Article Categories

• Advertising
• Blogs & Podcasts
• Business
• Ecommerce
• Google
• Linking Strategies
• Marketing
• RSS
• SE Optimization
• SE Positioning
• SE Submission
• SE Tactics
• Security
• Technology
• Video Marketing
• Web 2.0
• Web Design
• Webmasters
• Website Promotion
• Website Traffic
• Writing

SiteProNews Blogs

• Darren Dunner
• Jerry Bader
• Kalena Jordan
• Matt Jackson
• Mel Strocen
• Titus Hoskins

7 Steps to Designing a Website for a Profitable Internet Business

By Matt McWilliam in Featured

Step 1: Create The Idea
Decide what type of business venture you would like to undertake. The internet is a large place, but there is always room for more and competition in some markets is still in its infancy. Many start up internet companies are from people who have an idea. This idea can come from work, family, friends or even to solve a problem in their personal life. If you plan to start an internet business in a new field, it is good to have connections in that specific field. Having connections through family and friends or even your full-time or part-time job can be a significant advantage over the competition.

Step 2: Do The Research
You will need to do some market research to discover what types of products you will be selling, who you will be selling to, typical and non-typical costs involved and how profitable these products will be for you. You will want to do Keyword Analysis on the major search engines to find out what your target audience is searching for and how they are locating your type of business online. Another thing you might consider is creating a solid business plan.

Business plan creation software and guides are all over the internet. Just search for “Business Plan Guide”. Finding out what your competition is doing is a great way to discover new ideas and plans to being more profitable. You will want to distinguish your new business from the competition so be creative, don’t just copy off of what the competition is doing. Once you have a solid plan in place you are ready to move forward to creating the business website, establishing a customer base and then generating revenue.

Step 3: Establish Web Presence
Now that you have your idea and plan set, it’s time to take action. You can start by contacting a shared-space website hosting company to establish web presence. You will also need to purchase your domain name from a registrar like GoDaddy.com or Register.com. Often, hosting companies will allow you one free domain name registration with hosting service activation. Hosting service is typically sold in annual fees of $240.00 to $360.00. Once you have your hosting and domain name registered you can build out the website.

Step 4: Building the Website
Contacting a local website development company is your next step. Working locally with a website developer allows you to meet the person or people that will be responsible for creating your profitable business for you face-to-face. If you feel that your business idea is going to revolutionize the internet world and put Google or PayPal to shame, then you might consider asking your website development company to sign a non-disclosure agreement. This will ensure that the website company won’t steal your idea or share it with any of their other clients. Another good idea is to request a quote before deciding on a website development company. Most will offer this as part of a free consultation to find out your project details. Your website developer will need to know specific things like the goal of your business, types of web pages your site will have, the content that will go on each page and obtain logos, graphics or photos from you.

Step 5: Generating Sales and Customers
After all this is what you want your website to do right? Unfortunately it isn’t easy, don’t expect to wake up tomorrow morning with thousands of pending sales and money flowing into your merchant account. This will take time, dedication, the right promotion techniques and a lot of effort on your part. Nowadays creating a static HTML website isn’t enough to generate sales and customers through your website. Typical internet browsers are becoming more and more used to shopping carts, interactive guides, live chat support, contact forms and quote request forms. These are all great ideas that once combined will create a very solid and trust worthy online business website. Your website development company will be able to set up all of these features for you. If they can’t, find a new website development company fast! If you plan on being more personal with your customers, you might be interested in creating a Blog or Discussion Forum. These are great ways to generate topics and ideas to discuss. This will also develop a loyal community who will continually revisit and shop more on your website.

Step 6: Promotion
Internet promotion is great because it allows you to target your customers without the large budget requirements such as print or television and radio advertisements. The first and foremost internet promotion is Search Engine Optimization. This is the technique of developing quality, accurate and reliable content on your website. Search Engine Optimization also includes, Title, META and ALT Image tags which Search Engine spiders will index allowing you to place higher the keywords you are targeting. Other forms of internet promotion include affiliate programs which allow you to offer commission based payouts to visitors of your website who refer people to your site, PayPerClick (PPC) campaigns which allow you to place in the top one or two spots on a Search Engine results page for a set bid amount, participating in online forums, communities and discussions related to your business’ subject or target audience and writing online articles such as this one which will increase links back to your website.

Step 7: Managing & Maintaining
Managing your customer base and maintaining your website content is just as important as all of the work you put into it in the beginning. Your website development company will be able to offer you website maintenance and update service based on a set monthly fee. Adding new, fresh content to your website is critical in raising your search engine rankings and getting customers to revisit your site frequently. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is available to help you track customers and maintain a lasting relationship. Most systems are web based and can be integrated into your website for you by your web development company. If you prefer to maintain the content on your website by making the updates yourself instead of paying your website developer to do the work, consider a Content Management System (CMS). Content Management Systems typically cost more to set up, but allow you to avoid the monthly maintenance fees.

Author:  Matt McWilliam is the successful entrepreneur and owner of MJM Design located in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. Read more about Matt McWilliam at http://www.MattMcWilliam.com

Visit http://www.ClevelandWebsiteDesign.com for all your website design & development needs.

A Hosting Provider Is Your Business Life Source - What You Need To Know

By Mike Flynn in Featured

verviewAvoid being caught with a “Sorry For Any Inconvenience” staring at you from the monster on your monitor.

Imagine you are very excited about finishing your first website. You upload it to a web hosting service, but to your dismal demise, your website is not showing on your screen.

Your website is your identity and an efficiently working website is extremely necessary step along your road to riches. Choosing a reliable hosting provider is your first major step towards internet marketing success.

Whether the hosting provider is the most expensive or the least expensive, the company must have all the information documented and in detail about their web hosting plans and other related services. Don’t overlook the fact that being the most expensive or the least expensive does not mean the best.

It is worth knowing that there are, also, free web hosting providers. Free web hosting services are suitable for personal web pages, but inadvisable for commercial purposes.

Robert Fritz said, “If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise”. Don’t compromise in selecting your web hosting provider.

If you are building an e-commerce site, choose a hosting service that will ensure that your site runs efficiently and can perform the necessary functions to promote your site. You will not receive a guaranteed minimum uptime of 99% or higher with free web hosting. If your web hosting provider’s server goes down, the injurious impact on your business is immeasurable.

Secrets of Selecting A Web Hosting Provider

To compile your list of web hosting providers, you first search for unbiased reviews. Best place to obtain a third party review is to check the latest reviews on forums. A web hosting provider should be a registered company and not an individual; check the BBB (Better Business Bureau).

Now, that you have established your list, gather these important details about each company:

• Has the provider been in business for 3 or more years;
• Is the provider incorporated, have a logo, physical address and phone number (preferably a 1-800 number);
• Does the provider have leading edge technology and works with a professional website designer;
• Does the provider have a reliable server with sufficient back up; that is, it has 24/7 monitoring capable of handling any emergency;
• Does the provider have 24/7 client support both by email and phone;
• Does the provider offer a money back guarantee, especially if you choose to switch companies;
• Does the provider guarantee 99.5% or higher uptime;
• Does the web hosting package offer 2 mega bites of band width or more which is enough for minisites unless you intend on having a lot of downloads of software, audio or video;
• Does the provider offer sufficient disk space; 5 mega bites is ample for a minisite unless you have a lot of pictures, videos or mp3;
• Does the provider offer email accounts; for a mini site 10 is usually enough;
• Does the web hosting package include PHP, Perl, Cgi-bin, SSL, MySQL, and Shopping Cart. If not what is the added monthly cost for these additional programming languages;
• Does the provider offer both Windows 2000 and Linux server. Linux is cheaper and if you are not running Microsoft SQL server database, or Microsoft Active Server pages, then Linux server will almost certainly be fine;
• Does the provider provide multiple domains or sub domains;
• Does the provider offer a free domain;
• Does the provider offer web design tools as well as the right to become an affiliate;
• Does the provider offer various packages and are these packages competitive.

Keep in mind that having capable 24/7 support and a completely reliable provider is more important than saving a few dollars per month.

The Success Package You Need

Most economical plans include PHP and ASP. PHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor and defined as a programming language that allows web developers to create dynamic content that interacts with databases. Since PHP scripts sit inside HTML documents, you do not need a special editor to create pages, but your server and package that you choose must support and include PHP.

This scripting language is sufficient for building basic mini sites. ASP stands for Active Server Pages and is technology that enables you to make dynamic and interactive web pages. It uses server-side scripting to dynamically produce web pages that are not affected by the type of browser the web site visitor is using.

The default scripting language used for ASP is VBScript, but you can also use JavaScript. ASP runs best on Windows 2000/XPPro and NT4. When you compare PHP with ASP you find the following:

• PHP has inbuilt features as email from a web page and FTP;
• ASP requires additional components to provide same;
• To run ASP programs you need IIS installed on a Windows platform server, it’s not free;
• PHP programs run on Linux, which is free;
• PHP generally uses MySQL, which is usually free;
• ASP requires purchase of MySQL;
• PHP runs on various platforms as, Linux, Windows, Unix and Solaris;
• ASP runs on Windows platforms;
• PHP runs faster than ASP;
• For most mini sites you will find that PHP is suffice.

If you plan on collecting data from your visitors, having a CGI-Bin is useful. CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface. It is a directory of a web server where you can store programs.

CGI is an interface of data exchange through which sending and receiving of data between the browser and programs residing in the server is organized. Normally, it is used to run Post Scripts.

Depending on what type of e-commerce site you run will depend on the package you want to purchase.

Your Competitive Web Hosting Providers

When choosing a web hosting provider, “You are the person who has to decide. Whether you’ll do it or toss it aside; You are the person who makes up your mind. Whether you’ll lead or will linger behind. Whether you’ll try for the goal that’s afar. Or just be contented to stay where you are”.

GoogleCashReview and EZMoneyMakingMinisite are serviced by Godaddy and RichJerkPower is provided by MidPhase. Both providers offer reasonably price competitive packages. The economy plan offered by Godaddy.com gives you the choice between using PHP or ASP with either Windows platform or Linux platform.

With Godaddy you can upgrade to the delux plan with either ASP or CGI. You can upgrade further to either PHP/PERL or ASP/Windows.

To put the above in perspective, both companies meet the secrets of selecting a web hosting provider, offer the success package you need, support and include excellent features, and are competitive web hosting providers.

Author:  Mike Flynn is an internet marketer, author of articles, publisher of Mike’ Newsmail Tips, and runs three websites dedicated to providing helpful hints and tips and advice on profit pulling products and much more.

Building Valuable Backlinks

By Nick Sullivan in Featured

Building decent backlinks to your site can be one of the most important strategies in gaining awareness, in relation to sites of your circle, higher rankings and crucially, long term respect from the search engines.

The links you build should be on relevant higher ranking sites and not on link farms or useless directories. Relevant directory listings can definitely be a bonus but don’t focus too much on them, though stuff like DMOZ, Yahoo directory listings can be valuable.

So, how do you go about getting backlinks? Well you can either pay for them or ask politely for a free link, simple as that. Just get a list of relevant sites to yours and ones which are at least… PR3 depending on your own pagerank, but then again, a backlink is a backlink, so just get a decent list of relevant sites to begin.

Once you have a good list, go to each of these sites, find the contact page or find another way to find out who owns the site and email the webmaster asking for a link. Just say that you like their site and ask politely if they wouldn’t mind linking to you as you’re another good resource for that topic.

Now some people don’t just give away links willy nilly so you might end up in 1 of 4 scenarios, either

A: You get a response saying that they will link to you… (perfect!).

B: You get a response asking for a reciprocal link.

C: You get a response asking for payment for a placement.

D: You get a straight… no.

So if you get a straight up yes, that’s perfect; you’ve just gotten yourself a free backlink.

If you get a reply asking for a return link… alot of people would say reciprocal links are pointless and cancel each other out… well, I’m not sure they entirely do but even if they do, depending on the traffic to the apposing site - it still may create a tiny bit more awareness / traffic to your site, so I would say it’s worth it. It surely can’t do any harm, so why not.

If you get a reply stating that he / she / they do not give out free backlinks and it will cost to have a link placed, ask how much, if they haven’t said so already.

Then evaluate if it’s worth it, go find out what sort of prices links are going for on certain PR’s and if it’s even worth buying one on this site. Find out the sites traffic, age, rankings etc.

If you get a straight no then try replying back asking why, if they give no reason -maybe they just didn’t want to give out a free link, in which case either offer a return link or a payment (if it’s worth it).

Also, when asking for backlinks it’s important to get good anchor text. It’s been proven that anchor text links are pretty valuable long term these days on the web so you should get in there now. You should vary the text in which you ask your link to be named each time, but not so much and so broad that it could be mistaken as spam. Too much of exactly the same text could also be wrongly taken as inerlinking or cheating by the search engines so make sure you get good healthy text links, but not overloaded.

Say for example you own a website about sleeping problems, get a few links with the text Can’t Sleep? or something like that, maybe some with the text Sleeping Problems and then one or two with your actual site title.

A good cycle of healthy anchor text links should help remind Google etc that the backlinks are genuine.

Author:  Nick Sullivan is an Internet marketer based in the UK.

Really Simple Syndication (RSS for Blogs)

By Sean Felker in Featured

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a tool useful for saving or retaining updated information on websites that you frequently visit or websites that are your favorite.

RSS utilizes an XML code which scans continuously the content or subject matter of a certain website in search for new informations then transmits the information updates by way of feeding the information to subscribers.

RSS feeds are generally being utilized in blogs or news sites, though any website wanting to broadcast and publish information can use them. Once new information is sent, it will contain a headline, a little bit of text, and either a rundown or a brief review of the news or story. A link is needed be clicked upon to read further.

So as to accept RSS feeds, a feed reader is needed, called an aggregator. Aggregators are widely and freely available online, and all that is needed is a bit of searching, you will be able to locate a certain interface that best interest you. What’s more, RSS feeds can likewise be read and retrieved from cell phones and on PDAs.

Once you encounter upon a website that you want to add or insert to the aggregator, the process can be done in two ways. Almost all sites offering an RSS feed displays an “RSS” or “XML” button in their homepage and with one click, it promptly add that particular feed to one’s aggregator. Some aggregator however, requires the need to copy and then paste the URL of the feed unto the program.

Whatever the method used, you can be certain that the feed will be accessible soon as you have inserted it, likewise, in just seconds, the next update can arrive. In the event that you do not anymore would want to accept or take in updates, you may simply delete or erase the feed from the aggregator.

Through e-mail subscriptions, you can receive newsletters. RSS feeds on the other hand, can be more convenient in keeping up with newsletter updates since they are prompt and available in an instant; you no longer have to wait for a scheduled time or day to obtain a news summary, plus, these news will never be detained through a spam filter.

RSS feeds are widely used everyday by individuals who understand and appreciate the accessibility of fast reports and news that can be readily read and only read certain updates that appeals to them.

Aggregators

Aggregators are popular use of feeds, having several kinds. Web aggregators or portals as they are sometimes called, create this view which is then made available in a Web page. Also, Aggregators have been incorporated into e-mail patrons, users of desktops, or dedicated and standalone software.

Offering a collection of special features, such as combining more than a few related feeds in just a single view, hiding certain entries or statements that has been already viewed, and classifying entries and feeds, the aggregator is a versatile component.

Why make a feed available?

You will have more viewers, since now, your viewers can conveniently see your site without even going out and looking for that certain site.

While at first, it may seem corrupt, it will in fact enhance the visibility of your site; this is so because users can easily keep up or keep tract with your site, to allow them to view in a way that they want to; it’s more probable that guests are aware should something that is in their interest is available or accessible on your site.

For instance, every month your website broadcasts a new feature. Having no feed, your viewers will always have to keep in mind to go to your site in a certain time to see if they discover something new; that is, if they can remember, and if they still have the time.

However, if you supply a feed for your viewers, they can just point to their aggregator and it will instantly provide them a link along with a description of happenings or events at your site immediately.

What format to choose?

Syndication is very confusing as it uses a lot of formats that can usually be come across in the web. However, this can easily be solved as in general, syndicated libraries are used by aggregators which conceptualize a particular format that a feed is in, in order that they can utilize a certain syndication feed.

With this, whatever format to pick is just a matter of personal preference. RSS 1.0 is far reaching, and practical should it be integrated into Semantic Web systems. RSS 2.0 is very easy and simple create by hand. And atom is an IETF Standard, does it brings constancy, stability and a natural and accepted community to support its usage.

Author:  Sean Felker is the publisher of the very popular and successful Work At Home and Making Money On The Internet: http://try-marketing.com/workathome/

Good Discovery Makes Great Small Business Websites

By Ilene Rosoff in Featured

Many small business website development projects start with great vision but end up generating less than stellar results. Small businesses faced with budget constraints and little or no experience in the process of business web development often find themselves on the wrong side of their finished web project wondering exactly where things went wrong. Usually the answer lies with both the client and the web design or development company.

It’s All About Communication
The job of a good web development company is to help you take the vision you have for your website or web project and turn it into a reality. An initial “discovery meeting” should be the first step in working with a small business web design and development company. The way to make that process most effective is for the client and the developer to have a clear understanding of both the big picture and the fine points. The goal is to arrive at a consensus for your project that meets the project objectives you have outlined. Those objectives should be guided by the budget and technical considerations that you and the web development company have identified prior to beginning your project. As we all know, the devil is usually in the details.

The best way to insure maximum results for your small business web development project is to take some time in preparation to get clear in your mind what exactly your are trying to accomplish. The next step in the process should be a good fact finding mission guided by the web project manager or web developer. The web developer should use this opportunity to not only gather the details of your project but to clearly understand your vision and what you want the end result to be. From there it is crucial that lines of communication between you and the web development company or web designer be kept open each step of the way to ensure a continued consensus on the project direction.

With that in mind, here are a few key steps you can take in preparation for that first conversation. The aim is to help you make the most of the “discovery” process and provide some sound advice to guide you along the way.

Good Process Makes Good Partners

1. Broad Strokes
Take some time to think about what you’re trying to accomplish with your website or web project. Hone in on how your project fits with your business, your industry and ultimately your customers. If the project is for internal use, how does it fit with your staff? Your website is ultimately about a business or marketing solution that solves a problem or set of problems. What are your trying to solve? What are you trying to accomplish?

2. Who Are You?
Help your web development company understand your business and your brand. If it’s a new website or a redesign that reflects a new look, it’s helpful to have some of your promotional materials, logos, letterhead, etc. available for the discovery meeting. You want to convey who you are as a business and how you present yourself to the world. The company or web developer you are working with should be interested in this and be able to summarize it back to you. If you’re a new company tackling small business website development for the first time and don’t really have too much in the way of branding or logos, don’t sweat it. A good website design company should be able to work with you to create design elements that reflect who you are or recommend a copy that specializes in logo or branding for business. Keep a list of websites you encounter where the web design speaks to you. The important thing is to reach a good design consensus.

3. Remember Your Audience
As your thinking about your business website development project, focus on your website visitors. Who are your customers? That’s ultimately who the website or web development project is being created for. Who is going to be using the website and how are they going to be using it? What’s the goal? Are you looking to generate leads from your website, automate your ordering process, sell products online, allows customers or staff to access certain information? Since you are the voice for the end users of the site, make sure and give them ample consideration during the discovery process.

4. You Don’t Have to Do It All At Once
The beauty of the web is that it is a dynamic and flowing medium. Your website can evolve in phases and you don’t have to accomplish everything in Phase I of your web project. You can brainstorm without barriers about what you want. Then, hone in and decide where the best starting point is. This is an area where an experienced web developer should be able to provide guidance. Perhaps phase I of your business web development project will be a new site creation that focuses on good design and offers essential content about your company and your services. It might include a newsletter subscriber “call to action” box on each page. Phase II might be the addition of an online store that allows customers to view order history and create reorders. Phase III could integrate added functionality to the store like the assembly of certain components, detailed reporting or a place for customer reviews. For small business web design and development, budgetary constraints have to be contended with. A website can be a work in progress and grow with your business. Breaking the project into digestible pieces can not only help you in getting better insight into what the priorities are but it can also help in spreading out the cost.

5. The Devils in the Details
You don’t need to know every detail in advance in terms of how the project will look. A good business web designer or developer should work with you through the process to draw out those fine points. It is useful to give some thought in advance to as many elements of the project as possible, particularly where projects involve interactive customer-based websites. To that end, it can be helpful to sketch out the step-by-step flow of what you’re trying to accomplish and how information flows. You might have a crystal clear idea in your head regarding how each element should look and behave. Putting it on paper helps communicate it to the web company. Or, maybe it’s a bit murky and setting the pencil to paper can be extremely helpful in clarifying your own ideas and objectives. Whether designing a new site or redesigning an existing site, jotting down a site outline is a great starting point. What are the key sections of the website? What content do you want to include for your visitors and where do you want them to go? During the initial discovery meeting, the objective should be to do a lot of fact finding. The more details you can provide the web development company, the faster and more effectively you can bring your vision to fruition.

6. Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff
While it is very useful to put some serious thought into the project for your initial discovery meeting, the nature of business web design and development projects is that many fine points will be shaped and forged as the project development unrolls. That’s why an integral part of the process should involve the web development company staging your project on the web (preferably in a staging area of the web company’s server). Then, as steps are completed and the project moves forward, a consensus on the final result is maintained. Small adjustments as the project progresses are common and expected. As long as all of the key points are in place, don’t feel like you can’t adjust minor details as things move along. With that said do keep in mind that major revisions or additions to project development can add hourly labor and impact the cost. Make sure you understand how much “adjustment” space you’re allowed without incurring additional costs. If you have a change or addition that is going to impact the bottom line on the proposal, request that you be notified in advance and have full veto or approval before work proceeds.

Conclusion
The best way to ensure that your web development project doesn’t miss the mark is by preparing for the process and selecting a small business web development company that can help you to realize your vision. Hopefully, this guide will serve as a useful tool in the creative and development process. It was designed not only for small business owners and managers but to be shared with the website developer or designer you ultimately engage. The process of good web development is about reaching a consensus defined by budget, vision, technical requirements and good communication. The blending of those elements serves to lay the groundwork for success with your project and a final result that realizes your vision and serves your business.

Author:  Ilene Rosoff is the president and founder of The Launch Pad, a 15-year-old Florida-based technology services company specializing in small business web hosting services, small business web design and development, and business information technology solutions for local and national clients with zero to sixty employees. The Launch Pad helps small businesses grow and succeed with technology and on the web. Visit www.launchpadonline.com to request a technology or web assessment for your organization or for a custom proposal for web or information technology services.

Kiva.org: Solving Global Problems One Click at a Time

By Wayne Silverman in Featured

Unlike most charitable organizations Kiva.org doesn’t give away anything to anyone. They exist to create connections between entrepreneurs in impoverished countries and people in the developed world who are willing to lend them money to expand their operations. This is a revolution in lending. No longer is the micro-lending process tied up in bureaucracy (i.e. the United Nations). Kiva makes it simple. If you are willing to lend Kiva has an established way to administer the distribution of your funds to credit worthy borrowers in many impoverished countries all over the world. This isn’t some internet scam…Kiva.org has received positive media coverage from the WSJ and NPR as well as BusinessWeek.

There are various estimates of the size and growth potential of the microfinance industry worldwide. Unfortunately, the demand for micro-credit services among the world’s poorest is still largely unmet. Agencies spend between $800 million-$1 billion per year, but they only manage to reach between 13 and 16 million impoverished people. This represents only 4-10% of the world’s poor. The microfinance industry has grown 25-30% annually over the past five years, and is expected to show continual growth. But, there is a lack of capital available to microfinance institutions. This represents a great opportunity for Western societies to redirect capital for distribution as micro-loans, many of which are repaid at rates of 95% or higher.

What is unique about the Kiva.org story is that Kiva is the first micro-lending Web site designed to connect people with people. Founded in 2004 by Matthew and Jessica Flannery, Kiva’s goal is to reduce poverty in developing countries by giving entrepreneurs the ability to build their businesses through flexible loans with six-to 12-month terms. Kiva allows individuals to act as a “micro VC” by loaning directly to entrepreneurs with feasible business plans. In other words, they have democratized the lending process. They are looking into expanding into the US market but, as I understand it, there are legal roadblocks to their providing micro-loans in the US at the present time.

Making a loan through Kiva is easy, secure and personal. A potential lender simply goes to www.kiva.org, registers in a password-protected section, browses through the business section to review available enterprises in need of funding, learns how much funding the enterprises are requesting, and then chooses one or more businesses to which to loan. Loans are made via PayPal, a globally recognized online payment service. Kiva accepts loans as small as $25 and can integrate funds to customize loan sizes. Lenders can stay abreast of the progress of creditor businesses via a blog-site regularly updated on the Kiva web site. Lenders may correspond with the business owner through a Kiva partner representative in the native country.

If you are wondering how to change the world, Kiva.org gives you a way. Helping people help themselves is a fundamental principle of democratic freedom. What better way to show the world just what we, as Americans, and our capitalist system, is really all about, than by demonstrating it by lending through Kiva. I really believe that Kiva.org has the potential to change the world. Ordinary people helping other ordinary people without the insulation of an entrenched bureaucracy…We no longer need the bureaucrats, the internet provides us with the ability to connect in a way that would have been inconceivable even 5 years ago. People can now unite and work together for real global change without leaving their home office.

The take away from this is: With the power of global communications, and electronic distribution, we can conquer global poverty ourselves, person to person, one click at a time.

Author:  Wayne Silverman lives in Philadelphia with his fiance and a cat named Angela. He works in Public Relations and Advertising for a nationwide franchise company and as a freelance copywriter/editor . He is a popular contributor to several online sites and can be contacted at fractalshift -at- gmail.com

7 Steps To Effectively Take Control Of Your Inbox And Reduce Spam

By Corey Geer in Featured

Everbody hates spam! I am sure spammers hate getting spam too, but they still continue to dish it out. Why? Because it is still effective. Believe it or not, many of us still click on the links or follow-up with the spam message. As long as we continue to do this, spam will exist. If everybody understood this and paid no attention to spam, the spammers will eventually give up because it costs them realy money to send out emails. It is hard to quantify what the cost of sending out one, two or fifty emails is, but 1 million or 5 million emails certainly has a cost that is not negligible. When the payback starts to get so small that the spammers cannot make a decent living, they will find something else to do. This day will come and I cannot wait for it to arrive.

In the meantime, what can we do about it. Well, I am not going to tell you that there is a perfect solution that will stop all spam, but what I will tell you is that there is a way to reduce the problem and manage it effectively using the 7 steps outlined below.

Step #1: Get Your Own Domain Name
Fighting spam effectively starts with getting your own domain name. For example if your name is Andy Williams, you would purchase a domain name called andywilliams.com, which is of course already owned by the famous singer. This has some unique advantages over using an ISP given domain name or a webmail service such as Hotmail or Gmail. It also has some minor disadvantages. Let’s examine these.

One major advantage is that you control the entire email address. You could create emails addresses like andy@andywilliams.com, info@andywilliams.com, sales@andywilliams.com and so on. This is in stark contract to an ISP assigned name like andywilliams@comcast.net. If you wanted another one, you’d have to open up another account or pay extra for each additional ISP assigned address. If you ever decided to switch ISP’s, you would lose that email address and have to start over using a new one, and inform everyone you communicated with about it - a very messy proposition.

Many get around this problem by getting a Hotmail, Yahoo Mail or Gmail account which you can access from anywhere as long as you have internet access. These types of email accounts definitely have a place in your email toolchest, but do not suffice as your primary personal email address. One reason is that you do not have access to your email messages and address books when you are not online, like during a long flight. Anotehr drawback is that they do not allow you to export the online address books making portability very tedious.

I prefer owning my own domain name which I call my permanent email address. I will always have this email address as long as I renew this domain name every year. The cost of registering a domain name varies from $4 to $8 per year for most common ones. This is a small price to pay for the advantages it brings you.

The one minor disadvantage of owning your own domain name is that you need to manage it yourself, or have someone do it for you. This in my opinion is far outweighed by the advantages mentioned above.

Step #2: Create Private Email Adresses
A private email address is one that nobody but your inner circle knows about. Every person that you give your personal email address to is someone that you trust and want to receive email from.

Setup one private email address for every person who is going to need to receive messages. This could be you and 5 other members of your family or 12 employees that work for you. This part is quite straightforward, you simply login to your email control panel and create new accounts for each email address that is going to be used to receive email.

Step #3: Create Public Email Addresses As Aliases
A public email address is generally known to the public. It can be specific like andyw@andywilliams.com or generic like receptionist@andywilliams.com.

A public email address is created as an email alias. An email alias is not a real email address, but an address that gets redirected to a real email address. For example, you setup receptionist@andywilliams.com as an alias that redirects to mary@andywilliams.com. Whenever some sends an email to receptionist@andywilliams.com, it will end up in Mary’s inbox. If you change receptionists, you simple modify the redirect for a very elegant solution. You can then publish this public email address on a website, in a brochure, on print advertising, business cards etc. without giving away your personal email address and without having to make much changes if Mary leaves and a new receptionist is hired. This is a huge benefit and maintains your privacy as well as those of others you have created email adresses for.

How does this help with spam, you ask? By using email aliases in a smart fashion, you could very easily shut down any spam that starts coming in. Let’s examine how this can be done.

Step #4: Setup the Default or Catch-all Email Address
Your email control panel will have something called a “default address” or it is also sometimes called a “catch-all address”. This is a valid email address that all unresolved emails go to. If you set this up to be your personal email address for example, then you will receive all emails that are addressed to “anything”@andywilliams.com, this includes sales@andywilliams.com, joe@andywilliams.com, andrew@andywilliams.com etc. Herein lies the secret to combat spam.

Step #5: Create Specific Named Public Email Addresses As And When Required
When you are forced to register on a website where you want to get some information from, you are usually asked for a valid email address. Well guess what, you now have an unlimited supply of valid email adresses. I usually use a specific format when registering at websites - it is “websitename”@andywilliams.com. So if I am registering at a website called www.get-rich-quick.com, I would use the address get-rich-quick@andywilliams.com as my valid email address. When the site sends me an email, it gets redirected to my personal email or whatever the default or catch-all address is.

Step #6: Send Spam Back To Where It Came From, If Possible
Here comes the real bonus, if you subsequently start receiving spam addressed to none other than get-rich-quick@andywilliams.com, you simple create an email alias for get-rich-quick@andywilliams.com and redirect the email back to exactly where it came from, for example georg-bush@get-rick-quick.com. You will then never get another email from anyone using that email address ever again. This is cool and is my favourite part. Bear in mind that spammers usually send email from an address that is not their own, so if you see an address like noreply@get-rick-quick.com, then you would redirect it somewhere else, for example a Hotmail address that you setup just for redirection purposes. Please exercise some discretion here because spammers often use the email addresses of real people and we don’t want these innocent people getting redirected email.

Step #7: Be Diligent In The Ongoing Management Of Your Domain
If you do this diligently for each website where you register by identifying the website name, you will very quickly know which websites are selling email addresses and which ones honor their promise not to share your information. ALl this while, nobody by your personal inner circle knows your private email address.

A real-life example in my case: I use a specific email alias for my Paypal account which nobody but Paypal knows. I have never ever received spam on this address, but I have received hundreds of spam messages on other email aliases that I have created. All of these emails supposedly come from Paypal and address me as “Dear Valued Paypal Member” or something similar, warning me that my account is going to be closed or suspended unless I click on their link and update my credit card information.

I hope that I have given you some food for thought on how to manage the ever growing spam problem by protecting yourself by taking some initiative and getting your own domain name. The added benefit is that you now have a permanent email address no matter where you choose to live or which ISP you use to connect to the internet.

Author:  644 EBooks - Marketing - Arts - Autos - SEO - Tools - Traffic - List Building - Society - Shopping - Sports - Self-Improvement and MUCH MUCH MORE! All For only $7 A Book. http://coreygeer.blogspot.com/

Corporate Blogging: Don’t Be an Island

By Mihaela Lica in Featured

So you set up a corporate blog. You have put your shiniest suits forward and have in-house editors serving up professional content. And it’s being updated regularly, in fact it’s running smoothly. In fact, you’ve created a blogger’s dream come true.

Sit back, relax. Pat yourself on the back, even. After all, you’ve done the right thing. Well, haven’t you?

I browse the blogosphere a lot and I am particularly interested in business blogs because, in the end, this is what I sell: online public relations for corporate clients. Blogging, as a publishing tool, is a very important facet of my business. I always recommend to website owners to add a blog to their sites because blogs bring many advantages including traffic, links, credibility, not to mention the possibility of publishing your own corporate news in real time and have them indexed almost instantly.

But many new online business owners don’t really understand what blogging is all about. They think that by daily contributions they’ll get higher rankings in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Well, this method used to hold true for Google rankings, but that was back in the good old days, before blogging became a mania.

So what real chances do corporate blogs have and how can they grab the attention of their market? The reality is corporate blogs have nothing if they don’t have community.

The first rule in corporate blogging (and the first rule in blogging as a discipline) is: don’t be an island. If you choose to be an island, then do us all a favor and post a big ALOHA sign in your harbor now. Being an island is like one hand clapping. You know you’re doing it, but no one else does.

So how do you make the transition from island to continent?

A blog is the ideal platform to publish news fast and to control the message you want to send out. A blog is also the ideal platform to communicate with your future clients and business partners. Used wisely, it will help establish a trusted brand and leverage profits for your business.

To help bring trust to your blog, you’ll need to turn on your comments. Let people tell you how they feel about what you have to say. Accept their advice, accept their criticisms.

Learn, improve and move on. In the process, you might discover that elusive “je ne sais quoi” that was missing from your product or service and by listening to the feedback from your readers, you just might change the face of your business.

Don’t forget to respond to these comments. It’s not just a courtesy: when you do answer, you show your readers that their questions and ideas actually matter. Engage your readers in a meaningful conversation, give them valuable, competent answers.

The blogosphere revolves at a fast pace. Try to be as fast as this revolution.

Next, get involved in the online community. Ask your employees to read related blogs and take some time to add comments where they can. Their comments should be meaningful because this is the surest way to get the recognition you deserve and encourage people to visit your website or blog. Their comments should never mention your company or your products. They should be related to the host blog’s entry and they should add something new to the conversation. Never comment “just to comment.” And never use comments like “visit our site, we are the best in…” Self promotion is not welcomed anywhere. Respect the owners of the blog where you post your comments, respect their readers. You’ll also need to educate your employees about how to recognize authority blogs and understand how networking works.

Encourage social networking in your company. Ask each employee to post at least 4-5 comments each day on different blogs. And get them to do this with a link to your corporate blog in their signature. Refrain from using keywords in the comments signature — so no niche-related key phrases that could be perceived as spamming. And be real: ask your employees to use their own names. This is how you give a human face to your business. It’s that personal touch that will gain credibility and goodwill for your company. As a bonus, when they learn how to interact with other people online, the members of your staff will understand why communication is important within a team too. From reading different blogs they will learn how related businesses manage their online strategies and they will be able to bring good feedback and lessons to your company too.

Another very important reason why you should comment on other blogs has a lot to do with SEM and SEO, basically with what online marketing experts call “linking strategies.” Many bloggers have joined a “you comment I follow” movement to motivate their visitors to comment. Basically they remove the “nofollow” attributes from the signature link of the commentators. That’s good news, because those links will count in Google and Technorati. But you should also comment even when some blogs use “nofollow” for the signature links. There are search engines (like Yahoo and Ask.com) that completely ignore the “nofollow” attributes. Besides, the readers — and they are your real target — will follow. They click on the names of those who manage to get their attention through witty comments and professional advice. You should understand that the real purpose of the signature links is to drive traffic to your website or blog. That’s it! No matter what else you’ve heard, they do not have important SEO weight to make them count for your rankings in the SERPs.

So don’t blog to get more links, blog to gain goodwill for your business. Use your blog as a PR tool. Think of the savings and the amazing power you hold in your hands. Hire a blogger to do the networking if you don’t have time to do it yourself, but don’t be afraid to explore this world. Professional online PR consultants already agree that a site without a blog is a dead site in this profound Web 2.0 world. And guess what? We are heading towards Web 3.0!

Author:  Mihaela Lica is online marketing specialist for the Luxembourg based web development company Red Dog Communications.

How Using a Templated Website Hurts your Business

By Brett Miller in Featured

If your website isn’t generating you leads, you need to ask yourself what’s wrong. If you’re using a templated site, that may be the cause of the problem. Search the Internet yourself to find out which small businesses like your own are ranked at the top in different cities. How many of them are using a templated site? My guess is not many.

Internet buyers and smart consumers have become a tech-savvy group. They’ve seen every type of small business website imaginable. When they hit a site that’s obviously built on a template, they know it right away. Internet searchers have seen enough templated websites to know that such sites don’t offer the personal attention they’re looking for in your field.

Your templated sight isn’t generating leads because it doesn’t add anything of value to customers’ lives. Having pretty pictures on your site isn’t going to drive you more business. How will your business fulfill all of your prospective clients’ needs?What will you do that none of your competitors can or will do? It is necessary to answer all of these questions in your website and make them ask for more.

In a search engine world dominated by Google, one principal has become clear: Content Is King. The search engines regularly crawl through every website to see if there have been any changes since the last time they visited. If your site has added content since the last visit, you will be noticed as someone who has not let your site go dormant and seem abandoned. If your site is templated with templated copy that is exactly the same as a lot of other sites with only the contact information being different, you will all be given lesser value for being duplicates.

This principal of search engines ignoring duplicated websites is especially true for affiliate websites where you are given a specific ID number to track your traffic, but with everything else exactly the same, no one ever has a chance of being found by potential clients that you have not personally directed to your site.

Regularly updated content that is rich with keywords relevant to what your site is about is important for showing the search engines that you are an important source of timely information which they rate as very important. When your website is constantly updated, prospective clients know that it’s not just a templated site. They will see that you are putting an effort into putting your best web-face forward, which is the key to marketing and sales strategies today.

The majority of today’s consumers begin their searches on the Internet. If a website is difficult to navigate, or if visitors don’t find their answers within the first few seconds of hitting a site, they’ll leave as fast as they came. It must be click-click-click easy because you only have a few seconds to make a good first impression. Your small business website has to be a place that visitors want to come back to. A place where they know they can find information to help them achieve their goals. A place where you can build strong relationships with prospects and clients. The best way to create such a place is with a personalized website that puts a human face on your business.

Author:  Brett Miller, the founder of HoopJumper WebSystems, is the creator of Webepreneur, an easy-to-use website building program for small business owners and individual service professionals who want to save money and time by building and editing their own search engine optimized Web 2.0 websites. If you’re a Small Business Owner and you want your websites to work for you, go to http://www.webepreneur.com/

Search Marketing Industry Shake-up Imminent

By Jim Hedger in Featured

As sure as the sun shines behind the clouds on a rainy day, a major shake-up in the search marketing industry is coming soon. The signals are being sent and received  through-out the various sectors of search and online marketing. Change in any marketplace, when it does come, is often swift, brutal and merciless. For some SEO practitioners, this one will be especially so. While the search marketing industry has been bracing for change for at least a year, the movement is now picking up speed and gathering momentum. As SEOs, our working-world is going to look very different this time next year.

The biggest change is the death of “traditional SEO”

Dead is taking it a bit far. SEO is not exactly dead. A better way to describe it would be to say it dyed.

SEO has evolved so far and so quickly in the past six months that it as a practice is hardly recognizable from its humble roots, much like a Neanderthal placed beside any given Homo sapien. The thread that ties the past to the present is search. Everything still comes down to some sort of search.  Nevertheless, the traditional view of SEO services is over. Having languished in a virtual state of stasis for most of the past year, the concept of traditional, SERP based SEO went to rest sometime in the early spring.

With the introduction and rapid advancement of social networking, the attention of the search marketing world and Internet users has quickly spread outward, away from the common search engine results pages. While Top10 (first page) placements are still extremely important traffic drivers, information seekers rely on social media, RSS feed-readers, specific vertical search tools and multimedia as frequently as they do on traditional search engines. (That’s why the traditional search engines are branching so far out into the social media)

This has led to a surge in the development of SEO based techniques to work within social media environments. Clients now require social profiles for their businesses, themselves and their key staff, along with the proficiency of a skilled social networker to keep those profiles popular and polite. Fortunately adaptable SEOs will find many of these tasks fall within skill-sets that are very similar to “traditional SEO”.

Another critical service popping up in many SEO firms is called reputation management. With literally thousands of potential venues open to anonymous or unmoderated postings by the public larger companies often require professional assistance monitoring and maintaining the numerous representations of their online reputations. All too often though, the majority of us don’t need someone else to make us look bad online. We’re perfectly capable of doing it ourselves.

Take a second to think about this question. How many profiles do you have available to searchers in how many different venues?

Try to consider everything from a database of church members to the dating site one might have signed up with to the websites of local business association. Now add MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, MyBlogLog, and any other larger social network you or your business might have joined. Though much of it might be restricted to members-only searches an enormous amount of personal and business information is floating around to be discovered, vetted, and compared with that of other potential employees or vendors. For some, that though constitutes a reputation management problem. Who better to find and attend to such problems but companies that already specialize in performing searches and creating high ranking documents?

The final nail in the coffin of traditional SEO was the introduction of Google’s personalized results. Though personalization and localization will be good for adaptable SEO firms, the direct interests expressed by each unique user will increasingly determine which documents are consistently placed in that user’s results. That means SEOs will have to do more work on each file doing little things such as placing calls to action leading to social or browser based bookmarking (which requires the establishment of even more business profiles) and building smarter link/tag networks, along with the traditional SEO tasks covering titles, tags, text, structure and links.

Covering all those bases is not a simple task but much of the basics remain the same. The principle application of search is used in an increasing number of venues. While each search application differs from venue to venue, they perform the same ultimate task. Most fall into a limited number of types that experienced SEOs have likely dealt with before. For instance, tagging images at Flickr or documents at Digg is much like adding the keyword meta-tag was for Alta Vista. Similarly, writing great personal or business profiles is much like writing a strong description. The same principles apply from keyword to copy.

Full-scale service is going to cost a lot more for SEO firms to provide in the near future. A worry in the business end of the SEO industry is that tomorrow’s services (slowly being introduced today) will cause a shake-out in the industry as less adaptable firms fall by the wayside and smaller business clients struggle to afford an increasingly expensive set of services. The small business situation will cause its own short-term stirrings in the industry as the standards of SEO services start to imitate other vertical markets.

For businesses currently relying on SEO services as a primary traffic driver, the warnings have gone out long before this one but…  Adapt now. Your advertising dollars are already moving away from the mainstream media (newspaper, TV, flyers, etc…) and towards the digital media. That trend will make digital media the number one advertising venue by 2011 according to the influential VSS Communications Industry Forecast, issued earlier this week. While hardly advising immediate abandonment of the mainstream media, I strongly advice a hard look at how next year’s marketing budget is going to be used. You’ll likely get a lot more mileage from the viral power of a 3-minute YouTube video than you would from a month of localized 30-second spots. At the same time, you might want to take a very close look at what others are saying about you or your business online. If you find that nobody is talking about you or your business, or that they are talking trash, you might want to do something about it.

The bottom (and hopefully last) line is simple. A new generation of highly wired consumers is looking at monitors more than they are print or television. The weight of their bulk is fundamentally changing how they and other consumers use the Internet. Though it is and likely always be about search, it’s not necessarily about search engines. Like I said to start, a shake-up is coming in the industry and like most shifts it is going to produce interesting results.

Author:  Jim Hedger is Executive Editor of SiteProNews.com. He is also a consulting SEO and writer for Metamend Search Engine Marketing and Enquisite Search Analytics.