PPC marketing - Popular method of advertisement on the Web

PPC marketing or pay per click marketing is the most popular method of advertisement employed by various websites on the Internet. PPC marketing may often be referred to as pay for position, cost per click or pay for performance. But regardless of the term used, PPC marketing is the online advertiser's medium of choice for promoting products and services to online consumers.

PPC marketing is beneficial to both the advertiser and the consumer. Advertisers using PPC marketing only need to pay for the actual click throughs linked to their sites from search engines. At the same time as consumers are relieved of having to get annoying emails or pop-up ads for products and services.

When an online consumer searches for a specific product or service on the Internet, corresponding PPC marketing ads are also displayed alongside the results generated by the search engine. This forms a highly targeted consumer group that is more likely to purchase a specific product or service. In addition, websites get to limit their advertisement costs with the use of PPC marketing. PPC marketing is truly a winning solution for both parties.

Possible drawbacks of PPC marketing

Despite the obvious advantages of PPC marketing, there are possible drawbacks that can cancel out its benefits. One of the most common problems associated with PPC marketing is the inexperience of many people attempting to use this profitable advertisement method. Simply submitting PPC marketing ads to a search engine such as google, does not make up the entire campaign.

PPC marketing requires a calculated and systematic approach to setting up ads. PPC marketing involves the use of keywords and biddings in order to get top placement on a search engine. Getting top search engine placement helps boost traffic to a website that can easily translate into profit.

Without the necessary experience and knowledge to carry out a typical PPC marketing ad, may turn into an expensive campaign that does not convert into profit. PPC marketing ads also require continuous funding, as discontinued payments will also result in discontinued ads. This can be unfavorable for a website that has already built high rankings with their PPC marketing ads.

Bidding on keywords can also be quite costly, as the growing number of websites on the web struggle against each other to bid on the most popular keyword for their PPC marketing add. Obviously small business websites are at a disadvantage here since big business websites are able to pay more for popular keywords related to their site. This is because most small businesses only set aside a small portion of their capital for advertisement, putting them at a disadvantage.

Running an effective PPC marketing campaign

There are a number of things that a website should consider when running an effective PPC marketing campaign. It is important to develop a marketing plan in order to get the most return on investment from PPC marketing. Selecting the most appropriate keywords that relate to the site's business is essential in PPC marketing.

However, simply choosing the most popular keywords does not necessarily translate into profit. Selecting more specific keywords that will put a site within the first ten results of a search also gets greater awareness from online consumers. In addition, it doesn't cost as much as getting the top spot for PPC marketing.

It is also important that a website constantly monitors the performance of their PPC marketing campaign. This will help the site modify any existing PPC marketing ad to make it more productive. At the same time any PPC marketing ad that has not proven effective can be immediately discontinued. Altering PPC marketing ads is a continuous process that many websites do in order to increase their return on investment.

Getting professional help with PPC marketing

The popularity of PPC marketing has given rise to professionals offering PPC marketing services for small and big businesses. Hiring a professional PPC marketing company is advisable for a small business without experience in PPC marketing. Most PPC marketing companies offer reasonable rates for their services and at the same time produce acceptable results.

A PPC marketing professional can attend to all the details commonly involved in a PPC marketing campaign. Handling a PPC marketing campaign is a time consuming process that can be overwhelming for a small business. A PPC marketing professional can help set up a PPC marketing campaign and later on train someone from within the business to handle it to ensure its continued success.

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Making Money with Articles: Where to Find Affiliates For Your Niche Website

To make money with articles that you place on websites, you will also need a variety of good affiliate links that will help to generate revenue. It is important that you know where to find affiliates and that you choose the best affiliates for you and your niche site.

When you pick an affiliate, it is important that you determine which companies you will profit best from based on the frequency that the product is likely to sell. There are several types of affiliates and some will offer you more money from a sale than others will. Before you get hazy-eyed by dollar signs, however, remember some products are bound to sell more than others. If you sell on product four times a year from a little known company that gives you $100 per sale or sell a well known product 3 times a week at the rate of $10 per sale, then you will make much more money with the $10 per sale product. Often times large well known companies will offer a very small profit per sale because they are established and know that their product is likely to sell well. Small, unknown companies, on the other hand, need all of the promotion they can get. Also, because they are unknown, their products are likely to sell less frequently.

The most important rule when picking affiliates to promote on your site is to pick products that would be of interest to those who would likely visit your niche site. Otherwise you will be promoting a product to a group of people who do not even want nor need it. If your niche site targets parents of young children, then promote baby products. If you niche site targets gardeners, then promote gardening products. If you promote baby products to gardeners, you are almost guaranteed to not make a profit no matter how much money the affiliate company offers for a sale.

Lastly, there are two main ways to find an affiliate company for your niche website. You can sign up with a company that manages the accounts of hundreds of companies, big and small, and apply for the products within these accounts or you can do a web search for companies that would match well with your niche, visit their websites, and see if they advertise an affiliate program.

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Blog as a marketing tool

In this article we will discuss a relatively new intertnet tool – the Blog.

Blog (also known as Weblog) is traditionally a webpage where pre-surfer or a blogger “logs” all pages he/she finds interesting. In other words, it is a Web page that contains brief, chronologically arranged items of information. Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality of the author.

Weblogs provide a series of annotated links to items such as news stories, and often include personal rants. They are maintained by one person, most commonly someone who is involved in Web design or some other tech-related field.

A blog is often a mixture of what is happening on a particular website and what is happening on the Web, a kind of hybrid diary/guide site, although there are as many unique types of blogs as there are people. Blogs can be used to introduce products to potential customers.

People maintained blogs long before the term was coined, but the trend gained momentum with the introduction of automated published systems, most notably Blogger at blogger.com. Thousands of people use services such as Blogger to simplify and accelerate the publishing process.

Blogs offer huge marketing potential. They are highly strategic tools that can strengthen relationships, share knowledge, increase collaboration, and improve branding. Besides, blogs can represent the real voice of the website.

A weblog can take the form of a diary, a news service (or summaries of and links to current news items on a topic), a collection of links to other Web sites, a series of book reviews or products, reports of activity on a project, the journal of an expedition, and much more. Businesses can use
this tool to effectively advertise their products or services.

One of the most interesting ways to use a weblog is by allowing it to function as a discussion forum for customers of your products or services. In this case, the webmaster can give posting rights to other people – visitors and customers, and their posts may or may not be reviewed before they are published to the Web page. Customers, in such a way can post favorable comments about the websites offerings. Some weblogs are set up in such a way that only the owner or the owner and certain other people have posting rights, but anyone else can add comments to the posts.

Weblogs when used with newsletters present immense marketing
opportunities:

* Articles within newsletters can be linked to a blog, extending life and creating a massive conversation.
* You can offer a bidirectional forum to customers to get true, personal opinions on your products and services.
* Company experts can start a blog and become industry experts, helping your company edge out competition and, through this interactive forum,draw customers into another exchange of information and thoughts.
* The beauty of this interplay is you can layer your blog with editorial controls.

How to create a Weblog?

The majority of weblogs are now created using software or services designed specifically for this purpose. Some of the software is free - and some of the organizations that provide weblog software will also provide free server space to house a weblog so that it is publicly accessible on the Internet. There are also commercial versions of some of the free software; these commercial versions often provide more features. Some weblog software is available only as commercial software. Alternatively, bloggers can create and maintain their weblog using free software or a free weblog service, but use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to load the resulting weblog to their own Website.

There are many blogging softwares available easily on the Internet. One of the most popular weblogger is “Blogger” which can be downloaded for free at http://www.blogger.com. Most webloggers simplify the process of Website creation. However, they do require basic knowledge of FTP, Website structures and a few technical terms. Besides, creating an advanced weblog requires knowledge of HTML.

So get out there and start your own Blog…it’s free,easy and can work seamlessly with the rest of your website or newsletter. Until next time…

Warmly,
Adya.

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Making Money with Articles: What Kind of Experience Do I Need?

When you are trying to make money with articles, the beauty of it is that you don’t really need previous career related experience and that you can learn the ropes as you go. That being said, there are some skills that you will need to teach yourself or pick up along the way to make your sites successful. You can’t go in not knowing anything, not learning anything, and still expect to make a good income (or any income at all)

First, you will need to know how to pick out the correct articles to make your sites successful. There are many types of content, from free content to high dollar content, and each comes with its own advantages and disadvantages (although high dollar content is more likely to give you a successful site in the end).

Second, you will need to know how to choose keywords that can help you get a good amount of traffic, without being too competitive to get on the first or second page. If you choose highly competitive keywords that are used by large, mammoth website, you are likely to never get up to those much needed first two pages.

Third, you will need to know how to optimize your websites for various search engines. Search engine optimization skills will allow you to get high rankings for your chosen niche keywords, which will help to get visitors and make profit.

Fourth, if you opt for a large website that you will focus most of your internet marketing career on, you will also need to know how to market your website to your intended audience through paid banner ads and text links. If you prefer very small 2-5 page niche sites, then promoting all of them this way will not be cost effective and will eat up more profits than it is worth.

If you can capture some of these skills and attack them aggressively during your first few small websites or the first few months of a larger website, then you will eventually become an expert. Since you can learn the ropes first hand on your own, the only thing that you will need to do before you begin your new career is to read up on how to get started (maybe purchase an internet marketing e-book or two) and make sure that you have the funds available to start a small site.

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Selecting a Search Engine Optimization Company

A Search Engine Optimization Company can be an invaluable
asset in your Internet marketing campaign. They specialize in knowing how to raise your search engine positions,monitoring those positions on the regular basis, and adjusting their strategies to account for undesirable results in any given month. Since this takes a lot of time,effort, and specialized knowledge, it can be in your best interest to go to an outside source rather than try to maintain high search engine positions on your own.

However, like every business, there are good companies and there are lemons. Knowing the right questions to ask and the criteria to look for will help you in choosing an affordable, effective search engine optimization company.

When looking at different companies, begin by considering the approach they employ to raise your search engine positions. Steer clear of companies that use cloaked,doorway, or bridge pages to raise your positions. These techniques violate most search engine policy, and in the worst case scenario, will only get your website severely penalized, if not removed entirely from a search engine's index.

A cloaked page is a page that is created which is invisible to the regular visitor to your website. The cloaked page is coded to detect a search engine spider and divert them to this special page, which is set-up to artificially boost your search engine position. Doorway or bridge pages utilize the same concept, but often reside on an entirely different server. Google, one of the largest and most important search engine on the Internet, will remove your website from their index if they detect you have cloaked pages. Never, never employ any company that uses this
technique!

Another important element is to get a guarantee that the company you hire will not work with your competitors while they are working for you. Obviously, this would seriously compromise the effectiveness of the search engine optimization campaign. Be aware that some companies will
use the success they achieve for your website to sell their services to your competitors. So get your guarantee in writing, and make sure it is legally binding.

Of course, one of the most important factors you want to check out is the company's track record of results. However, don't take the company's word for it. They will undoubtedly be slanting their results in order to sell their services to you. To go beyond their simple statement of success, ask them a few pertinent questions, and verify their answers.

Ask them which engines they have achieved the best results on. The ones that are important are the most popular engines, and these are the ones you want to see good results on. Since the popularity of search engines can change with the landscape of the overall Internet, check out the Nielsen Netratings page at Search Engine Watch. You can access this at

Next, find out what keywords and phrases they are claiming great results with. It's easy to get high rankings with unpopular words. For instance, the keyword "cat leashes" will get high popularity ranking because no one else would think of using it. What you are looking for is good results using popular keywords. Check out the software Wordtracker, available at www.wordtracker.com. You can order a free trial, or a subscription ranging from 1 day to 1 year. This software rates the popularity of keywords and phrases based on actual search engine use.

Next, look for good results over an entire site that the company claims to have successfully worked for. You want to see a wide range of positions over a number of different search engines using different keywords or phrases for the entire site. Request a report for any client the company claims to have done well for. This report should show good positions on a number of the most popular search engines for a variety of different, popular keywords and phrases.

When you are checking out search engine optimization companies, make sure they have actually done the work they are claiming to have done. Some companies will use other company's results in order to get you to sign on with them. If you are in doubt, call the company they are showing you results for, and ask for the name of their search engine optimization company.

It's important to keep in mind that a successful search engine optimization campaign will result in maximum exposure across a wide range of popular search engines using a variety of keywords and phrases. This is the formula for a successful campaign, and you should keep it always in the forefront of your marketing strategy.

Ask the search engine optimization company you are considering for a report that shows you rankings across a number of popular search engines for a period of at least six months. Remember: search engine marketing is a process that is continual, and you need a company that not only understands this, but keeps constant tabs on your search engine positions. That company must also be able to adjust its strategy in the event that search engine rankings drop.

Since search engine marketing is an on-going process, your positions must be constantly monitored. If you want your search engine optimization company to do this for you, request a sample of a monthly report. It is essential that this report should show rankings for the most popular search engines. Don't be impressed by a report that only shows great results for a limited number of small search engines. These are fairly easy results to acquire. Also confirm that the popular search engine results they are showing you are indeed the popular search engines
currently.

Be sure the sample report the company shows you is in a
format that you can easily understand. For example, it
could be in the form of a chart that covers a period of at
least six months and presents data such as the top 50
positions broken down on a monthly basis or the top 5 pages
each month. Then, ascertain that the company you are
considering actually monitors these positions or pages
every month, and that the sample report they show you
includes findings and recommendations for the specific
site. This insures that the company will actively monitor
and make adjustments to their strategy on a continual basis
rather than simply gather statistics on your positions. You
need a company that is actively participant in your search
engine marketing campaign, not just an information
gatherer.

Obviously, your finances have to figure into your choice of
company, but bear in mind that a search engine optimization
company is crucial the success of your marketing campaign.
It is not just a casual accessory. If you cannot afford a
company that will do a thorough and reliable job for your
website, you might consider waiting until you do have the
finances in place.

If you have to find a company and can't wait for your
finances to catch up, you may be able to find an affordable
company that will also be able to supply quality, reliable
work, such as a fairly new company. Just remember that
there are risks involved with using a company without a
proven track record - and that risk is your money! Don't
take that leap unless the company can supply you with a
least a few references.

References are the most reliable indicator of a good
company. Don't use a company that won't show your
references because of any reason, confidentiality included.
Remember - even doctors will provide references! The firm
you choose should provide you with a minimum of two
references, one that is from the past, and one that is
current.

When you contact these references, be prepared to ask
precise, specific questions so that neither of your time is
wasted. Ask them what their experience was like with the
company, such as their availability to answer questions and
deal with problems and their ability to meet deadlines. Ask
the reference to rate the overall performance of the
company.

Find out if the company requested that the reference make
significant changes to their web pages that affected the
visitors coming to their site. You are looking for a search
engine optimization company that can balance the needs of
both search engines and site visitors without compromising
either.

The most essential question to ask is whether the work of
the search engine optimization company resulted in higher
profits for the reference. Without profits, it doesn't
matter whether your positions are at the top of the list or
not.

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Is The Best Way To Choose An Affiliate Marketing Program

What Do you know Marketing products and services through the Internet is unquestionably easier and more rewarding compared to traditional marketing methods. With the millions of people worldwide getting online each day, there's an enormous possibility for a merchant to sell his products and generate huge income.

However, merchandisers are not the only ones who can benefit from online marketing. A booming industry nowadays, provides great opportunity as well to individuals as affiliate marketers.
In internet marketing, an affiliate marketer doesn't need to have his own products and services to sell. All he needs to do is to refer people to the merchant's business site for them to buy the products and thereby, earn a commission.

The key to an online marketer's success is to choose a good program and to employ excellent marketing techniques in promoting or selling the products to consumers. Why good and not the best affiliate program? There is no "best affiliate marketing program," as one program might make one internet marketer a millionaire and the other a frustrated marketer. In other words, it can be a success to one and a failure to another. But there certainly is a good affiliate marketing program to start with. How to make it best would now depend on you.

But before you think how you are going to make it best and financially rewarding, first think about how you are going to land on a good affiliate program with the thousands of affiliate marketing opportunities abounding in the Internet today. Try to look into the following tips and suggestions on how to best select the affiliate program that's right for you.

Information, that's you need in order to make the right choice. It is helpful when you have already focused your search to a specific interest, which may be the theme of your website (if you already have one). In this way, you would be able to direct yourself towards a program that really matches your needs, wants and resources. It would be easier for you to eliminate options that are not suited to your own criteria for a good internet marketing program. You can join affiliate forums and learn some tips and get suggestions from experienced affiliate marketers. However, be wise enough to weigh their ideas before you buy them.

The Internet Affiliate marketing program networks are good places to look for choices. Here, merchants and affiliate marketers like you meet. The merchants advertise their programs to interested affiliates who sign up in the network for free. Third party program networks are helpful since they provide you with access to a large number of advertisers (merchandisers) simultaneously. You can easily track and compare their sales records, performances, benefits, products and services.

So now you have choices, the next question is which among those options is the right one. Here are some things to consider in deciding which to take and which to reject. First is the quality of the products and services. As an affiliate marketer your goal is not only to make visitors of your site click the link to the business site; but more importantly, to promote the product so they would buy it. If the customers are not convinced upon going to the business site, then you don't earn. Make sure the products you are endorsing are worthwhile or in the business context, saleable. Ask yourself: if I were the customer, would I buy it? Would I recommend it to my family or good friend? If you can't convince yourself or your family and friends to buy it, take a look at your next option.

Another is the affiliate program or the merchandiser's history. Look into their previous and present sales data, their proven and tested affiliate marketing systems and their partners' experiences with them. Although, success of the program really depends on you, this one is still very important. The sales records don't only show how good the affiliates are, but they speak about the products' reliability, market availability and the company or the merchandisers' reputation as well. Moreover, look into and carefully study the company's compensation plan. Your purpose for joining the program is to earn, so make sure you'll be paid for all your efforts fairly.

If you do not have much time to promote intensively the affiliate products by creating banners, graphics and articles, choose affiliate programs that help you create these for your web site. It would be great if the company provides training on how to effectively market products online. Remember that affiliate marketing is a partnership, so make sure your partner is able to support you as you help him promote his products and services.

Take down all the advantages and disadvantages of each program you are considering so you can clearly see the difference among your options; then later, compare the advantages of the programs with your own checklist. Take time to gather all the info you need to choose the right program. Remember an informed choice is the best choice.

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How to Add Your Affiliate Profits With Pay Per Click

PPC is one of the four basic types of Search Engines. PPC is also one of the most cost-effective ways of targeted internet advertising. According to Forbes magazine, PPC or Pay Per Click, accounts to 2 billion dollars a year and is expected to increase to around 8 billion dollars by the year 2008.

Let us take a quick look at how PPC Search Engines work.

These engines create listings and rate them based on a bid amount the website owner is willing to pay for each click from that search engine.
Advertisers bid against each other to receive higher ranking for a specific keyword or phrase. The highest bidder for a certain keyword or phrase will then have the site ranked as number 1 in the PPC Search Engines followed by the second and third highest bidder, up to the last number that have placed a bid on the same keyword or phrase. Your ads then will appear prominently on the results pages based on the dollar amount bid you will agree to pay per click.

How do you make money by using PPC into your affiliate marketing business?

Most affiliate programs only pay when a sale is made or a lead delivered after a visitor has clickthrough your site. Your earnings will not always be the same as they will be dependent on the web site content and the traffic market.

The reason why you should incorporate PPC into your affiliate marketing program is that earnings are easier to make than in any other kind of affiliate program not using PPC. This way, you will be making profit based from the clickthroughs that your visitor will make on the advertiser's site. Unlike some programs, you are not paid per sale or action.

PPC can be very resourceful of your website. With PPC Search Engines incorporated into your affiliate program, you will be able to profit from the visitor's who are not interested in your products or services. The same ones who leave your site and never comes back.

You will not only get commissions not only from those who are just searching the web and finding the products and services that they wanted but you will be able to build your site's recognition as a valuable resource. The visitors who have found what they needed from you site are likely to come back and review what you are offering more closely. Then they will eventually come back to search the web for other products.

This kind of affiliate program is also an easy way for you to generate some more additional revenues. For example, when a visitor on your site does a search in the PPC Search Engine and clicks on the advertiser bided listings, the advertisers' account will then be deducted because of that click. With this, you will be compensated 30% to 80% of the advertisers' bid amount.

PPC is not only a source of generating easy profits; it can also help you promote your own site. Most of the programs allow the commissions received to be spent for advertising with them instantly and with no minimum earning requirement. This is one of the more effective ways to exchange your raw visitors for targeted surfers who has more tendencies to purchase your products and services.

What will happen if you when you integrate PPC into your affiliate program?

PPC usually have ready-to-use affiliate tools that can be easily integrated into your website. The most common tools are search boxes, banners, text links and some 404-error pages. Most search engines utilize custom solutions and can provide you with a white-label affiliate program. This enables you, using only a few lines of code, to integrate remotely-hosted co-branded search engine into your website.

The key benefits? Not only more money generated but also some extra money on the side. Plus a lifetime commissions once you have referred some webmaster friends to the engine.

Think about it. Where can you get all these benefits while already generating some income for your site? Knowing some of the more useful tools you can use for your affiliate program is not a waste of time. They are rather a means of earning within an earning.

Best know more about how you can use PPC search engines into your affiliate program than miss out on a great opportunity to earn more profits.

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The Top Adsense Tips And Strategiest

Google Adsense has made a huge impact on internet advertising and it is not short of being a revolution. The fact that more and more people are using Adsense today is the proof of its success.

It is a concept that can provide businesses, small and large with a good ROI and generate targeted traffic by creating a high visibility over the internet.

You should start applying Adsense if you have been losing money instead of gaining in any kind of affiliate programs. Google through its Adsense service is providing high quality and relevant ads, which match up to the content on your website.

To add to this is the search engine, which will take care of most of the searching. Another salient point is that you will not have to spend too much time choosing various types of ads for your website pages. Google’s Adsense process makes it easy for you because it doesn’t involve codes like it is the case for several affiliate programs.

Adsense Tips

AdSense is something on the lines of a set and forget arrangement thanks to the state-of-the-art technology used by Google. Here are some strategic tips of what to do with Google Adsense and what not to do with it.

1. While working on Adsense, you should try and avoid default settings, instead work towards customizing your ads.

2. When you are writing the content, think about your reader and then target your content through Adsense.

3. One mistake that most businesses or people make is looking at AdSense as a competitor; instead you should look at it as a partner that is going to help generate revenue for your business and create visibility over the internet, and in fact provide you with a winning edge over your actual competitors.

4. You need to position the ads correctly. This is highly important if you want to profit you’re your Adsense campaign. You need to place your ads where you feel there is a higher probability for people to see it.

5. With Google, you can place three instances of AdSense code per page. You should use this to your advantage but remember you need to also bring a variety to the implementation.

6. If you have implemented the code on your Adsense ads then refrain yourself from clicking on the ad. Note: Google is extremely sensitive to click fraud.

7. One of the things that many people try is game the system. Google is aware of most of the things or tricks that people apply and is notorious for pursuing people caught doing a click fraud.

Here is a list of Don’ts:

1. Don't try to implement your AdSense code in a palce where people won’t be able to see it.

2. There are many people who try to offer incentive to visitors so that they click on the AdSense ads. This is a no-no!

3. Never beg people to click on your ad

4. Never place your AdSense ads on empty pages.

Making money from the Rates

The Google Adsense ads can be easily customized, which is one of the reasons for its popularity. They can also be placed anywhere on your web page but it is always advisable to place them where people will be able to see them and click on them. You can always experiment a little with themes & colors and of course the placement but you should never go overboard. Too much of experimentation can kill the main purpose.

But before you can start with Google Adsense, you need to be aware of the rates, which can vary. Your Adsense strategy should revolve ideally around the rates because you will receive your payments per click and it will all depend on how much you are willing to pay per click to place an advertisement using AdWords. The minimum that advertisers pay is around 5 cents and it can go to as much as $10, and even more. For example: lawyers are paying around $75 for using the keyword mesothelioma.

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At Google, we’re committed to helping build a clean energy future.

Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal

Clean and affordable energy is a growing need for our company, so we’re excited about launchinga strategic initiative whose mission is to develop electricity from renewable sources cheaper than electricity produced from coal. Initially, this project to create renewable energy cheaper than coal will focus on advanced solar thermal power, wind power technologies, and enhanced geothermal systems – but we’ll explore other potential breakthrough technologies too.

We’re busy assembling our own internal research and development group and hiring a team of engineers and energy experts tasked with building 1 gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal. (That’s enough electricity to power a city the size of San Francisco.) Google’s R&D effort will begin with a significant effort on solar thermal technology, and will also investigate enhanced geothermal systems and other areas.

Supporting Breakthrough Technologies

In conjunction with the eSolar Inc. (PDF) specializes in solar thermal power. Solar thermal technology replaces the fuel in a traditional power plant with heat produced from solar energy, and has great potential to produce utility-scale power that is cheaper than coal.

Makani Power Inc. (PDF) is developing high-altitude wind energy extraction technologies aimed at harnessing the world’s most powerful wind resources. Capturing just a fraction of available high-energy wind would be sufficient to supply current global electricity needs.

Google's Green Commitment

This current initiative is just the next step in Google’s continuing commitment to a clean and green energy future. We have been working hard on energy efficiency and making our business environmentally sustainable.

Last spring we announced that we would be carbon neutral for 2007 and beyond, and we’re on track to meet this goal. We’ve taken concrete steps to reduce our carbon footprint and accelerate improvements in green technology. For example, through design improvements and the adoption of power-saving technologies, such as evaporative cooling, we have made great strides to bolster the efficiency of our data centers – the facilities that store the computers that enable Google to deliver accurate search results at lightning speed. We’ve also reduced the carbon footprint of our building and office operations - for example, by replacing incandescent bulbs with higher-efficiency lighting, and maximizing the use of natural light. And earlier this year we flipped the switch at our Mountain View headquarters on one of the largest corporate solar panel installations in the United States.

In addition to “greening” our own business, we’re also cooperating with members of the tech community to improve efficiency on a broader scale. In 2007, we teamed with Intel and other industry partners to form the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, a group which advocates the design and adoption of less wasteful computing infrastructure. (In November 2007, CSCI achieved a new milestone when we signed on our very first public sector partners, the state governments of Minnesota and Kansas.)

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Google AdSense and Web Site Services

Google believes relevant advertising can be as useful as search results or other forms of content. And that advertising can enhance the experience for visitors to a publisher's website, while helping publishers recover some of their investment in creating content of value. Google AdSense™ combines Google Search technology with our base of keyword advertisers to deliver ads that precisely target search results or the content on a site's pages, no matter how specialized the subject matter. Advertisers, publishers, and information seekers all profit as a result.

Signing up for AdSense is easy -- it only takes a few minutes to apply. And our sales team helps customize the program for sites receiving more than 20 million page views a month.

* AdSense serves relevant ads on content pages search result and content pages as well as dormant domain pages.Google Search Services enable publishers to provide Google web search on their own pages – results that can be used to generate revenue with the AdSense for Search program The Google Search Appliance, a scalable and secure device that provides Google quality search across an individual website or intranet.
* Google Wireless Services deliver Google search results via PDAs, wireless phones and other mobile devices powered by many of the world's leading wireless service providers.

Thanks Google.

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Google AdWords for Advertisers

Google designed AdWords for advertisers who want to reach a qualified audience as efficiently as possible. Advertisers select their own target keywords and only pay when customers click on their ads. It's easy to create ad text and manage online advertising accounts with no large upfront payment required. All that's needed is five minutes and a credit card. The ads appear across Google's growing roster of partners, including thousands of sites from America Online to the Washington Post, and are targeted to relevant search and content pages.

Google's experienced sales and service team optimize campaigns for our larger advertisers. Our staff of AdWords experts work with advertisers to select the appropriate keywords and generate the matching creative, then carefully monitor the campaign to improve its performance over time by winnowing keywords and rewriting copy based on what is most effective. There's no limit to the number of keywords that an advertiser can select and each keyword can be matched with a different creative execution. Recent advertisers include Amazon, Cisco Systems and Staples.

Google provides all of its advertisers with a full complement of reporting services to enable fine tuning of campaigns and real-time intelligence about which components are performing best. Advertisers can further increase efficiencies by targeting their campaigns to specific geographies or languages.

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Google Business Overview

As with its technology, Google has chosen to ignore conventional wisdom in designing its business. The company started with seed money from angel investors and brought together two competing venture capital firms to fund its first equity round. While the dotcom boom exploded around it and competitors spent millions on marketing campaigns to "build brand," Google focused instead on quietly building a better search engine.

The word quickly spread from one satisfied user to another. With superior search technology and a high volume of traffic at its Google.com site, Google's managers identified two initial opportunities for generating revenue: search services and advertising.

Google grows and business blooms

Over time, these two business lines evolved into complementary networks. Google AdWords advertisers create ads to drive qualified traffic to their sites and generate leads. Google publishing partners deliver those ads targeted to relevant search results powered by Google AdSense. With AdSense, the publisher shares in the revenue generated when readers click on the ads.

For sites wishing to have more control over their intranet or site searches, Google developed the Google Search Appliance, a scalable and secure appliance that delivers accurate search results across any number of documents.

Google continues to think about ways in which technology can improve upon existing ways of doing business. New areas are explored, ideas prototyped and budding services nurtured to make them more useful to advertisers and publishers. However, no matter how distant Google's business model grows from its origins, the root remains providing useful and relevant information to those who are the most important part of the ecosystem – the millions of individuals around the world who rely on Google search to provide the answers they are seeking.

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From Google Technology Overview

Google stands alone in its focus on developing the "perfect search engine," defined by co-founder Larry Page as something that, "understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want." To that end, Google has persistently pursued innovation and refused to accept the limitations of existing models. As a result, Google developed its own serving infrastructure and breakthrough PageRank™ technology that changed the way searches are conducted.

From the beginning, Google's developers recognized that providing the fastest, most accurate results required a new kind of server setup. Whereas most search engines ran off a handful of large servers that often slowed under peak loads, Google employed linked PCs to quickly find each query's answer. The innovation paid off in faster response times, greater scalability and lower costs. It's an idea that others have since copied, while Google has continued to refine its back-end technology to make it even more efficient.

The software behind Google's search technology conducts a series of simultaneous calculations requiring only a fraction of a second. Traditional search engines rely heavily on how often a word appears on a web page. Google uses numerous factors including its patented PageRank™ algorithm to examine the entire link structure of the web and determine which pages are most important. It then conducts hypertext-matching analysis to determine which pages are relevant to the specific search being conducted. By combining overall importance and query-specific relevance, Google is able to put the most relevant and reliable results first.

* PageRank Technology: PageRank reflects Google's view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that Google believes are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.

PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. Important pages receive a higher PageRank and appear at the top of the search results. Google's technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance. There is no human involvement or manipulation of results, which is why users have come to trust Google as a source of objective information untainted by paid placement.

* Hypertext-Matching Analysis: Google's search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), Google's technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. Google also analyzes the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user's query.

Google's innovations don't stop at the desktop. To bring its accurate and speedy search results to users accessing the web through portable devices, Google also pioneered the first wireless search technology for on-the-fly translation of HTML to formats optimized for WAP, i-mode, J-SKY, and EZWeb. Currently, Google provides its wireless technology to numerous market leaders, including AT&T Wireless, Sprint PCS, Nextel, Palm, Handspring, and Vodafone, among others.

Life of a Google Query

The life span of a Google query normally lasts less than half a second, yet involves a number of different steps that must be completed before results can be delivered to a person seeking information.

1. The web server sends the query to the index servers. The content inside the index servers is similar to the index in the back of a book - it tells which pages contain the words that match the query.
2. The query travels to the doc servers, which actually retrieve the stored documents. Snippets are generated to describe each search result.
3. The search results are returned to the user in a fraction of a second.

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The 9 Common Mistakes in Landing Page and PPC Campaign Design

For all the cash that Google makes off Adwords, they certainly aren’t putting a lot of it back into educating people on how to create a successful PPC campaign. While some industries are very advanced, whenever I wander into something a little off the beaten path, as I have this last month with small niche attorneys, I’m shocked how much money people are wasting with a terrible landing page and PPC campaign.

By no means am I a landing page expert, but seeing how bad some of the sites out there are, you needn’t be to provide 9 solid landing page and PPC campaign tips.

1. Mismatched URL and Site Topic to User Inquiry

Many individuals try to create a one-stop shop landing page for a group of leads so they can build links and try to rank one spot naturally. That is fine as long as the topics are narrow enough in focus to where a visitor from either site feels at home. But when you have visitors coming in from related but not identical fields, it is important to consider that you may be losing more PPC conversions than you’re gaining in natural search by having a mismatched URL and landing page focus as compared to the terms you’re targeting.
2. Below the Fold Call To Action

The call to action is the whole point of a landing page, so why hide it well below the fold where you’re automatically going to lose 30% of visitors.
3. Collecting Unnecessary Data

Every piece of data you collect in your landing page means fewer submissions. While there is certain information you absolutely must have, collecting unnecessary or redundant data is just throwing money away. In some cases the landing page is asking for the submitters specific address. When it comes to high-dollar time-sensitive lead that you are going to pursue over the phone, there is absolutely no need to collect the specific address. Sending out a piece of snail mail is useless, and so if you’re just trying to figure out which of your subscribers to send the lead to, zip code is plenty. (For that matter you can get rid of the ‘State’ entry as well).
4. No Testimonial

Testimonials dramatically increase landing page conversions because they indicate to the user that the form is legitimate and completes the promise it makes. It’s obvious that a testimonial can be faked, but a casual internet user doesn’t think quite so cynically and will regard testimonials as a quality assurance indicator.
5. Too Many Calls to Action

There should be one or a maximum of two calls to action on your landing page. While you might be inclined to think that offering users the opportunity to sign up for your newspaper, give you a call, send you a fax, sign up for your RSS feed are all good things, they create confusion and a paradox of choice for the visitor.
6. PPC Not Directed to Landing Page

This is about the dumbest mistake possible, yet I see it all the time. You’re bleeding money through a PPC campaign, you’ve created a landing page, but your campaign doesn’t drop the user directly on the page. Instead people often have their highly converting page one or even two clicks away. If you're investing money to convert via a landing page, don't make the visitor work to find it.
7. Call to Action Not Distinguished or Obvious

Think of your entire landing page and PPC campaign as an elaborate plan to get people to complete one single action. Now that you’re in the right mentality, how dumb is it to leave the call to action button a muted color or otherwise not distinguished. Instead, use an arrow or incorporate a different design element that immediately draws the readers eye to the call to action.
8. Using Flash, Video, or Other 'plug-in required' design elements

People clicking on a PPC campaign link typically aren’t the most sophisticated internet users. So running a landing page which requires a plug-in is a surefire way to dramatically cut your conversions. Rule of thumb: If your grandma connecting through a dial-up on her Pentium I 586 can't quickly see and complete your call to action, its too complex.
9. Being too cheap with your PPC campaign to target top terms

Nobody is saying that you need to spend $12.00 a click like some of those mesothelioma attorneys are doing, or even $0.25 cents a click to capture long tail industry terms like texas trucking accident. But often people want to limp into a PPC campaign with only a few hundred dollars and end up bidding ridiculously cheap keywords that do them no good. Spending a few extra cents per visitor is often the best way to ensure a decent return from your campaign.

No matter whether your goal is to buy a mansion or just to drive some additional leads to your business, a decent landing page and PPC campaign is an essential component of that success. While I want to emphasize that the 9 tips in this article are by no means advanced, they will help someone inexperienced with the art and science of landing pages to get started.

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How to make your WEB Keywords are suggest Key to Search Engine

Keywords are the key to whether your site is seen in the search engines or not. Whether you plan to submit your site for free or use a service you will need to prepare your keyword for the site.

Following are tips must be kept in mind while making your site keywords.

TIP #1
Do not put words into your keyword list that have nothing to do with the content of your web site.

TIP #2
The more key words (phrases) you stress, the less each one will become emphasized. You have a better chance of ranking higher in the search engines with a more targeted approach.

TIP #3
Think about where the competition is for keywords. Avoid using common or generic words, especially ones that have to do with the Internet in general, i.e., web design, internet services, etc. If you are a real estate agent, the words 'real estate' might be very hard to capture. You would be better off with something more specific like 'commercial real estate pennsylvania.'

TIP #4
Use common variations of misspelling in your keyword list.

TIP #5
Make sure you use your keywords in the body text, Title tag and Meta tags
of your main page.
If you have the perfect keywords, Title and Meta tags, but your body text or content does not contain your keywords, you will probably be listed low in the search engines. Concentrate on the first two paragraphs of your web page.

TIP #6
Unless you are a well known company like Microsoft, it is generally less important to emphasize your company name. Ideally your web site will bring you new business from customers that are unfamiliar with your company, but who are searching for products/services that you can provide.

TIP #7
Use descriptive keyword phrases - as Brian Pinkerton, founder of WebCrawler puts it, "Imagine walking up to a librarian and saying 'travel'. They're going to look at you with a blank face."

TIP #8
Do not hide keywords in the text of your document by using a font color that is the same color as your background color.


SUMMARY
Choose the right keywords! Target the wrong keywords and all your efforts will be in vain. Choose the right keywords, and you'll see an increase in traffic. It is of utmost importance to identify your target market and then select keyword phrases to match. Therefore, select your keywords with extreme care!

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Urban Gardening Blog Editor and Content Strategist Wanted - $100/month

Urban Garden Casual.com, “Gardening for the Urban Dweller” is looking for a Blog Editor and Content Strategist. Urban Garden Casual specializes in providing its community of readers with urban gardening instruction, recipes, and urban gardening style.

The blog Editor and Content Strategist would be responsible for:

*Establishing and championing the creative and editorial direction of the site working in conjunction with the Executive Editor.

*Assisting the Executive Editor in hiring 2-3 bloggers to write 250+ word posts for the blog so there are a least six new articles posted per week. Bloggers would be paid $4.19 per post. Editor will be responsible for helping determine and implement the content strategy and creative and editorial direction of the site to increase page views and traffic.

*Creating and maintaining an editorial calendar.

*Proofreading and loading articles and selecting photos to post with each blog post.

Looking for someone is comfortable with the Editor and Content Strategist role and working with the site’s bloggers to follow an editorial schedule.

Payment (via paypal only): $100/month USD. Position is renewable monthly at the Executive Editor’s discretion.

How to Apply: If you’re interested please visit the following About Urban Garden Casual link to download an application: http://urbangardencasual.com/about/about-urban-garden-casual/

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The Problogging Tips: The Value and Structure of Comprehensive Content

A blog is a blog is a blog, but if you've bought into the idea of using WordPress as a CMS - or any other platform, if you don't like WordPress - you can turn it into a hybrid site, with regular pages and blog pages.

One way to do this is to introduce comprehensive content which, as I've discussed before, builds upon resource articles. So for example, instead of the resource article I wrote called 48 Unique Ways to Use WordPress, I could have gone a step further and given detailed tutorials for each example. However, you don't always have to build comprehensive content around a linkbait article, as you'll see below.
Why Build Comprehensive Content?

Comprehensive content is one guaranteed way to build authority for your site. If you choose a specific topic and then build 30, 40, 50 pages of content connected together by an accessible link structure, search engine bots will very likely assign more relevancy to your site for that topic. That's what SEs live for: to find relevant content for a topic. This means that you'll eventually start pulling in significantly more traffic for that topic than if you write a one page summary.

So the sooner you start, the better - especially if you're building content for an upcoming event. This gives search engines time to find your content and then actually index it. Also, the longer you have before an event starts in the real world, the longer you have to start accumulating backlinks from other sites.
When Not to Build Comprehensive Content

There is no point in building comprehensive content around a one-time event that will have no ongoing value in the future. For example, previously I gave an example of building comprehensive content for Dancing With the Stars Season 6 (DWTS 6). If you happened upon insider information that indicates that DWTS will not return after Season 6, you might think twice about building comprehensive content around it. On the other hand, if you're building a database of reality TV shows, you might still build some DWTS content, but in a condensed form. Similarly, if you're building a database about dance styles and origins, you might use a condensed form for DWTS content.

So before you spend hours of your valuable time, do some market research to determine how valuable any of the information you had planned on publishing will be in a year, two years, and so on. If you are planning on monetizing the content, you need to determine whether building the content is worthwhile. Even if you expect traffic to be relatively high, if you cannot find suitable ad networks, you might think twice.
What Comprehensive Content Can I Build?

Previously I gave the example of going beyond a couples photo gallery for Dancing With the Stars Season 6. You could build up comprehensive content by adding profiles for each celebrity and professional dancer, then analyses of each episode, etc. However, that starts on Monday Mar 17th, and at this point, you're already behind anyone that's got the jump on you. (You might still build the content after the season, for the express purpose of drawing web traffic just before Season 7.)

A much bigger event happening this year is the Olympics. How might you build comprehensive content for the 2008 Summer Olympics being held in Bejing? Here are some content suggestions, which you can mix and match.

1. Primary index page. Regardless of what content you build around the 2008 Olympics, you want one handy "front door" page. That is, a single index page to tie together all the groups of pages. What goes on the main index page, in terms of links, depends on what other groupings you have, as discussed below.
2. Year-based division. If you plan to cover all future Olympics starting with 2008, your main index page should not have a link to a 2008 "group index". Not yet anyway. Wait until after you have another Olympics (e.g., 2010 Winter Olympics) index page to link to.
3. Host country page. Consider having a summary page about the host country, the locations of the events, transportation information, hotel information, Visa issues, tourist attractions, links to articles about air quality, links to articles about etiquette and legalities, etc.
4. Sports index pages. For example, "swimming" would have it's own "sport" group index page, which will point to various events for this sport.
5. Events pages. Each sport has its own events. For example, swimming might have a "100 m men's breaststroke" and "100 m women's breaststroke". These two swimming events would have their own events pages. (However, you might choose to put men's and women's information on one page instead of splitting them.) The page might contain a summary of the event's rules and all participating countries, with links to actual results pages as they're available. Or you might put all information for an event on this event page. Don't forget to include extra media/ info/ links such as country flag thumbnails, links to country index pages, video and images of events.
6. Country index pages. Each participating country should get their own index page. This page will list all the sports (and possibly sports events) that their athletes are participating in. Make sure you include details about the country in general, as well as a flag (larger than a thumbnail). If you want to get fancy, maybe you could include an MP3 of each country's national anthem. If a participating country has already hosted the Olympics, you might want to include such information. Keep in mind that you want to organize a country index page in such a way that it can be used again for the next Olympics but in a manner that does not cause confusion for a reader.
7. Main country listing. Somewhere you'll want to list all the participating countries and link to each country index page. This listing could consist of flag thumbnails, country names, and links.
8. Athlete profile pages. If you are providing profile pages of each athlete, make sure you list the athletes on their country's index page and then link to each person.
9. Live blogging content. Once the 2008 Olympics launch, you probably want to blog about each event as its happening, or just after it finishes.

How Much Comprehensive Content Should I Build?

Think about other types of content pages that you might include, as well as how you might link pages together, to make it easier for readers to find the information they probably want. If you plan on repeating this process for future Olympics, consider how you might re-use some pages and/or link together pages from different years. (For example, if an athlete participates in 2008 and 2012, make sure a 2012 reader can find the 2008 info, if they want to. Readers might also like to find info about a participating country in different years. So if you use different country index pages in different Olympic years, link a newer page to older pages.)

For the 2008 Olympics alone, you could easily build 100-400 pages of content. Sounds like a daunting task, but if you plan it out in advance and get started now, you could have your regular pages in place, then blog the events as they happen - with links to the comprehensive content pages. By getting a headstart on the page building, you significantly increase the chances that your site will gain high rankings for "Olympics 2008" before they even launch this summer. That means more web traffic when you start living blogging after each event.

If it's too big a project for you, consider teaming up with a few online friends, to build a site under joint ownership. Four or five bloggers can make short work of 100 pages of comprehensive content.

The Structure of Comprehensive Content

Regardless of how much content you plan to build, make sure that you sketch out in advance how you want to group all of the content pages. Determine what index pages you will need to tie the content pages together with links.

If you use WordPress, you know that WP offers two types of pages: (1) blog post pages that are typically shown reverse-chronologically; and (2) regular pages that are not affected by chronology. Which of these should you use when building comprehensive content? Your choice will depend on a number of factors:

1. Can a content page stand on its own? If so, you can use a blog post page.
2. Does your blog theme show every single regular page's link in the navigation bar, even when you don't want it to? If so, you might want to use blog post pages. Or, use regular pages and customize your theme to show only what you want in the navigation bar. On other option is to display a small box in the navgation labelled "2008 Summer Olympics". This box would contain a list of links to other content pages or to group indexes.
3. Are you live-blogging an event? If you're building comprehensive content around an upcoming event, you'll probably want to post updates as necessary. This content can go into blog post pages. Make sure you link to existing content pages, to lead any search spiders that have not yet indexed your site.

Other Events to Consider

This method works for TV events that take place either on a regular basis (regular weekly TV series) or for an extended duration (seasonal reality shows). Don't discount how much web traffic a TV event can generate, especially if you build your comprehensive content well in advance. What content you put in depends on who the people are that are participating, and whether or not you can find information about them. It's easier to find info about countries or celebrities than unknown reality show contestants.

Of course, you do not have to focus on TV events. You can build comprehensive content such as RideLust's Corvette Hub, around a particular historical event, a popular product, an entire sporting league (e.g., wrestling), a form of entertainment (e.g., music and popular bands), or an ongoing health concern - such as diabetes triggered by obesity triggered by inactivity. (If you choose health topics, just make sure that you're not offering medical advice and that you prominently display a disclaimer link on every page.)

Good luck and get to it.

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Awesome PR stunt: Britain's first 'Safe Text' street with padded lampposts

Wow, what a PR stunt!
British humor at its best.

Paddding lamp posts and draw lines on the pavement

* Pretend to be serious.
* Publish a study and people will jump on that 'scientific' train.

Classical PR linkbait by a classical company on a London road attracts classical media (and me). Kudos for that great and funny approach.

The scientific hook

Britain's first 'Safe Text' street has been created complete with padded lampposts to protect millions of mobile phone users from getting hurt in street accidents while walking and texting.

Around one in ten careless Brits has suffered a "walk 'n text" street injury in the past year through collisions with lampposts, bins and other pedestrians.

The 6.6million accidents have caused injuries ranging from mild knocks and embarrassing cuts and bruises through to broken noses, cheekbones and even a fractured skull.

Here is the full story: Brick Lane made Britain's first 'Safe Text' street with padded lampposts to prevent mobile phone injuries

What is the whole PR stunt good for?

From the about page of 118.com:

Text your question directly to us, you already know the number, its 118118, We’ll text you your answer back, each response only costs a pound.

Only one British pound...

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Freelance Blogging Jobs Everybody Wants and How to Get Them

Want well-paying blogging jobs? Don't rely on the job boards.

I'm not saying never check the ads. I check them regularly. What I'm saying is don't rely on the job boards as your sole source of income. Not if you want to find the best paying work.

My best paying clients never posted an ad online. In fact, most of my clients didn't even know they needed a blogger until I told them. I pitched, I scored. If you've got the skills, you can too.

Tip #1: Don't be a moron.

If you don't know how to blog, and you don't know anything, don't expect to get a good paying blogging gig. Sounds obvious, but you'd be surprised how many emails I get each week from people saying, "I want to do what you do. Teach me how to do corporate blogging. Help me blog for lawyers." Then I ask them a few questions. Turns out, they have no blog, they don't know what corporate blogging is, and they don't know anything about the legal field. Would you hire these people?

Tip #2: Figure out what you want.

Before you can find the blogging jobs you want, you have to know what kind of freelance blogger you want to be. There are many paths to freelance blogging. There is no one right way. But you may find one way more suitable to your abilities, personality, and goals.

You can be like full-time blogger Deb Ng and blog for a variety of network blogs and individual clients across a wide range of subjects. You can be like side-blogger Skellie and blog about pretty much one topic across many different decent-paying blogs. You can be like me and focus on one core niche, blogging for several regular clients at a time within that niche. No one way is better than another. We all enjoy our jobs. We all earn a living we're comfortable with. We do what works for us.

You have to decide what works for you. Do you want to blog all day every day, once in a while, or somewhere in between? I enjoy blogging every day for primarily demanding, over-caffeinated people with little patience. My job would kill most bloggers I know, but I thrive at it. On the other hand, I wouldn't be happy blogging about celebrities, while that is many bloggers' dream gig.

To get the freelance blogging job of your dreams, you first have to know what your dream is.

Tip #3: Know your potential clients.

Once you know what kind of blogging jobs you want, you have to get to know your potential clients.

Learn about their industries. Read their websites. Talk to them on forums.

Learn how they make their money and what their goals are. This is information you need, whether you're hitting up a fellow problogger for a guest blogging gig or you're knocking down the door of a CEO to get him started blogging. You have to know them before you can blog for them.

Tip #4: Learn the benefits and sell them.

Once you know how a prospective client makes his money, and you know what his goals are, you have to find out how a blog could help him.

Want that network to hire you? You have to convince them you can offer valuable information with a unique perspective which will bring them more readers, thereby increasing their revenue. Want to convince that smoking cessation counselor she needs a website? You have to convince her it will bring her more business, thereby making her more money.

To make someone believe you, you have to know what you're talking about.

When I first started blogging for lawyers, I found the best way to convince a personal injury lawyer to get a blog was to send them a link to injuryboard.com. It's the "it" blog for these people. "If you want clients to find you online," I'd say, "do what these guys do." Pointing out the competition's stronghold can be a beautiful thing.

You've got to be smart enough to figure out how to convince your prospective clients that they need you. If you can't figure out how to do this, then you aren't cut out for the job.

Tip #5: Don't take on too much too soon.

If you're new to freelance blogging, pitch and score one client at a time. Don't apply to every blogging job you see, send email pitches to a dozen prospective clients, accept every offer that comes along, and hope you'll still have time to work a tidy 9-5 and sit down to dinner with the family.

Start with one decent paying blogging client. Once you know how much time that'll take up, add another. Add enough work that you're financially set if one or two clients flake. But don't overwhelm yourself or drive yourself to carpal tunnel.

Most of all, keep at it. If it's what you want, it's worth working towards. Don't expect instant financial success to land in your lap. You'll have to work for it, be choosy, and constantly perfect your skills. But in the end, it's worth it.

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The Practical Blogging Tips: Finding Information For Resource Articles

One constant problem I have, despite having extensive search engine experience, is finding the "right" information online. When I write on a topic I know well, it's not always necessary. But as a freelancer, I tend to write about a variety of subjects when I'm working on comprehensive content and resource articles.

What Is A Resource Article?

Let's be clear on what "resource article" means, for the purposes of this post. Linkbait is linkbait is linkbait, but linkbait that also provides much more information for readers is a resource article. These articles are beneficial for numerous reasons:

1. Provide readers with what they're really looking for.
2. Evergreen for backlinks and traffic.
3. Authority builders in search engine rankings.

One site that displays some of the best examples of resource articles is Smashing Magazine. Their articles go beyond list-based linkbait.
Content to Add

To build such resource articles, you need more than just text:

1. Images.
2. Diagrams.
3. Video.
4. Slideshows.
5. Summaries, profiles, reviews.
6. Links to other resources.
7. Thumbnails.

Organization of Content

Just slapping together this content isn't enough. A good resource article has to be accessible. If it's a big, dense list with lots of links but little explanation, it's not a great resource, regardless of how good the articles linked to are. The whole package must be readable as well as be a quality reference. Information has to be organized in an easy to use manner.
How to Find Information

Finding the information you need for a good resource article can often be like trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack. Many resource articles tend to be of the "20 Best WordPress Plugins" sort. Sometimes, the title might be provocative but the content is subjective. How do you decide what's "best" or "top"? At some point, you have to apply your own rules. That doesn't make finding information any easier. Here's what I tend to do:

1. Produce a list of synonyms. If I'm looking for "cars", I'll also check for "auto" and "vehicle", or try more specific words such as "motorcycle" or "truck".
2. Search for "best", "top", "reasons". E.g., "top reasons to buy a hatchback", "best car makers". So depending on what I'm trying to write, I'll search for what others have already done. If I can incorporate their content (giving credit where necessary), I will.
3. Use search operators: AND, OR, inurl:, site:, etc., depending on which search engine use. Doing "complex" searches shorten the amount of searching you need to do.
4. Use blog directories: Technorati, Google Blogsearch. This increases the chances of finding recent references, compared to using a standard search engine.
5. Use Google Alerts. If you write about a topic regularly, it's worth setting up a Google Alert. Snippets of recently indexed content will be delivered to your email box. Just note that this is no guarantee that the indexed content was published on the day you received the alert, so check publication date.
6. Use custom news feeds. Google News or Yahoo News. Both allow you to enter a complex search query and then use the dynamically-generated RSS feed in a feed reader. I sometimes run these feeds through a custom Yahoo Pipe.
7. Use image search. Google Image Search is very handy, though make sure you respect copyrights.
8. Use video search. Look for video using Google Video Search (which goes beyond YouTube and Google Video).
9. Use niche databases. Of course, it depends on what you're looking for, but there are niche databases out there that can be extremely valuable. One example is IMDB, the movie and TV database.

Using these resources and techniques makes it easier to produce quality resource articles.

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The Practical Blogging Tips: Lighten to Up

The more contrast your blog's pages have, the easier they are to read, especially when you publish longer posts. Here are some quick suggestions, to supplement Check Your Typography.

1. Switch to a lighter theme.
2. Remove colored backgrounds. This could be as simple as tweaking some CSS code in your theme's stylesheet.
3. Increase the font size - small fonts make for dense text.
4. Increase leading - that is, increase the space between lines of text.
5. Don't use liquid-width themes.
6. Increase whitespace in general.

Decades of research for print media show two key characteristics of enjoyable reading experiences:

1. Content that does not exceed 4-5 inches in width. The human eye simply cannot easily read wide pages without fatigue. Which is why I just don't understand this love for liquid widths in some blog themes, just because someone has a 22-inch monitor. You might have a desire for ear-to-ear wraparound text, but your blog visitors probably will not.
2. Suitable leading between lines of text. The larger the font size you use, the greater the leading needs to be. Not increasing leading means that you increase page density and reduce the ability of the eye to distinguish lines of text without strain.

Understand that if you're young, you might not feel the eyestrain or fatigue right away. It can and will accumulate over time. I know whereof I speak.

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5758 The Practical Blogging Tips: Create a "To Read" Folder

Over the past four calendar years of blogging, I've jumped from one method to another while doing daily research. This hopping between methods is not premeditated, just incidental. For a while I'll use RSS readers, then I'll switch to Popurls clones, for monitoring the top blogs in a niche.

Still, there is one thing I do that stays pretty much consistent: using browser bookmarks. I keep the following folders:

1. Daily Sites - For sites that I want visit daily but don't necessarily want to have in my "niche dashboard."
2. Weekly Sites - For sites that I want to visit several times per week but don't need to visit daily.
3. Infrequent - For sites that I want to visit no more than once every week or two weeks.
4. To Read - for actual web pages that I want to fully read later, for improve my knowledge on a subject. Sometimes, these pages are not read for months, sometimes just weeks.

The key to successfully using these folders is to make a habit of it. Sure, you could use Del.icio.us for bookmarking. I have, but I find that I never actually go back and read any of those bookmarks. I find that keeping my Firefox browser bookmarks pane open at all times to be much more "in my face." So I'm far more likely to actually go back and read bookmarked URLs. It works for me; it might work for you.

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Your Blog Pulling The Power - With Creating Flagship Content

Walk into a shopping mall and at the ends or in the corners are usually huge big-name stores. These are anchor units, the flagships of the mall. For many people they are a destination on their own, or a big part of the decision process in choosing where to go. The smaller units fill in the gaps, gaining walk-by traffic as people move from one anchor to another or from an anchor to the food court.

Attracting these big stores can make or break a mall, without them the customer numbers aren't as great and the smaller stores go elsewhere. But we still shop at the smaller stores and might spend more money there. Part of the appeal of anchor stores is psychological. Mall owners will do anything, including cash inducements, to keep the anchors.

So what are you wittering on about now, Chris? This is a professional blogging site not retail!

The lesson isn't as irrelevant as it first seems. What is your blog known for? Is there anything that you could point to that your blog really owns? It could be a single post, a series of posts, an over-arching "message". Now think about your favourite blogs. I am sure you go back to these blogs because of good quality regularly updated content but is there also a reference or series that you can refer to again and again?

This is "flagship content". It is an effective way of creating a blog using a core of content that you build around. The post, series or "message" is added to and referred to repeatedly over time, increasing the original value and relevance and also keeping it fresh. While the main benefit is branding and educational value, there are other benefits I will describe later.

You might be wondering what I am getting at, after all many blogs do quite nicely without any of these things. Look at BoingBoing? Well my theory is not every blog needs anchor content but all blogs could benefit.

The downside of course is this content is hard to produce. You need to put in the time and effort, and that is after thinking up a killer idea. But it is worth it. As well as being all the more likely to get attention from the bookmarking sites and a torrent of traffic there are several other benefits including:

* Search engine performance - given prominence on your blog navigation and references in future posts promotes the post in the search engines, also this anchor content is more likely to be linked to by others.
* Viral Appeal - something to recommend, something to remember, something to link to. Yes they could pass on your blog url but anchor content gives people a "because".
* Marketability - on occasion you will need a "portfolio piece" - something representative of your blog or your work, pro blog gigs, book deals, media appearances, press releases .... You don't always want to use your most recent post for this. A great flagship can sell a blog or your writing skills far better than asking the person to subscribe and read a while.
* Expansion into products - if you build up a good series or a well fleshed out post that can form the basis for workshops, training materials, book publishing ... it actually makes the job easier because you can add to it incrementally all the while building up feedback and tuning your effort to what works.

So how do you come up with the idea?

* Your biggest tip - what one thing would you tell a newbie to your niche that will serve them best?
* Vision - do you have a vision for your niche? What should the niche be like in an ideal world?
* Beginners 101 Guide - what steps or lessons do all new people need in your niche?
* FAQs - probably the easiest source AND content - a definitive FAQ can work extremely well
* Message - it might be a political message, a certain point of view, or something more simple. Many of my favourite blogs have the message "anyone can do this", including this one you are reading now ... obviously needs to be backed up with the "how".
* Jargon Buster - many industries build up long dictionaries of jargon words, be the ultimate glossary
* Product Database - some sites have grown to prominence purely because of reader reviews, you don't necessarily even have to do the reviews yourself (great keywords for adsense too!)

The best bit is you don't need expertise necessarily, just address a need. Actually thinking up the original idea is probably easiest for someone just starting out in a niche; as you learn you can record the lessons knowing it is all relevant for other beginners.

This post is a little odd as much of the time we write about getting more traffic but traffic is no good if you have little of value to see, having one or two great flagship destinations will give your blog something worth visiting and more importantly something to recommend to others.

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The 10 Small Business Finance Tools I Can’t Live Without

Lately I've seen a bunch of articles in which the author explains his favorite few tools and why. Rather than duplicate what has already been done well, I thought I'd cover an area that has been my biggest small business hassle as of late, getting a hold of finances and money.

t seems like banking and financial services are either designed for individuals or giant corporations, with very few options for those small business owners in between. Thankfully there are a few good new and old tools and tricks that work especially for the small business owner. I rely pretty heavily on these 10.

1. Mint.com

Mint is an extremely new online program that quickly integrates your bank accounts and breaks them down in order to show you where you’re spending your money. I’ve only been using this for a couple of weeks and already found myself relying on it heavily to plan out my personal and business savings. As an aside, this service is ridiculously easy to setup, so even if you don’t have a lot of extra time, this one may be worthwhile.
2. The Perfect Calculators

I’m in love with the CCH Calculators. They’re the small businessman’s version of an actuary. I use them to plan out the feasibility of taking on a new loan, the long-term expected ROI on a short term project, or just to play around with things like my retirement plan. Literally everyone I’ve shared my enthusiasm for these things hasn’t felt the same, so I don’t blame you if you disagree. But I would encourage you to go ahead and spend a few hours with these calculators just because putting hard and fast numbers to your ideas is a good way to weed out the really crummy ones.
3. Quickbooks OE

This is the mother of all small business finance tools. The online edition is frequently updated and will pull in all of your various business accounts (with the notable exception of PayPal). I use this tool to constantly have great documentation of all our company’s activities and it saves me a lot in year end accounting fees, b/c everything is done for me.
4. Wells Fargo Payroll Services

Not so much an online tool as an online service, Wells Fargo payroll service is the cheapest on the market (at least among the 5 different services I quoted). Having checks made out and sent through them is not only a lot more professional than signing your own checks, it also saves a ton in end of the year accounting fees because they keep track of all of your withholdings and prepare your quarterly tax returns for you.
5. Continental's Frequent Flyer Program

I live and work out of Houston (which is Continental Airlines hub) so that program works really well for me, but you can basically find an airline rewards program for whatever company is biggest in your city. I only fly about twice a month, but since I always do it with the same airline that’s enough to get me free first class upgrades almost every time I fly, and I get to bring a free guest on some of my flights. I know that a airline rewards plan isn’t specifically a finance tool, but it is a means that I rely pretty heavily on to make my business’ travel dollars go a lot farther.
6. Basecamp

I realize that its trite to rely on Basecamp, and I sort of hate the fact that I give them $20 something dollars a month to use their software, but using Basecamp has literally saved our business thousands by keeping us organized. I’d suggest that you setup a number of different projects and different to-do lists for each site rather than trying, as most users do, to utilize just a single to-do list.
7. Freshbooks

Again, it isn’t original, but it is vital. I used to rely heavily on freshbooks for invoicing and time tracking. While I use the service less now that the company has grown, it remains one of the only tools designed for small business owners that actually works the way its supposed to.
8. Google Docs & Spreadsheets

Why are you still using MS Word and Excel. If you’re a small business, especially an online business, there’s usually tons of collaboration taking place between people in different offices. I use Google Docs and Spreadsheets on a daily basis to collaborate when researching new domains or website niches, as well as to collectively draw up specs on a new project.
9. My Small Business AMEX Card

I originally thought that only millionaires had AMEX platinum business cards. Not true. Basically if you have good credit you can get one no matter how small your company is. The benefits are a lot better than any other comparable card in terms of the travel rewards as well as the fact that you get into the executive lounges in all major airports for free (many have free liquor BTW). From a finance perspective, AMEX also prepares a complete end-of-year rundown for you for free which provides you with a good foundation if you plan on doing your own taxes.
10. Top Blogs

There are a number of really bad small business finance blogs on the internet. Thankfully there are also a few really good ones.

Obviously there are different tools that work for different people and different companies. So take the 10 recommendations I've made with a grain of salt. They've worked for me, but all I can really say is that you should consider giving these a try because I can attest that they're proven techniques for getting a handle on your small business finances.

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