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Welcome the the ninth edition of Carnival of Webmasters. There were again over fifty submission to go through. As usual, I’m listing only the best or most relevant ones here. If anyone is interested in hosting the next edition, please contact me either through the comments, or my contact page. Please also submit your new posts to the next edition, which will be posted again in two weeks.
10 Ways Article Writing Can Stack the Deck for Your Favor - Kenton Newby
I was talking with a email coaching client about some ways to shortcut the challenges of article writing. And then it occurred to me that I hadn’t really laid out the benefits of article writing. There was no “so what” to it. Anyway, I thought it might be a good idea to take a look at why this is still one of the most beneficial, powerful and profitable ways to market your business online.
4 Steps to Creating Quality Content - HL Grove
The more quality content you have on your blog, the more keywords you should rank for on Google and other search engines which could mean thousands of visitors you never even have to work for. Quality content also means return visits which could mean repeat business for you. In order to get your visitors to truly high numbers you need to follow a few simple steps when creating content for your blog:
Getting Indexed in a Matter of Hours - Marcus Hochstadt
I regularly see folks putting up Web sites but don’t know how to get the pages indexed by the Search Engines. Some think the SEs will somehow magically find all of them somewhere someday. I haven’t come across that magic yet. Still, there are several methods available for getting your pages indexed in a matter of hours.
More Content = More Sales - Ed Rivis
Your prospects are screaming for information. I’ve spoken a lot about increasing online sales using techniques split-testing, conversion rate analysis, optimising sites and so on. It’s true, there are tonnes of amazing software applications, tools, gadgets and gizmos that can boost the results you get. But all of them require one key ingredient, without which they’re all useless. Content.
The Make Money Online DNA - Matt OConnor
You can get so into making money on the net - all the techniques, systems, formulas, books, tools and memberships that you forget what you’re actually supposed to be doing. Sometimes, you need to bring it right down to the basics and start again, refreshed and more effective than before.
You can submit your new articles to the next edition of Carnival of Webmasters using this form. If you’d like to host a future edition on your blog, please let me know using my contact form, or by leaving a comment here.
Images, as well as video content, are a very good way to make your website more lively and emphasize important points about an article. They also do well in social media, where a single successful image can bring hundreds to your site.
The difficult part about using images is that creating them requires a lot of work. You either need to go around taking photos of the topics in question, or have pretty good drawing skills. Therefore many choose to do it the easy way and use someone else’s images.
You don’t need to steal either, since the web is filled with free images, if you know where to look for them. Here is a list of sites with free images that you can use on your website. Some of them have public domain images, while others use a Creative Commons license. Always make sure you comply with the license restrictions.
- WikiMedia Commons - Over 2 million media files, most under CC licenses or dual licensed.
- Flickr - user photos shared under various conditions - many use a Creative Commons license.
- WP Clipart - Around 20,000 public domain clipart images.
- PublicDomainPictures.net - The name says it all. These are free to use in any way.
- Free Photos for Commercial Use - Public domain photos.
- PD Photo - Thousands of public domain photos.
- GIMP Archive - Over 3GB of public domain images.
- Open Clip Art - Public domain clip art as vector graphics.
- PD Clipart - 25,000 clipart images in public domain.
- Creative Commons Search - Search for Creative Commons licensed content.
At least one of the above sites should meet your image needs. If all else fails, you can try Google Image Search and see the license agreement on the site. If one does not exist you can ask the owner, but never use an image without permission. There are too many images you can use for you to do that.
Microsoft announced it had proposed a per share price of $31 to Yahoo! board of directors. The offer is over 60% more than the price of Yahoo! shares before the announcement, and represents a total value of over $44 billion!
This may be big news to the search and online advertising markets dominated by Google. The total share of Yahoo! and MSN live of the search market is around half that of Google, so combined they could actually make a difference. I guess Microsoft now sees the full potential of online markets, as the estimated growth for online advertising is 100% during the next three years.
The Yahoo! share jumped up by 50% as a result, I wonder how Google will react. They recently reported annual earnings lower than expected, and their share price has fallen from last year.
Do you think this will have an effect on search market?
Source: CNN Money
Most web hosts sell domains, but the price and the control you get when registering your domains through a domain registrar are much better. Many web hosts either overprice their domains or sell them bundled with an overpriced hosting account. If you only need a single domain, the difference won’t be that great, but especially if you are into domaining you should go for the better options.
Different domain buyers have different needs, but I believe these three registrars can fulfill most of them. I personally have domains registered through each of them and I haven’t had any problems with support or any technical difficulties, so I can recommend them from personal experience.
One of the better known registrars, especially in Internet marketing circles, GoDaddy has very competitive pricing. Their current price is $9.99 for most domains, but $7.99 for transfers and a very low $2.99 for .info domains. The prices they list don’t include the 20 cent ICANN fee, so that will be added to final price.
If you use GoDaddy, remember to take advantage of the numerous coupon codes circulating around. For example the following should be valid as of January 2008: OYH3 - $3 off .coms, OYH2 - $5 off a purchase of $30+, OYH1 - 10% off anything. For more, simply search Google for [GoDaddy coupons].
The normal price for the most popular domains (.com, .net, .org, .biz) is currently $9.29 at Namecheap. Dot info domains are $5.88 which, while cheap, is significantly more than of the other two registrars. The features I most like about Namecheap are easy user interface (in that GoDaddy sucks) and free privacy (WhoisGuard) with new domains.
There are usually only a couple of discount codes valid at Namecheap at a given time. The current (January 2008) coupon code is WINTERFEVER. It gets $0.88 off normal priced domains. Again, try Google if it fails you.
This is the third registrar I regularly use, mostly for their excellent deal on .info (and .cn) domains - $2.99. That’s $0.20 less than the GoDaddy price (remember the ICANN fee). Their features are also very good - they have free email redirection, cash parking and for sale listings, just to name a few.
So Which to Use?
For those of you that aren’t too picky about privacy (I hate whois spam, and rather wouldn’t have my email publicly listed), I guess GoDaddy is the best choice. Othewise I would and do go with Namecheap. For .info domains the Dynadot offer is just too irresistible to pass by.
Welcome the the eighth edition of Carnival of Webmasters. Thank you for the plentiful submissions. As usual, I’m listing only the best or most relevant ones here. If anyone is interested in hosting the next edition, please contact me either through the comments, or my contact page. Please submit your new posts to the next edition, which will be posted again in two weeks.
10 Free, Fast and Easy HTML Tools - Troy
With all the fancy CSS, Javascript, and Flash on the web today, we sometimes forget that most websites are still built on good old HTML 4.0. If you’d like to design webpages that look nice and work well, you’ll be spending a lot of hands-on time working with the language. These online tools can help make that easier, without the need to ever download anything:
Dealing with Negative Comments - Tash Hughes
As soon as you put a blog online and open it up to comments, you face the risk of receiving negative comments on there. The only way to guarantee none of these is to not allow comments - or not have a blog! Remember to consider why you don’t like the comment and the potential impact the comment will have on your readers and your blog before you decide how to treat any negative comments.
How to Optimize a Homepage - Ed Rivis
I’ve been using a clever online service called CrazyEgg to optimize web pages, or more specifically, homepages, which are notoriously difficult to optimize simply because they usually have so many choices for visitors to take.
International Success with Languages - Cindy King
To reach 80% of today’s internet users you need to communicate in at least 10 languages. The long time standard choice of languages, French, Italian, German, and Spanish, just doesn’t do it anymore. In addition to a change more internet users in large foreign countries, the smaller developing countries can also represent a great market to target.
Top Ten Tips - Learning HTML Basics - Tip Diva
Many websites - blogs, social networking platforms and online communities, in particular - allow you to use Hyper Text Markup Language (or HTML, for short), to spiffy up your posts. Basic HTML allows you to change your font, add images, create links and more. Here are some of the most popular HTML tags used on those websites.
You can submit your new articles to the next edition of Carnival of Webmasters using this form. If you’d like to host a future edition on your blog, please let me know using my contact form, or by leaving a comment here.
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