Most websites are indexed organically. The search engines follow a link from one site to another, delving deep into the site. The indexing times can take anywhere from days to months.

One urban legend was Google’s sandbox. This doesn’t exist in the true sense. It just takes time for a site to be indexed. Most search engines may index only 300 – 400 pages. Getting the site indexed deeper can involve several techniques including setting up sub-sections and sub-domains and submitting them to search engines, individual page submission, and linking to that page from an outside source.

Submitting one page at a time which links to other pages is called creating a "hallway page." This will get previously ignored web pages indexed, and it may also improve the ranking. It is important to remember that web pages found organically receive more value than ones submitted. So letting Google follow links to un-indexed pages increase their rank.

Avoid Redirects, no-follow links, and meta refresh code. Most search engines will refuse to index these web pages.

If a web page does not change for several months, then search engines may purge it from their databases. Search engines love new content. That is why optimization must be done every few months. An old page may be re-submitted after part of the content or page is changed.

Text

Make sure the web pages are not full of code that cannot be indexed. Search engines will long look through a page indefinitely, past affiliate codes, meta info, heading info, dynamic menus, graphics, video, links, and finally to content. They may leave.

Robot File

All sites should have a robot file that tells the search engine what information is important. It contains meta information.

Archives

Archives can make it easier for search engines to dig deeper into the website. Check your CODE. Did the template designer put a no-follow code in it?

Free Brochure Maker

I found this great new tool that lets you make brochures with a mailing panel, without mailing panel, or a flier. Best of all, it is free, online, and prints on your home printer. This is not one of those widgets that are hosted by printing companies which force you to buy 250 copies.

Just create a flier by clicking your favorite layout from the selection. Then add your text, front and back. Then print. The brochure maker lets you print front, then back, for people who do not have printers capable of doing both in one action.

The brochure maker has no 'buy ups' or add ons needed. It is perfect for business owners who only need the occasional brochure, and want the freedom to change the content and layout for different clients.

Don’t Slam the Competition

Many businesses work hard to offer more than the competition. They go the extra mile. They take a bigger profit cut. These are all good promotion and marketing tactics. They are the foundation of a solid marketing campaign that will work for small ecommerce business owners as well as brick-and-mortar business owners.

The problem comes when the business owner starts to highlight the differences. There is a fine line between highlighting the best in your business and bad mouthing the competition. Even if the complaints are legit. Even if there are thousands of reviews stating the same thing as your internet marketing campaign does. If you badmouth the competition clients will see ‘you’ as the bad one – sale lost.

Avoid Buying Directory Links

Buying links in directories, for a few pennies may seem like a good bargain. You’ll get more traffic, but at what cost? September 2008, when Google decided that buying links was illegal, webmasters were in a rage. Blogs were dropping from PR4 to PR0 over night.

The only blog I had that dropped was a PR3, it went down to PR0 – and has never started to climb up. I looked at all 30 blogs I manage, and the only thing that made this blog stand out was that I had bought $500 worth of directory links.
This has made me afraid of listing in the directories – just in-case Google sees the website as ‘suspect’ and drops the PR. It is very frustrating. Google has made it almost impossible to follow their rules.

It is making me so frustrated with Google that I am starting to favor RealRank, at least they are honest about their algorithms.

Is Digg For Sale? Will You Leave

A TechCrunch report stated that four companies are competing to bid on Digg–Microsoft, Google, and two unidentified “media companies” are reporting that that the sale of digg is looming on the horizon. It’ll be less than the $300 million that Digg was once rumored to sell for.

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington said that Google's bid between $200 million to $225 million and that Microsoft, which also looking at Yahoo, is bidding slightly lower.


Digg’s Jay Adelson,states: “Normally our policy is to not comment about things like this...”

But, “rumors about a bidding war involving Google and Microsoft have created such a stir we feel compelled to tell you all directly that they are completely inaccurate.

“Sorry to burst any drama theories, but they aren’t true.”

I do not know why he is apologizing. I am glad that Digg is not for sale. But it is hard to ignore the media.

Even ZDnet got into the gossip reporting:

Allen Stern, CenterNetworks, predicts that if Microsoft or Google were to acquire Digg, “the mass exodus will begin swiftly.” The comments (above), if taken at face value, would seem to back this up. The point is, whoever becomes Digg’s new custodian will have to spend a lot of energy managing the transition in terms of the community’s expectations and fears or risk devaluing Digg dramatically before the ink has dried on any such deal.

Who is the Worst Deal for Digg Users?

If Google buys Digg then we can say goodbye. We all know that Google is on a 'Hun' type rampage to wipe out Social Networking and retain its monopoly of the Internet Marketing $$$. I wouldn't be surprised if Digg turned into nothing more than another AdWord website - which of course would help them ban/bench any websites that didn't play in the sandbox 'their way.'

If Time purchased Digg, then I think it would become less social and more news related. The Times owns about.com and you all saw what happened there. NO one wants to go there for 'long term.' The site talks down to the readers, the information is all 'evergreen' because they are more interested in 'degrees' and education than actual passion for the topics.

Yahoo could be interesting. Yahoo has always favored Social Networking, letting the end user control the ebb and flow of the net. I honestly think they would do the least damage. AT the most, I see them opening up the categories - at the moment you can almost create a list of Digg's main advertisers and promoters based on the categories.

Microsoft is right up there with Google. They are more interested with using sites like this to collect marketing data and promoting their product than they are seeing that the average web user can 'have their say.'

Is Digg Ready to Sell?

However, I am one to lean toward believing the Digg owners. They've only had one year to work on the site. I can't imagine that they've reached all their short term goals yet. I think their site will continue to grow as a 'user' promotion tool - not a product promotion - or web content control medium.

I really don't think they will sell. All of the gossip stems from one - very short - report. I think it was a good idea for Digg to Go with Microsoft and not Google for advertising. A lot of large websites I know are leaving Google because their sliding scale is in desperate need of oiling - if it moves at all. Forget page rank and traffic, most blog owners just want to see page counts.


The two companies signed a 3-year agreement, which puts display and contextual ads before more than 17 million visitors a month.

Last summer Digg announced that it would follow the WEB3.0 trend and become more user friendly. Does this mean a few more categories - maybe ones not related to advertising? I personally hope so. I don't actually want to see them become another blogsvine, but open it up a bit, or create a second level.

Will You Leave

A lot of people are saying they will leave. I am not sure if I will. For one, It is still a great site 'as is'. The site still indexes pages - a big bonus. And, in the end, the site does put articles before users.

I will watch for a few things. Will google limit the people who see my 'dugg' articles and turn the site into a big 'pre selling' tool? This is usually their plan of attack after buying something.

Another thing I will watch is the number of hits a month. If a search engine buys the site, and start using it to control web traffic in favor of their advertising (more than happens now) then I will not invest my time in the site.

What is your opinion?

How to Brand Yourself on the Internet

I was recently interviewed by a large website, www.lovetoknow.com My persona, gracepub, has been known as a business guru in the home based business industry for several years now. I did not start out to be a guru. At first I thought it just happened. As I continued to study business and success I learned that I stumbled on a common method of establishing a business professional as a guru or industry expert.

I wrote a 5 step plan to use yourself as a sales aid for your business. Take a look at Establishing a Professional Internet Presence You'll find a few tips for promoting yourself on the web, as well as some advice that will help you start your own campaign.

Will Microsoft Buy Yahoo?

There is a lot in the news about Microsoft trying to buy yahoo. I have a few thoughts on the whole thing, not that I'm going to draw a lot of attention, but have you seen the latest comstock numbers? Now, I am not saying that I'm old. But I know when Google commanded a much larger share of the searches - 10% more? Do you remember?

Of course, I also remember the days when myspace was not considered a powerful traffic generating tool that out performed MSN.

You need to remember that MSN may have a small piece of the pie, but their 'decision to buy' ratio has made them a 'must' for ecommerce and shopping cart based businesses.

What I find as 'sad' is that Yahoo's generosity started Google. Yes, that is right. If it wasn't for Yahoo we'd have no Google.

Remember 2002? Yahoo bought Inktomi, a search engine, for $235 million and then went after Overture which disappeared from cyberspace for a cool $1.6 billion.

Of course - they really slipped up when they failed to realize that kids could drive facebook into a phenom! This was probably the beginning of the end.

Will I be upset if MS buys Yahoo? You bet. I tried using Google search today and had to go 10 pages back to get sites that had anything to do with my topic - not a closely related product for sale. I went over to Yahoo and found what I needed on page 1. I also don't need to let Yahoo store up to 10g of marketing information on my c:// - tracking every key stroke and website I visit.

I am proud of Yahoo for holding out - demanding that Google pay 'fair price' for the Golden Goose. Yes, because as the net grows, and as the users become more savvy, I believe they will start learning to hack Google and get 'out of its clutches' - when they do - they'll have no other choice than to go to Yahoo.

Free Traffic To Your Site

BlogCatalog, one of the oldest operating blog directories, is growing again. They announced the beta launch of their Social Search with will search across several social networks.

The Social Search feature is built on top on BlogCatalog’s Social Dashboard, which (like many services lately) aggregates member activity across other popular networks. The search feature allows users to search by single user, friends, or by anyone who has opted in to use the Social Dashboard feature.

Lifestreaming blogcatalogu's NewsFeed widget is one of the few aggregate tools that publishes your personal life streams across networks. MyBlogLog’s recent addition is the most notable. The tool is designed to draw your multiple accounts into a single location that can be posted wherever you want.

BlogCatalog is fast growing from the 'fun place' for bloggers to Social Networking powerhorse, with comScore counting 2 million unique visitors a month, and 6 million page views for January and February.

This is great news for bloggers and ecommerce business owners who use use blogcatalog to drive traffic to their site and network with other sites.

Seach Engines Give Free PR Boosts

Google Loves Google

We all know this. We all have read SEO reports that working with google products give bloggers and webmasters a benefit over the rest of the world. This is true. Using Blogger or Googlepage gives your blog extra SERP value. (search engine results page)

You don't need to have your main blog on blogger, and your main website doesn't need to be on googlepage, but having a 'landing page' there that leads readers to your website will earn a higher SERP. Then, you link to that blog/page from your home page, increasing your links and increasing your PR.

You've seen it, and you just don't have time for that type of social networking. You've outgrown that type of 'time waster.' Well, I just want to let you know that if you answer questions on Yahoo answer then the back links do count toward your Page Rank.

Yahoo Answers

I've posted answers, but until now I've never posted comments. In a few weeks I will check to see if the answers were 'counted.' If so, I will come back to this post and tell you.

Participating in Wikipedia is another way to build inbound links to your website. Most writers think they are not allowed to post on Wiki. Yes, if you are going to post with no thought for anything but building a link, then yes - stay off wiki.

But, if there is a topic that you know a lot about, and you can 'add something' to the information on wiki, then you are free to add your URL in the links at the bottom.



AMAZON BLOG

Do you have a blog at amazon? Why not? If you are looking for a site with a lot of traffic, then this is the place to find it. Your amazon blog doesn't need to sell book. However, it does need to meet the amazon 'reader's expectations or they won't read it.

I usually post topics, and then suggest books, and include a link to my blog.



Other Places

There are other places where you can trade links for good content. If you have anything to add, feel free to post it in this content.

I've spoke about blogged.com, blogcatalogue, blogowogo, digg, blogsvine, forums, in another post that focused on Social Networking.

Facts about Work at Home Opportunities

I normally warn people away form the free or buy-in opportunities on the net. Most of them are built for one purpose, to rip of the desperate. There is an old business saying 'if you want to become wealthy than cater to the lowest denominator.' This is true with the opportunities. They all cater to desperate people who need money - now. Unfortunately, these people are so desperate that they will put their grocery money down for the promise that someone will help them succeed.

Of all the WHAM (work at home mom) programs - the only one I ever have - ever will support is WHAM.com. That doesn't mean that I believe their site is 100% danger proof. But, if you need to have your hand held, and to have someone show you how to manage your time, money, and business, then this is the place to find help.




Work at Home Moms Opportunity- are These Hard to Find?


Many mom dream of staying at home and being a full time mom. Money is usually the biggest thing preventing that from happening which is really sad when you think about it.

So in order to be a stay at home Mom you have to find a work at home Moms opportunity that you can start making money with. it does always seem to come back to making money doesn't it!

You can choose to start your home business with many different work at home Moms opportunities. You just have to take the time to do some research to find the opportunities that will be the best for you.

Don't give in and pick the first work at home opportunity you come across. Before you decide you have to thoroughly check out each one.

Most Moms get online to start a business but they want to do something that has to do with kids or with other things that Moms know a lot about. So decide what type of products you would like to sell and then look for a work at home opportunity that has them.

You can also find the opportunity and then look at the products if you don't have any clue about what you want to do. One idea would be to help other moms start their own online business by teaching tips you have learned.

You can find a lot of opportunities that are put together with Moms in mind. In other words, you can find a work at home Moms opportunity that only Moms would be interested in doing.

One website that really caters to work at home moms is WAHM.com. This is a website for moms and helping them make money working at home.

One way many moms choose to do is know as affiliate marketing. This is where you get paid to sell other people's products. There are several good places to elarn more about affiliate marketing.

One website that offers affiliate programs in many different areas is CJ.com. AssociatePrograms.com is another site that has a directory of affiliate programs, affiliate marketing training, and a discussion forum.

This is just a few ideas to start with. Just remember that it is not hard to find a work at home moms opportunity if you are willing to take the time to look for it. The Internet is the perfect place to do just that.

Guy Mendelson invites you to visit his work at home business idea website for hundreds of internet marketing tips. work at home moms opportunity

Keep Your Computer Working Fast

Most people do not realize that working on the Internet can slow their computers down. The internet fills your computer with cookies and tracking software scrips. Every time you open a page you add to your cache. Not looking after a computer can lead to all sorts of problems.

I recommend AVG I used the Free AVG for the longest time, about 5 years. It protected me better than Norton did. In fact, I bought a new computer with Norton installed. It was working slow within 3 weeks so I ran AVG and found 250 extra viruses and tracking cookies that were slowing the computer down.

I also use Lavasoft spyware. I do have a fire wall with AVG, and spyware, in my paid version, but nothing beats lavasoft for finding a few 'loose cannons' in the files.

I do not trust Windows Defender - end of story.

I use AVG firewall, but if you can't pay for the full version of AVG then get ZONE ALARM.



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Looking After Your Computer


If you are going to work and do a lot of browsing on the Internet, the first thing you need to learn is how to take care of your computer.

It is far better that you take the trouble to look after your computer regularly, rather than have it freeze or crash when you lose everything on it, at which time you’ll have to pay out a lot to have it fixed.

Here are some tips to prevent disasters:

1) Set your virus checker to update itself automatically. This way, it is always updated with the latest protection.

2) Scan your computer daily when you finish working on it.

3) If on a certain day you happen to download many pages, software, programs, zipped files, exe files, etc., immediately after downloading everything, scan your computer. This way, just in case a virus existed in anything you downloaded, you will catch it in time before it infects your entire Hard Drive.

4) Use your online scanner to scan your computer once a week.

5) Use your adware/spyware checker once a week.

6) Do not open any attachments in emails from people you do not know.

7) Do not open any attachments even from people you do know, if you are not expecting anything from them.

8) A virus could replicate itself to everyone on the address book and send itself out by email, without the owner even knowing this has been done.

9) Do not download free music on the Internet – these free sites are always infected.

10) Do not download any free games from the Internet.

11) Adult sites are particularly prone to viruses.

12) Back up all your data on a daily basis. Use floppy disks, flash drives, memory sticks, zip disks, CD-ROMs, etc.

13) Print out contracts, payment forms, agreements and all legal documents and file them away in a ring-binder.

14) Try not to keep anything to do with your finances, payment details, payment processor passwords, credit card details, etc. on your computer.

15) A hacker could easily access all these details, if they are anywhere on your computer.

Sadly, despite all these precautions your computer might still get infected, as the people who invent these malicious programs are getting even sneakier.

When this happens, the easiest way to rid your computer of a virus is by rebooting your computer. This is not as difficult as it may sound, and if you learn how to do this yourself you could save yourself hundreds of dollars in repair bills.

Author: Pooja Rani

Basic Internet Marketing: Build Inbound Links

It amazes me that all bloggers know about Del.ici.ous, technorati, and stumbleupon, but don't know about blogsvine, blogowogo, blogsworld, blogged, blogscope, blogcatalog, Digg or other blog catalogues. If you know of more, then please suggest them in contents

Why do I promote these three? Because if you post your articles on them, the article will appear on Google searches. The pages will be indexed, and you'll build Page Rank.

I've been posting to technorati and digg for years, but never find my submissions on search engine searches. This means that my efforts only reach the 'Social Networking System's Readers.' This is no big hardship, as I get a lot of traffic from stumbleupon and technorati.

My time is valuable. I need indexed pages and incoming links. That is why I like these sites. I need 100 links to give me PR increases. That is not 'any' 100 links but ones that Google consider relevant. This is true for IZEARank. I need inbound links from them.

This networking group (divanetworking) is helping me get inbound links, but we don't need to limit our link building campaigns.

I use to buy inbound links. Then Google gave my only blog with 'purchased' links a PR0, down from PR4. I am not sure whether this is because I copied and pasted a disclosure (picking up a bit of HTML code hidden in the words) that alerted Google to the fact that I sold links.

I now put my efforts into organic link building. My Time is valuable. I spent most of today and only earned about 80 inbound links across 12 of my blogs. This is not wasted time. It will pay off by increasing my website's PR and indexed value. It will also increase traffic

Blogsvine

Blogsvine lets bloggers post their blogs, one post at a time. Members vote for the articles. Because the site hasn't been hijacked by 4 networking groups, the voting is fair - or more fair than digg. Everyone has a chance to get on page one.

Voting is easy as a single click. You can submit posts written by friends. There is a blog watch list where you can promote friend's blogs. The only drawback is their widget for listing the member's blogs. It is far to small to hold all my blogs.

Blogged

I love this site. People can write reviews for blogs. I had someone else list http://www.healthafter40.blogspot.com on there and reviewed by someone else.

This is just a list of blogs, like a website search engine, but it does provide one link.

Blogcatalog

This is one of the most powerful social networking tools I've ever found. The trick to success and higher page views is to put the 'recently viewed' widget on your page. Many people will become your fans just for the view on your page.

Some of my blogs give me 2 links from here, my profile and my blog's page, but not always. A lot of times I just get a single link toward Page Rank.

Blogowogo

I haven't figured out everything on this site yet. You submit a blog, it brings the feed up on their site, and people vote for the article. I think that the 'no votes' and the low votes will disappear, while the high votes remain on the site.

I think this is one of my favorite sites. I get the concept, but don't ever overload these systems.

I usually post a couple articles a month, and vote on a few things every week. No matter how many weblinks that you have on these sites, Google only lists 1 or 2, not matter whether you enter the tag name - divanetworking.blogspot - divanetworking or use the Links: http://divanetworking.blogspot.com or any variation. You will only find that Google counts one or two.

Blogscope

BlogScope is an analysis and visualization tool for blogosphere which is being developed as part of a research prject at the the Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto.

We currently have over 23.48 million blogs with 275.01 million posts in our database. After removing non-english content and spam posts, we index 152.57 million documents.

I think this would be an amazing analytical tool that can be very profitable for pro bloggers and webmasters if they take time to learn how to use it. But, for the rest of us, it will generate at least one link.

Blogsworld

This appears to be a blog search engine. The only thing I give it points for is the index and link you get from it.

Digg

The difference from Digg, is that articles which do have votes, appear to show up on searches - more than the standard 2. This is good news for people who are trying to increase their page link. The average blogger posts 20 times to his blog a month. That means that in 5 months a blog can increase (in theory) one PR from digg alone.

I still don't know if it matters whether people vote and that somehow puts the article into a separate category - maybe one of the readers has an answer.

I have a lot of articles on Digg. I just put up 5, for diva, and asked friends to vote. Yet, Google still only gives me credit for 2 links.

MyBlogLog Yahoo

I haven't been to this one, but it appears to be Yahoo's version of blogcatalogue. I'll take a look into it. Some of these services I found accidentally because someone else tagged one of my blogs. In fact, almost all my blogs are on blogger - but I didn't even have an account.

Helium

Putting articles on your helium account with your url in it won't create a link. However, that page will appear high on the searches when someone searches the keyword phrase in your domain name, or your domain itself.

I don't receive any link value from Helium, but I do receive traffic and it always appears somewhere on the list of top 100 referes when I study my web-analytics software.

Free Articles

Still, one of the best ways to generate inbound links. The trick is to spread your articles across the net. Of course, if you want publication in newsletters then you want to submit good information and submit as much as possible.

If you want inbound links, then only submit 2 articles to each free content site. Repeat this every month or so.

I've done searches for clients whom I have written more than 400 articles for. I can find those articles across the net at different free content sites - but google on This client has about 2500 links from those articles as well as clients that publish.


Conclusion

Before you get upset, I know that google includes the cached pages. This blog, divanetworking has only 32 links, but if you go to the last page and click:



In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 32 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

Then you get almost 400. Now, this blog has PR3, which is in line with the '100 links needed to increase PR by +1. I also find the rest of my article links - but most of them do not take me to my article, but to a 'page.' The value of these is suspect.

However, www.inspiredauthor.com has 211 links without counting the 'relevant results' that are hidden. Because many of these are PR4, it would explain why IA has a PR4. I lean toward the belief that google doesn't count the relative links because IA has 19 999 'legit' ones that Google counts (about 45 000 in total). If google counted all of them, I should have at least PR8 on this site.




IF you think the information in this article was good, please DIGG it. Just click here and vote.

Computer Support: A Survival Guide

My Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000 keyboard just failed. I am not going to get into the importance of an ergonomic keyboard for work anyone who types more than 5 hours a day. If you don't have one - you'll learn how important it is soon enough.

After my keyboard broke I did the natural thing - called warranty and asked them for a replacement. The replacement worked fine - for 1 week - then it broke. This time I decided to call support.

Most people do not call support because they are afraid of being charged. If you have a broken computer, or tech problem, do not go to the computer or Microsoft website to find service. That is where you will pay.

Instead, find the documentation that came with the computer and look for the service number on it. Or, if you have software loaded onto your computer that makes the keyboard work, then go into there and look for support options.

If you use the phone numbers found in here, you will (probably) not be charged for support.

Do I Let a Tech Onto My Computer?

This can be a hard call. I've let techs on my computer several times - and watched them closely. Most of the time there is no problem. But, it only takes once.

Last fall I let a Dell tech from overseas onto my computer (If you call dell service at 3am you'll get American geeks who can fix everything. I think they could even fix your microwave via the PC access tool.)I watched the screen closely as the tech went through several steps and then started doing things that gave me a coronary.

This tech - without consulting me - started to reformat my C:// drive. I immediately stopped her and asked what the ... 'what are you doing?" She informed me that the 'book' said that if a) b) and c) doesn't work then she needed to reformat my hard drive.

I asked her if she knew that reformatting the hard drive would wipe all the data from my files. She agreed. I asked if she considered letting me back up my data? (I type about 10000 words a day, and make an average of 20 - 30 additions/changes to my project manager, as well as accounting, communications, meeting archives).

Her response was 'no, why? Is there anything important on your computer?" It took me about 3 days to get over the shock.

This time I tried a few alternative methods of repairing my computer and came to the conclusion that I needed to back up my C:// and then reformat my computer, which I did, without the tech's help.

I wonder if the tech knew that we would automatically disconnect from PC2PC when she started to format the drive? I doubt it.

Again - this is why I trust the tech support listed on the manufacturer's fliers and brochures that come with the equipment.

PS. After a 10 minute service call to the manufacturer's support desk my keyboard works again.

What Are The Moral Ethics of Paid Blogging

I know there are a lot of amateurs and writers who abuse the system, but it is nice to see that the pro blogging community mature. I recently saw a client come up at PayPerPost who wanted bloggers to ‘say’ they saved a lot of money last Christmas by shopping at their website. That client’s post hung on the opportunity board for three days.

If you are unfamiliar with pro blogging, hanging on the board for 15 minutes without being snatched up would have been impressive. Most posts are taken before the average blogger can click the assignment and type in the verification code – which I can usually so in less than 4 seconds.

The ethical problem is one that is interesting. No one cares if a newspaper lies to increase readership. Everyone turns a blind eye when a magazine chooses their lead story ‘after’ they find out who their big advertiser is this month. And, no one complains when their television show is intruded on to post several minutes of ads in a row.

The information in this article has been compiled from information shared by the pro bloggers at http://www.divanetworking.blogspot.com

Disclosure Policy

I have full disclosure at the bottom of every page on my blogs:

This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation. The compensation received will never influence the content, topics or posts made in this blog. All advertising is in the form of advertisements generated by a third party ad network. The owner of this blog is compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. Even though the owner(s) of this blog receives compensation for our posts or advertisements, we always give our honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the bloggers' own. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question. This blog does contain content which might present a conflict of interest. This content may not always be identified.

This disclosure statement tells people the full scope of what my readers can expect.

The Content

The ethics of whether a company wants to sponsor a blog in exchange for a link is not the issue. The issue is bloggers who lie, write adcopy, and blatant advertising that misleads the readers. Whether there are no-follow codes in the blog – or not – doesn’t change the fact that the blogger is being paid to write that blog post.

There is nothing difference between a link in a blog post, and a link in a Google ad bar in the side column of a blog, except that Google ads hi-jack the reader and takes them away from the blogger’s site.

The content should be honest, relevant to the blog, give ‘real’ information to the reader, and not be misrepresented.

The Advertiser

The advertiser has certain expectations. Removing a blog post is not ethical. Some agencies permit their bloggers to remove posts after one year. Some even allow the use of no-follow links. Trying to trick the advertisers and their clients is unethical.

One way to overcome the advertiser problem is to sign with an agency which forces bloggers to accept posts. There are agents that let bloggers pick and choose which opportunities they feel comfortable blogging about.

Subscribers

The bloggers and agencies sometimes forget the subscribers when they are negotiating the aspects of ethical and moral blogging. It is unethical to write a splog. A splog is created to sell and promote a product. A legit blog promises readers that they will read about a certain topic or niche, and keeps that promise. They do not try to trick them, or use deceptive tactics to make sales.

One overlooked aspects of subscribers is the percentage of paid posts vs. organic posts. The minimum should be 30% paid posts. However, readers prefer a 50/50 balance. This means that to selection of 10 paid posts a week, then the subscribers will receive up to 50 posts a week through their RSS subscriptions. It can be considered unethical to spam the subscribers. Again, it all depends on how the information is sent to members.

A blogger who posts 50 or more articles a week should use a feed instead of sending emails to the subscribers inbox. Spamming anyone, even if they opt in, is unethical, and possibly illegal.


Conclusion

Honoring the moral and legal ethics of pro blogging does not decrease the chances of making a good living as a pro blogger. Just think of yourself as a digital newspaper. Keep the information insightful, honest, and cutting edge. Respect other bloggers, the clients and the readers.

Earn a good reputation – and you’ll easily make $1000 - $2000 a month. To learn more, and meet other bloggers who earn this much money each month – ethically – then visit www.divanetworking.com

How to Write a Sponsored Blog Post

I’ve been in the professional blogging niche since the beginning. That first year was frustrating for both bloggers and clients. In many cases the clients expected us to write posts praising the company, even lie if needed. They thought they were paying for testimonials. However, professional bloggers are not freelance writers. A ghostwriter might write fake testimonials, but they are not expected to put their in their publications and trick their readers into believing that the blogger loves the company.

Understand The Purpose of the Sponsored Blog Post

At the same time, the bloggers tried a few dozen ways to include the client ethically. They added an add at the bottom of the page. A few bloggers tried making an abridged squeeze page which lead the reader through an article and then hit them with the ad. This was ‘hated’ by blog readers and lost countless subscribers.

The industry flagged twice. The blog ad agency, blogitive.com, was the first. They started to teach their bloggers how to improve their image. Bloggers started to demand an ethical form of writing posts that respected their clients as well as promoted the clients.

To understand this fully, you need to recognize the three players.
The Client: Wants links, advertising, or testimonials
The Agency: They bring together the bloggers and clients
The Blogger: Also known as the publisher

Each of these players has their own concerns, their own demands, and their own responsibilities to their clients.

What Is The Purpose of the Post?

The first step to writing a good sponsored post is to understand what the client wants. If they only want the link, then the blog post can be written with no regard to the client at all. The blogger just needs to include a few keywords that pertain to the page being linked to.

The blatant advertising post must review the client’s website and post neutral or positive elements of the website, product, or service. Many bloggers create a ‘tag system’ with their clients. They might write REVIEW in their subject line, or put a symbol such as * in the subject line, so their readers know this is a sponsored review. The blogger is upfront about the fact that they are advertising a product or website.

There are ways around adding ‘intrusive’ blog posts to a blog. The easiest is to only submit blogs that are so ‘targeted’ to a certain niche that other clients are not interested in posting links there. This works moderately well. The next way is to list with agents who let you pick and choose which posts you wish to accept. This is by far the best method.

How to Write a Sponsored Post

Writing a sponsored post is fairly easy.

The Intro needs to let the reader know that the post has a client and will be reviewed.

The Content needs to include two or three points of information that are important to your blog’s readers. This can usually be found in news sites etc.
The Ending is where I normally put the link, in the conclusion.

Do not: Write in a different style and vocabulary than the rest of the blog.
Do not: Try to sell or trick your readers by using ‘car salesman’ language
Do not: Write an article and then start selling at the bottom of the post, unless the intro suggested that the blog post is a review or advertising in the introduction.
Do not: Write lies in your post.
Do not: Copy and paste from free content articles, the company’s website.
Do not: Add tags to sponsored posts, or include them in your index/site map

How to Write a Good Post
One thing I do is to add a couple of posts before the sponsored posts on the same topic, even if I write these afterwards and change the time stamps.
Another thing I do is write the post as news, and to include news from non sponsored sources so that my readers do not see the difference.

Do: Find 2 keywords or keyword phrases on the client’s website that can be used in the post (this can be done by hitting the site in your browser and then clicking VIEW so you can see the meta tags. Use these keywords in your article.
Do: Try to make the sponsored review newsworthy
Do: Avoid any posts you cannot blog on with a clear conscious
Do: Add pictures to make the post look more like a real post and non intrusive
Do: Meet the client’s expectations in word count, number of links, focus and importance

These tips will help you meet all the ad agencies requirements for sponsored blogs. This 'check list' will almost eliminate the number of rejected posts, posts that you are not paid for, or banned/benched votes.

What is a Pro Blogger

This article is not designed to tell you how to make money online but what elements ‘define’ the pro blogger and to outline the basic steps to help people start their own professional blogging business.

I had a writer ask today what the difference between a freelance writer and a pro blogger was. There are many ways to make money as a blogger, and even earn a few hundred dollars a month as a blogger. This doesn’t make you a pro blogger.

The Blogs

The blog topics of a pro blogger are vital. Not all topics will earn money. News, technology, health, parenting, pets, and other ‘hot topics’ need to be researched well. The write must be able to write good content, on an ongoing basis.

To do this, pro bloggers must belong to the right newsletters, associations, and forum groups. This helps them gain cutting edge information that their readers need. They also need to learn the difference between a blog and a splog. Spam blogs, splogs, are artificially created weblogs which promote affiliated websites or increase the PageRank or backlink portfolio of affiliate websites, or artificially inflate paid ad impressions from visitors, and/or a link outlet to get new sites indexed.

Spam blogs content is often either inauthentic text or merely stolen from other websites. These blogs contain a high number of links to sites associated with the splog creator.

A blog owner can link to their other blogs, but they usually change the links, keep the numbers down, and include elements that make the blog ‘legit.’

• A legit blog has no more than 30% paid blog posts.
• Any duplicate or free content articles start with about 100% original content.
• The blog has feed and RSS tools for subscribers.
• The blog discusses a topic – does not promote a product, affiliate, or service.
• They have their own domain
  

Many people post an RSS feed in a blogger blog, and call it their own blog. They then post ads around it, and use it to promote their own products.

The Promotion

The pro blogger will invest money and time into promoting their blogs. They will work to get their Page Rank up including:

• Buying targeted traffic
• Building RSS and Feeds
• Submit to Search Engines
• Comment on PR6 and above blogs
• They ping to all the search engines by posting daily
• They social networks
• Work at Digg, Tehcnorati, blogcatalogue
• And promote the blog – not a third party product
• May ‘not’ buy directory links as this will lower their Google Page Rank
  

Most legit blogs have a Page Rank higher than PR3 or PR4. They need Pr4 minimum to make money. They will use promotion tools to get PR5 or higher. No blogger with less than PR5 can hope to earn a good income.

Generating Revenue

There are three ways to generate income: Paid Posts, Pay Per Click Ads, Affiliate campaigns. Successful income generation in all three of these depends on PageRank5 or higher and high traffic numbers.

The average PPC payment for a blog with a Page Rank of PR3 is 2%, while the PPC payment for a PR6 is 10 – 30%. This is quite a difference.

The average Paid Per Post earning for a PR3 blog is $5 a post. The average PPP earning for a PR6 blog is $45.

This is why bloggers work hard to get PR5 and higher on their blogs. It is a full time job. They work a minimum of 40 hours a week at their job. There is nothing ‘part time’ or ‘passive income’ in this business.

Importance of Blogs

Many people might think someone who manages 30 – 50 blogs is clogging the Internet. This is not true. I have dozens of subscribers to my RSS feeds and subscriptions who comment regularly on my blogs. I design my pro blogs as news feeds, or as free online courses. This gives my readers more information.

I also include a full disclosure that tells people that I do earn money through the blog. This disclosure statement is at the bottom of each page ( check out http://www.healthafter40.blogspot.com ) I also do not try to ‘hide’ my paid posts. I also sign with advertising agencies that let me pick and choose the ads I want to post on my blogs.

I never try to hide the fact that a paid post is sponsored. I make sure the title ‘alerts’ my readers that the following post is sponsored. They can then choose to read it or not. My subscribers respect this, and most of them do not object to the fact that I am paid for giving them free content.

Definition of a Pro Blogger

This tutorial is based on the efforts and practices of the pro bloggers at http://www.divanetworking.blogspot.com who support each other and work as pro bloggers. It is designed to help amateur bloggers see what they are doing wrong, and how they can improve their income generations, Page Rank, and find friends and allies among other pro bloggers.

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