Posts Tagged ‘webmaster’
What is Web 2.0?
What is Web 2.0?
There has been a lot of chatter lately about Web 2.0, as if the Internet is a versioned software application.
So what is Web 2.0? Simply put, Web 2.0 is a perceived transition of the web to web applications. Web 2.0 is the next generation of technology solutions where interactive content is the norm. There is no agreement on exactly what Web 2.0 means, depending on who you are speaking with, you may receive different explanations. At it’s heart, Web 2.0 is about the maturity of the Web and businesses that are thriving online. While many refer to Web 2.0 as companies that employ powerful web technologies, the key components of the new web are said to include: the web as a platform, collaboration, and syndication.
The Evolution of the Internet
The commercial web began as static html pages, and has progressed to well established sites created from content management systems. Most large websites contain dynamic content that is constantly changing, often the information provided is interactive or user specific. Amazon’s recommended products is an excellent example of the future, where web surfers receive personalized content based on their past surfing habits.
Web 2.0 is said to be the technological evolution. O’Reilly indicates that the dot-com bubble burst signified the beginning of Web 2.0 and a new generation of technology applications. The shakeout from the dot-com collapse pre-empted the technological revolution of Web 2.0. The dot-com companies that had survived the collapse seemed to have a few things in common. The first primary principle that the Web 2.0 companies share is that they use the power of the web to collaborate and grow. O’Reilly further defines Web 2.0 as a set of core principles and practices, with the primary principle being a thought process that the web is a platform.
Web 2.0 companies are said to not be constrained by traditional business models and philosophies. The hidden web, which is a fancy way of saying the technology behind the content that the web surfer sees, is becoming more and more powerful. Scripting languages that allow webmasters to employ technology and interact with users based on personal decisions or responses has personalized the Internet. While O’Reilly clearly outlines elements and components of Web 2.0, I think the general meaning that Web 2.0 is synonymous with the new generation of the Web.
While the techie types “got it”, many casual web surfers have not grasped the fact that the Internet is not versioned software. Which in effect has meant that Web 2.0′s meaning is limited to the evolution of the Internet and online business. Whether that means personalized content and user choice, or dynamically generated content that is ranked by weighing the websites popularity, the Internet is growing up.
Web 2.0 Companies for 2005 – web2.wsj2.com/the_best_web_20_software_of_2005.htm
More on Web 2.0 – .oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html
Permissions:
Permissions and notification of use not required.
The Value of Web Directories
Web Directories Explained
By S. Housley
Web directories are an important component to search engine positioning. Directories come in all shapes and sizes, some are generic, while others are highly specialized. Directories, are defined as categorized topics or collections of information organized into a tree like structure where categories are used to define each groups association.
Large directories like Yahoo tend to have general themes and may charge for listings. While smaller niche directories like .finance-investing.com offer free listings and profit from advertising revenue or pay per click models like Google AdSense.
Being listed in a directory not only brings in targeted traffic, it provides a one-way link from a website with similar content. Directories are generally highly ranked in search engines, and are considered well respected resources, two traits that are desirable in link partners.
While smaller directories that focus on a specific niche might generate less traffic, the quality of the traffic from a niche site is usually highly targeted and will be superior to that generated from general search engines.
If you are selling fire alarms, traffic from yahoo will be less qualified than traffic from Alarm Tools, .alarm-tools.net . Most visitors to Alarm Tools will have a genuine interest in alarms and alerting systems. The nature of highly specialized directories result in visitors who have a serious interest in the directories theme, or a at the very least an interest in a theme related to the directory.
As a result, web publishers need to make a conscience effort not to ignore the value of directory listings. Regardless of their size, a related niche directory listing can be extremely valuable.
Many directories offer sponsorship opportunities. Vendors can optionally purchase sponsorship to increased their exposure with a bold listing or top category listings.
Determining a Directories Value
It is difficult to assess the value of directory listing, as there is an obvious advantage to a listing of a closely related theme directory that is difficult to measure and quantify. In general, webmasters can use common web guidelines to determine the popularity of a directory and assess the directory link’s value.
To assess the value of a web directory, consider the PageRank of the webpage where the link placement of your site will occur. The PageRank is indicative of how important Google may find a specific page. Another reliable third party measuring tool is Alexa. The Alexa ranking provides insight into how popular a website is. In general, a link from a web page containing a PageRank of 5 or higher is considered very good. A link from a site in Alexa’s top 100,000 is also generally very desirable.
Compare the following two directories’ Monitoring Tools .monitoring-tools.net and RSS Specifications .rss-specifications.com . Monitoring Tools’ main page has a PageRank of 5 but most internal pages that contain links have low page ranks and the overall Alexa ranking of the site is over 650,000. While RSS Specification’s claims a main Google PageRank of 6 and subpages all contain a minimum of a 5 for PageRank, the overall site is ranked 32,000. Clearly if you are in the syndication business, RSS Specification’s would be a very desirable link partner, while you would have to weigh the cost benefit and position of a link from Monitoring Tools.
To determine a sites PageRank without downloading the Google Toolbar, use the following online tool from RustyBrick .rustybrick.com/pagerank-prediction.php . A website’s Alexa ranking can be found by entering the URL into Alexa .alexa.com .
It is recommended that PageRank and Alexa ranking be only used as a guide when determining a directories reputation. It is important not to get too caught up in either Google PageRank or Alexa Ranking as webmasters can use “tricks” to artificially inflate their numbers.
The bottom line, links from directories that are small but niche, can provide quality web traffic.
Permissions:
Permissions and notification of use not required.
Successful Tips for Online Sales
Selling is the number one skill you MUST learn if you are going to be in business whether online or offline. If you do not know how to sell, you and your business will struggle financially and success will take much longer to realise.
This truth is very simple and hard to deny: if you do not know how to sell or HATE selling, you cannot make money. Period.
On the other hand, the Internet marketplace is jam-packed with plenty of fantastic opportunities and wonderful products. I you want to learn how to sell chances are that you have:
A great idea that you think you can make money from,
A product that solves a specific problem, and/or
An income opportunity to provide to people online.
But the fact is this: if you do not know how to sell, you cannot turn your idea or product into a money-producing asset, no matter how great or high in quality they actually are.
What You Need
You have probably already got a great idea or a product, now you will need to have the following in order to churn out a sales letter that kills:
1. Good writing skills.
Since you will probably write your own sales copy, you will need to have good writing skills and a good command of English, at least. There are plenty of online copywriting courses and membership sites where you can learn from more experienced writers.
2. Personality.
Yes, you must need personality. You will be writing somewhat a personal letter from you to your prospects so be friendly and approachable in your letter. Don’t write a stiff letter, because not only is it boring to read, you turn people away from your web page faster than Speedy Gonzalez!
Mix your writing skills with personality, and you will make most of a perfect sales letter that kills!
And last but not least, you need…
3. To take action!
There is wealth of information on how you can write your own successful sales copy staring at you online &ndash don’t waste them by not doing anything with the information! The next step after developing your sales copy skills will be to setup a web page to sell your products online. The WebmasterFX.com website provides a range of internet marketing tools to help you build a successful sales pulling, profit producing website.
Finally, go and read point number 3 again…
Take Action! Take that great idea that you think you can make money from and start learning to write successful sales copy today!
Pushing Traffic From Content Sites To Sales Sites
One of the most effective methods of getting traffic to a sales page is very well-known within Adsense circles (used to send traffic to Adwords advertisers through the Adsense program), but not as well known for traffic generation directly to sales letters.
That method is the content site. There are literally thousands of people making a living online by simply creating content sites, placing Google Adsense code on those content sites and collecting a check from Google every month.
There are literally thousands of others who have sales pages selling products and services who have never created a content site and pay for their traffic through the Google Adwords program. Much of that traffic is coming from those who are creating the content sites and placing Google Adsense code on their pages.
Isn’t that interesting? If you have a sales page selling a product or service; how much could you save by cutting Google out of the loop? A lot! If you have been creating content sites and depending on Google for a paycheck, how much more could you earn if you sent that traffic to a site selling an information product of your own? A lot!
There is even more money to be gained with this strategy then you might first imagine. At first, you might be tempted to think that the only money being left on the table is the money going to Google for providing the Adwords and Adsense programs. Nothing could be further from the truth. If that was the only money involved, then the percentages that Google keeps are very small… their service is well worth that price.
But it’s not! That money is only the start. Let’s consider the following facts to see that we can actually earn a multiple of whatever you are currently earning from your Adsense check or from your product site if you cut Google out of the loop.
1. The Adsense algorithm isn’t perfect. It often shows ads that aren’t very relevant. If you cut Google out of the loop, you can make your content site to sales page site traffic 100% relevant 100% of the time.
2. Adsense publishers often only get 0.5%-15% click through rates on any Adsense ad due to a number of factors. The method I will show you in this article will deliver 25% of the hotest buyers from your content site to your traffic site continually.
3. Adsense is currently a negative ranking factor on all three major search engines (see RankingFactors.com for more information on that). That means that by running Adsense on your content sites, they are slowly losing search engine traffic month after month. By removing the Adsense and sending that traffic directly to a product site, you will retain your search engine traffic.
4. Many have reported getting banned by the Google Adsense program. You came to the Internet to make money because you wanted more control and freedom over your life. By getting a large percentage of your income from a single company (Google), you are sabotaging your efforts. You are at the mercy of Google just like you were/are at the mercy of any employer.
5. If you are selling a product using Adwords traffic, you also are at the mercy of Google and bidding wars. You must continually improve your conversion ratio or the ongoing bidding wars will eventually eat up your profit. Google (or Overture or any other bid PPC system) is slowly allowing your competitors to either receive more traffic while you receive less… or causing you to pay them more and more of your profit every month as you are forced to raise your bids to continue to receive traffic.
Wouldn’tyou rather generate your own traffic and not be held hostage to bidding wars?
So we are agreed that you want to cut Google out of the loop whether you are a content site creator or the seller of a product or service; right? How?
Well, first of all you will nead to learn the skills of the other side. They aren’t difficult whichever side of the fence you are on. If you are a content site creator, you can pick up InfoProdCreation.com and have your own product 35 hours from now with 5 hours of work. If you are a seller of a product or service, you already have the skills to create content sites. Just write articles instead of sales pages and give information instead of trying to sell. Make it a multi-page site instead of a single page sales letter.
And I’m about to give you the secret to traffic delivery from a content site to a traffic site. It’s very simple. Create a home page with only the following elements:
1. A very short 2 paragraph, 3-5 sentence description o your product or service (no selling here).
2. A large (size 6) link that says either “Enter Site” or “Enter Here”. This link leads to your product site.
3. Three smaller links (size 2) on a single line below the above link that lead to the rest of your content site. They can say “Widget Articles”, “Widget Reviews”, “Widget Forum” or whatever types of content you have on your content site… about widgets in this case.
You will find that about 50% of the traffic on a content site eventually ends up at the home page. You will find that about 50% of those that end up at the home page will choose to click the “Enter Site” or “Enter Here” link. You will find that those 25% of the content site visitors (50% of 50%) will be fairly pre-qualified to read your offer. In many, many split tests, this traffic has out-performed Google Adwords traffic.
Have fun and please leave a comment and let me know how much more money you are making with this strategy. I would love to hear from you.
More Than Traffic, You Only Pay On Relults After MTT Makes You $100,000 in 4 months Guaranteed!
All web sites are different. MTTs unique software is modified on the fly to suit each web sites products and services to guarantee that thousands of sales are generated. A huge surge of ready to buy targeted search engine traffic is Guaranteed.
It’s FREE to join MTT as an affiliate, clients are queuing to savor the unique pay on results payment model. MTT’s pay on results plane is revolutionizing the way people and businesses make money on the Web. You do nothing, just give them the URLs to your web site, you never have to touch MTT’s software.
Your web site will be deluged by ultra-targeted ready to buy search engine traffic. You site will jump to the top of all the best search engines’ results for the keywords and content the software will feed them including Google. You will sell more and earn far greater profits but only pay service fees subject to the MTT income and performance guarantee ONLY when they generate you $100,000.
If you do not earn $100,000 net profit within 4 months, MTT will give you the remainder of their service for FREE- no charges plus you get to keep what you earn. You can set up as many of your web sites or affiliate programs as you want. This is true Set-It-And-Forget-It technology. Join our FREE affiliate program and try the service before the introductory offer expires.
See You At The Top!
C L Eldridge
Basic Internet Marketing 101
To have a successful Internet business, you need only three things:
1. Product
2. Copywriting
3. Traffic
It really is that simple. If you have those three things… competently performed, you will have a succesful, profitable Internet business. Let’s talk about competency in each of those three areas and how you can quickly master each one.
Product
You need a product that people want. Don’t fall in love with a product just because you think it’s cool. I’ll go into details in a future article, but I look at two things to determine if a product is wanted enough for me to sell it:
1. Are there people searching for that product (I use the Overture tool)
2. Are fellow marketers willing to pay a significant amount of money for traffic for that search term because people are buying (I also use the Overture tool).
I multiply those two numbers. If the result is higher than the result for the product “air guns”, I’m willing to get into that market. Why “air guns”? It was simply my first profitable product. Can products that score lower than “air guns” be profitable? I’m sure they can, but there are enough markets that score higher than “air guns”, I’m not willing to chance it.
BTW, don’t get too hung up on the product. It is the least important of the three items. Copywriting and traffic are infinitely more important to your business. Don’t spend two years developing a product. There are already thousands of products available on the Internet that you can market and earn a percentage as an affiliate. Choosing your product should take no longer than a half an hour, not two years. You can run the numbers for 6-10 product ideas in less than half an hour and make your decision. Then start concentrating on what really matters… which is…
Copywriting
Now you need to describe your product. You will do this in many ways. You will create a sales page on a web-site that will describe the product and try to sell it. You will write small text ads to run on PPC search engines. You will write similar one and two line descriptions to enter into affiliate networks. You will write articles and resource boxes for those articles. You may even write a signature line for use on forums.
The point is that copywriting is what conveys the message about your product. It is simply some words. You can sometimes uses pictures and videos, but it is generally the words that actually do the selling. Don’t forget that you are in the business of words.
How do you decide what words to use? You have three choices if you are a beginner:
1. Hire a high priced copywriter. Generally you will want to pay $5,000-$10,000 per sales page for a decent copywriter. Drop me a note if you want referrals. I know two of the best.
2. Use copywriting software that scores words. I recommend Glyphius which you can read more about at Glyphius.com. It scores your prospective ad copy against a massive database of profitable ads. You can simply make up some copy and click the score button. Then change it and click the score button again. Pick the highest scoring text after you have worked with it for awhile. You’ll have copy that the pros will envy and more importantly… copy that will convert that traffic into customers.
3. Fail for a long time while you are learning. Don’t laugh. Most Internet marketers choose this path. If you are persisent enough, you will learn what works and what doesn’t.
Traffic
Once you have copy that sells, you need to get people to see it. We call that “traffic” on the Internet.
There are dozens of ways to get traffic on the Internet. Let me focus on two ways that I recommend to beginners because both are free (well; there is a small one-time cost to get started, but you don’t pay for each visitor like some other sources).
1. Search Engine Optimization – get free traffic from the search engines by being ranked high for the search terms associated with your product.
2. Article Submission – get recognition and links to your site by writing and submitting articles.
Let’s talk about Search Engine Optimization first. First of all, DO NOT waste weeks and months of your life listening to the lemmings on the SEO forums. In my experience, they are just the blind leading the blind. There are three factors to search engine optimization you should focus on:
a) Your domain and URLs
b) On page optimization
c) Links to your site
For the first, I recommend you choose your domain and URL structure using Nemeas. You can read about it at Nemeas.com. It is very simple to use and is also based on a massive statistical analysis of the leading search engine. You simply score prospective domains and URLs and select the highest scoring one.
I don’t recommend any on page optimization unless you are creating free content sites to feed traffic to your sales page. Instead, optimize your sales page for selling with Glyphius and don’t worry about the on page search engine factors.
For getting inbound links to your site, I recommend article submission. I recommend that you use Artemis Pro. You can read more about it at ArtemisPro.com. It gives you a boost above any other currently available article submission tool because it submits a unique article to each publisher. That boost can amount to an 1875% increase in effectiveness given the same amount of time invested.
At the end of each article, you should have a resource box with a link back to the site with your sales page. That resource box should be optimized with Glyphius.
That’s it. Running a successful, profitable Internet business is really just that simple. It’s just choosing the right product, choosing the right words for your copywriting and choosing the best way to get traffic to your sales page.
Please visit my blog often at .JamesBrausch.com for further lessons on the simplicity of Internet marketing. I’ll post regular lessons there. Every entry on my blog is categorized into three topic areas: Product, Copywriting and Traffic. Just choose one of the topics to find out more information about that area of running a successful Internet business.
Here’s to your success!