URLville Web Services

Master of your domain

Master of your domain
Belfast Telegraph, United Kingdom
By Danny Bradbury

Damien Hirst is the latest celebrity to find that someone else has a site bearing his name - It's a lesson for us all - if you want your own web address, snap it up while you can. Danny Bradbury explains how.

More and more people are registering websites based on their own name. Anyone can get one, for just a few pounds, and if you want to get the address you want, it's better to get in sooner rather than later. As the artist Damien Hirst found out recently, if you want a website that someone else has already registered, getting your way can be a tricky business. More on that later (see sidebar). First let's assume you're not a celebrity and feel like laying claim to your very own piece of cyberspace. How does it all work?

Why would I want a domain name?

The most obvious answer is that you may want your own website. For businesses or self-employed people, the benefits are obvious. But many families, residents' associations, football teams and individuals are choosing the added kudos and control of placing their family albums on their own site rather than tagging along with the crowd and using, say, MySpace.

But even if you have no desire to build a website, you may well be persuaded by the e-mail options this gives you. Consumer e-mail services such as Yahoo!, Gmail or AOL may offer you a free e-mail address, but you have to share the domain (aol.com or gmail.com) with hundreds of thousands of other customers. If you register your own domain name, it gives you an exclusive home online. Instead of using yourname@aol.com as an e-mail address, for example, you might want to follow the trend and have yourfirstname@yourname.com. Many people consider this more professional, and it also gives a sense of ownership - if you're fed up with changing your address because you switch your service provider or an account lapses, buying your own web address is a good option.

Where do I start?

Before you even go online to see which ...

How to Set Yourself Apart From Other Affiliates

How to Set Yourself Apart From Other Affiliates
American Chronicle, CA
By Brice Mattson

Considered today as one of the best and easiest way to earn some money, affiliate marketing is now attracting many people to represent themselves in this type of business. But as competition is getting a bit bigger, you may need some ways to distinguish yourself from the rest of the affiliate marketers. For the major reason that many of your competitors including you are promoting the exact same program, in the exact same zone or on the exact same websites perhaps. Now here are some tips that you may consider in order for you to stay in this business and have the chance to outwit and outplay other competitors of yours.

The first thing is for you to have your own website. It is very essential for you to have your own website in considering affiliate marketing as your professional career. Secondly, potential customers primarily go to websites in order for them to search and sometimes purchase items they were looking for. For the same reason that it is much easier to remember than a certain URL that you may be using and you can just point to your visitors the affiliate page in your website.

Another thing to remember is to have your own ad. A lot of times affiliates marketers have published the same ad two or three times done by advertisers. In this case, you may email the owner of your affiliate program asking that you make your own ads. This way, people may not become immune to ads, because sometimes seeing the same ads over and over again, may just make your potential customers to just skip it all together. Besides, your primarily purpose is to attract or encourage people to click and read your ads and be curios enough to click through your website.

Step three, have some products of your own which are only available through your website. Once you have your website going, it is important to have some products or services that your customers can’t find with other affiliate’s site. You want your customers to keep coming to your site and the best way to do that is to have something on your site that they can’t find on others. Being an affiliate marketer we must then choose a certain market segment where you can have a potential leadership or at least a strong challenger role.

The fourth step is to ...

Creating Multiple Streams of Affiliate Marketing Income

Creating Multiple Streams of Affiliate Marketing Income
American Chronicle, CA
By Jane Foster

Have you ever heard or read the phrase “multiple streams of income” before? Do you know what this phrase means? For many businessmen, creating multiple streams of income online or offline is one way of securing themselves as well as their businesses in the future. They also believe that it can also save them from the so-called famine effect in the business industry. Once you are engaged in affiliate marketing business, it is advisable if you have multiple streams of affiliate marketing income so that if one of those income streams vanished, it will not upset you the way losing your sole stream would. If you depend on just one source of income and this single stream has been downsized or has lain off, you’ll surely find yourself bankrupted and hopeless. Try to ask the most successful online entrepreneurs, and you’ll discover that they have established multiple streams of online income.

There is a businessman that said and attested that the very first step you must take in creating multiple streams of income is to assess or evaluate your resources. Start by assessing yourself first. Jot down your answers to the following questions: What are the talents, abilities, strength and gears that you possess? Are you gifted with excellent and creative writing skills? Can you do well at sales? Are you good in communicating with people? Are you born with an artistic skill or unique ability that other people don’t have? Through this, you can determine the kind of business where can possibly excel.

Next, look around and write down you assets and physical resources such as computer, color printer, scanner, digital camera, cell phone, CD or DVD burner. Write these all down because it can be used as a resource. Consider also your friends and family. Find out what do they possess that you have access to. Remember that no man is an island. You can use the talents, abilities, knowledge and resources of everyone you know.

That’s basically the initial step if you want to create multiple income streams. But if you’re already a webmaster or a site owner, you definitely have an edge. Why don’t you join affiliate marketing business to help you gain extra income out of your own website?

Being involved in affiliate marketing is one of the most desirable ways to make multiple sources of income. It is because affiliate marketing programs come in various shapes and forms. There are a large number of ...

So Google Is No Brand X, but What Is 'Genericide'?

So Google Is No Brand X, but What Is 'Genericide'?
Washington Post
By Frank Ahrens

Last month, we noted that "google" had entered Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. It was a landmark for the search engine -- going from nonentity to common usage in only eight years. One would think that a company that existed only in the minds of two college dudes a few years ago would be happy that a major publication such as The Washington Post prominently marked the occasion.

One would, that is, until one got a letter from Google's trademark lawyer.

Google, evidently, took offense to this passage in last month's article: "Google, the word, now takes its place alongside the handful of proper nouns that have moved beyond a particular product to become descriptors of an entire sector -- generic trademarks."

This characterization of Google, the letter warned, is "genericide" and should be avoided. Such letters are cranked out every day by companies keen on protecting their trademarks. Wham-O Inc. wants writers to eschew "Frisbee" for "plastic flying disc," for instance. I'll note that in my Palm. Excuse me -- my "personal digital assistant."

Google, however, goes the extra mile and provides a helpful list of appropriate and inappropriate uses of its name. To show how hip and down with the kids Google is, the company gets a little wacky with its examples. Here's one:

" Appropriate: He ego-surfs on the Google search engine to see if he's listed in the results.

Inappropriate: He googles himself."

But this one's our favorite:

" Appr opriate: I ran a Google search to check out that guy from the party.

Inappropriate: I googled that hottie."

It's a matter of debate whether it's appropriate or inappropriate for a market-leading company worth $113 billion to use the word "hottie" in official correspondence. What is beyond debate is the eye-popping fact that Google's trademark complaint arrived via a hand-addressed letter in the actual mail.

Wonder if they Google(TM)-d me to get the address.

-- Frank Ahrens

It's hard out here for a blogger

Thursday August 10, 2006

Mike McDonald found himself in a room with a larger A-list than a Nathaniel Hawthorne character sketch. San Jose (or thereabouts) is where the big search engines and their famed bloggers live. The only thing better than this, says Mike, would be Danny Sullivan in lederhosen.

Editor's Note: Managing editor Mike McDonald of WebProNews filed this exclusive look at the SES 2006 San Jose session featuring a number of A list bloggers. Discuss your reaction at WebProWorld.

"I lost a World Cup bet, so tomorrow I will be wearing lederhosen for the organic search panel," says Sullivan.

Score!

Sullivan is the moderator for "Speaking Unofficially," a panel comprised of Google's Matt Cutts, Yahoo!'s Jeremy Zawodny, Microsoft's Niall Kennedy, and Ask.com's Gary Price. The four of them spill their guts about life on the corporate blogging A-list.

Cutts and Zawodny, as may be expected, seem to have the most to say on the subject. Cutts feels as though he's a "security blanket" to an extent, as SEOers and Webmasters hang on his every word for the next Google tweak. Zawodny just wants everyone to know that bloggin' ain't easy.

Keeping up with a blog is a lot of work. How do you guys do it?

Zawodny: It does take a lot of time. People ask: 'how much time does it take?' And I never know how to answer that because it's so hard to quantify. Sometimes it takes no time at all, other times it takes half the day.

Are you having to show the company what you guys write about?

Cutts: Maybe 3 or 4 posts I've sent over to legal or PR, but in general it's just something I write at 3 am and just send out.

Zawodny: I think maybe I've done that 3 or 4 times, but I've never had anybody say 'don't say this' or 'don't post out' or anything like that.

Jeremy on speaking for Yahoo:

Mike

"One thing that happens is that someone will see something I've said and ascribe that to Yahoo, as in 'Yahoo draws a hard line,' or whatever, which is just wrong. And then what happens a lot of the time is that people won't link back to the original statements, or whatever, and the inaccuracy just lives on in the headlines."

How has the blogosphere created something of a democracy, and also somewhat of an imbalance insofar as what gets talked about? How do you feel about that underlying democracy wherein you have so much more influence over what is discussed than the smaller guy?

Cutts: I try to look for a lot of important feeds where news might break where people wouldn't normally look. I try to track down the smaller guys. The blogosphere can act as an echo chamber in both a good and bad way.

Zawodny: I think the whole democratizing nature of it went away a couple of years ago. I've actually tried to shy away from more of the echo side of things. The skill, I think, for companies is knowing when to get involved and when not to get involved.

Price: There's so much in the blogosphere where one person says something's great and the next will say it sucks.

Are you PR people at the end of the day?

Cutts: "I don't view Jeremy as ...

10 Indirect Ways To Get To The Top Of Search Engines

10 Indirect Ways To Get To The Top Of Search Engines
Promotion World (press release) - San Diego,CA,USA
by Chris Towland

There are millions of web sites trying to get listed in the top 20 spots of the major search engines. That amounts to an awful lot of competition and even after spending hours and hours on Search Engine Optimization techniques you may still not be able to achieve a high ranking for your competitive keywords!

However, if it proves too difficult for you to get high rankings directly, there are still ways that you can get to the top.......indirectly!

So, just how do you do this?

Firstly, look up the top 20 web sites on the major search engines under the keywords and phrases people would find your web site. If you could either advertise on those sites, or get a link from those sites to yours then that would be nearly as good as having a top listing yourself.

The most expensive way to do this would be to buy ad space on those web sites. However, if you don't want to spend any money to do this, you could use the ten strategies below.

These strategies may not of course apply to every web site but I'm sure there'll be at least two or three that you can make use of straight away....

1. Participate on their discussion boards. You could post questions, answer other peoples questions, and join in on conversations. Just include your signature file and link to your website at the end of your messages.

2. Ask the web site owner if they would like a free ebook to giveaway to their visitors. You could have them link to your web site or include your ad in the free ebook.

3. Submit content to their web site. You could write articles for their web site and include your resource box and link at the end of the article. If they publish it, you'll indirectly be at the top of the search engines.

4. Write an excellent ...

Using Journalism As Activism

Using Journalism As Activism
Bay Area Indymedia, CA
by kirsten anderberg (http://www.kirstenanderberg.com)

Journalism can be used as a very effective means of activism. There used to be an old saying about the guy who owned the press in town having all the power. It is true there is a “power of the press,” so to speak. It takes time and energy, and mental concentration, or *work,* to write articles in a coherent fashion. But if you want to donate your time to a cause or organization, offering articles is one way you can help them increase donations, membership, and visibility.

Journalism (or writing, publishing, and syndicating articles) can be used as a very effective means of activism. There used to be an old saying about the guy who owned the press in town having all the power. It is true there is a “power of the press,” so to speak. It takes time and energy, and mental concentration, or *work,* to write articles in a coherent fashion. But if you want to donate your time to a cause, organization, community, etc., offering articles is a way you can help on many levels. When you highlight an organization in an article, for example, it is possible their membership will go up or donations to their cause may rise, due to the exposure. When you spend time researching an article on the history of some issue relevant to an upcoming event, protest, etc., it can help educate people as to why the protests are important and increase participation. You can spread all kinds of useful DIY information, you can give a voice to issues that you feel have not gotten enough exposure. You can use your journalism work to help others, on many levels.

The first part of activism journalism is to gather some article ideas. The next thing to do is to write the articles. Then the next thing you have to do is find somewhere to get the articles published. Then you need to start doing internal work, such as setting up your own website, archiving your own articles written and where published, gathering lists of submission possibilities for your writings and email addresses of contacts, etc...If you are serious about using journalism as activism, you can start today! But just know, it is not about whipping out a 30 minute article and you are done.

Let’s say you want to work with ...

Do We Really Need A Website?

Do We Really Need A Website?
American Chronicle, CA
By Rami Doleh

To have a website or not to have a website; that is an occurring online question.

When we set out to search for online business, we receive so many messages telling us that not having a website is not a problem as the opportunity itself will give you a duplicate page of your own that you can promote.

This is great news if you want to market only one business on the internet. But look at all the people who are marketing successfully on the net. There isn't a single person who is actually marketing one single product or service. You would find them Partnering in this or that venture, selling three or four e-books, being affiliates of numerous opportunities…etc.

Now let us say that you have opted to work with one single online business affiliate program that offers you a web page that you can promote. How will you promote it?

Let us look at the things you will not be able to do:

1-Exchange Links: Since you do not own the site, therefore, you cannot make any changes on it; accordingly you will not be able to add links to your site. If you cannot put links on your site then you cannot exchange links.

2-Forums: One of the Forums that I am involved in, and believe me it is one of the best forums around, recently announced that you can add to your signature either a product or a website that you yourself own and nothing duplicate or you do not own.

3-Adding your link to directories: I guess I will be safe to say that at least 90% of directories do not accept links with an extension. Meaning, your duplicate site would be something like that http://www.website.com/affiliate . The directories would only accept http://www.website.com. Although I must say that some companies are overcoming this issue by adding your affiliate username at the beginning rather than as an extension. It would look like this http://username.website.com . In this case your chances to be accepted are better, still not very good though. As directory owners usually do not accept duplicate sites when they review it for approval.

What you will be able to do is the following:

1-Writing Articles: In your author resource box you will be able to put a link to an affiliate page.

2-Traffic Exchange sites: These also accept affiliates

3-Paid advertising whether online or offline.

You will realize from the above that out of the five free options listed above you will only be able to do two of them. While if you have your own website you will be able to build a full marketing effort without having to pay for any kind of advertising.

Remember this is with the limitation of having only one stream of income coming in. If you decided to get involved in more than one business then you will have to duplicate your work for each affiliate program when you are dealing with paid advertising.

The advantages of having your own website are numerous, but we will list a few here:

1-The flexibility of having all your online business opportunities in one place.

2-The flexibility of changing your content for search engine optimization and enhancing visitors' experience.

3-The flexibility of automating your link exchange activity.

4-The Flexibility of automating your content management so as to have always new content on your website.

5-Of course we should not forget that all the things that we listed above that you cannot do with an online business affiliate duplicate page, now you can do them with your own home based business website.

6-Adding a newsletter subscription which will build you a list that no home business/online marketer can do without.

Does this mean that each person who wants to venture into online business must go into the trouble of building a website, designing it, and setting it up? Not really, there are opportunities out there which have the option of building your own website as part of the package. Yet you must make sure that you own the domain name.

About Rami Doleh -To find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home visit the author's web site

Hotcaptcha: Hot Babes Eliminate Bots

Hotcaptcha: Hot Babes Eliminate Bots
Gizmodo.com, Hungary

You've probably seen website sign-up forms with a graphic of some crazy-looking twisted alphanumeric characters that you're asked to type into a form. That's to ensure that an actual human being has to do the signing up. It's called text Captcha (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart).

A novel approach to this concept is to display a series of pictures and instruct the website visitor to click on the kittens, or in the case of Hotcaptcha, click on the three attractive young ladies (or men, your choice) in the picture. Even though looks are subjective, machines can't tell the subtle differences between a plain Jane and a hot babe, at least not yet. The code is available to use on your own website. Looks like more fun than just typing in text. Nice idea. – Charlie White

Product Page [Hotcaptcha, via Propellerhead]

Demystifying Your Competitor's Ranking Successes

Demystifying Your Competitor's Ranking Successes
WebProNews, KY

Ross Dunn
Expert Author

We have all been there, "how the heck do they always get #1?" It is a constant frustration for many a client and, well, even myself occasionally.

The fact is that much of the time there are a few solid reasons behind the search engine success of any website and it is important to learn what these reasons are before trying to compete. How is this done? Therein lies the subject of this article; how do you determine what your competitor has done to win the search engine war?

Demystifying your competitor's success requires you to put on your detective garb because you are going to have to investigate all aspects of their website; even the deepest darkest corners. In the following instructional I will lead you through a hypothetical investigation of a competitor who is ranking for the phrase "voip services". In each step I will choose the more popular result that I find when I do similar competitor analyses professionally. So please take note, the sample is only the most popular result; occasionally there are truly baffling cases of competitor success which have required heftier investigation leading to differing conclusions of what they did to succeed.

STEP 1: Start with the Basics: Is The Site Optimized?

Visit your competitor's website and look at the content on the page. Does the keyphrase they are ranking under appear often throughout the body text? Does the phrase appear in the headings, Meta Tags, Title and in their menu? If this is so it generally means they have focused completely on attaining the keyphrase they are ranking highly for. In other words it is quite possible, and even likely, that they have sacrificed other keyword goals in order to achieve this single goal.

Example Results of Step 1:" The competitor's page has utilized the ‘voip services' often but not in a spammy manner (not obvious overuse) throughout the body text on their home page. The page topic is clearly focused on this phrase because the Title tag states ‘VOIP Services - by VOIP Business Systems' and the headings and menu items are clearly related. Conclusion, I have no doubt that this site has focused on this phrase and that a search engine spider will have no problem logically identifying the subject of this page as ‘voip services'."

STEP 2: Is Site Structure Playing A Role In Their Success?

Site structure is a fundamental reason for ...