Friday, December 30, 2011

Free Link Exchange

Back when I first started blogging almost six years ago, one of the tips I read about to get visitors was to use link building sites to get backlinks to your site. More backlinks is supposed to help give your site a higher page rank in the search engines. There are a lot of free link exchange sites out there. One free links site I tried out would let you put in requests to have someone link to your site if you would put a link on your site linking to them. I got a lot of requests not relevant to the topic of my site though, so they weren't very helpful backlnks.
Freelinkbuildingtools.com is another site designed to help you build links to your site. They offer a webmasters forum where you can connect with other webmasters and exchange links. A link exchange manager lets you upload a customizable resources page that other webmasters can use to quickly submit their information and follow your linking instructions to trade links. A free link exchange service lets you choose links from a list of relevant sites to trade with. You place code on your site and every time someone links to you, you get points to use for getting links from other sites of your choosing.
Freelinkbuildingtools.com can also refer you to someone who can do all the hard work of getting back links for your site.
Freelinkbuildingtools.com offers a database of articles designed to help you improve your site. Several useful articles include Link Building Etiquette, Generating Valuable Back Links with Blogs, and Using Quality Content to Build Backlinks.
The best part of Freelinkbuildingtools.com is, it is all free. You just have to register to gain access to free information, which just might help improve your site.

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Fantasy football

This guest post from Lewis Beck

I am a fantasy football widow. I cannot even believe that I am living this life. My husband has always been a person who cannot drag himself away from a football game. But now he has joined this fantasy football league and has become totally obsessed with what seems like every football game imaginable each weekend on television. And when he cannot find out a score of a game on television, he gets online on West Jordan wireless internet and finds out everything he wants to know about any game. To say that he has gone insane is putting it mildly. I don’t even like football, and now it affects our everyday lives. My husband’s brother who lives in Texas calls him every Saturday and Sunday to discuss their fantasy football teams. Before football season started, they would talk to each other about once or twice a month. At least they have unlimited minutes on their cell phones. I guess it could be worse. My husband could be interested in hunting and dragging home a deer or something dead every weekend expecting me to clean it or something.

Thursday, December 01, 2011

Online Marketing DiscountClick

Now that times are tough, I'm really glad I have my websites to generate a little bit of extra income. It would be great if they would generate a full time income, but I don't put enough time into them for that. I really like my day job though, but an extra full time income would be nice.
My blogs have all been around for a few years now, and I still post on all of them. That helps with building their credibility.
The main thing I need to focus on is online marketing, meaning ways to get visitors. Getting top ranking in the search engines is very important. That brings in the majority of my visitors. When writing a blog post, it is really important to choose your keywords wisely. It makes a big difference. I usually use Google's keywords tool, to look at the competition and number of monthly searches for a keyword before I settle on the one I will use. Google's keywords tool also gives suggestions on other keywords, so you might find one that is searched for frequently, but has low competition.
There is really a lot to learn in the online marketing field. There are lots of tips and tricks that the professionals use.
If you don't have the time or interest in promoting your website yourself, you could always hire a third party to do it for you. DiscountClick is one company that can help promote your website. They have several different online marketing services available starting at $50. Free quotes are also available. In the long run, that is a pretty affordable search engine optimization service. Hiring a professional to promote your website will guarantee you more visitors, which means increased revenue.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Custom Pins PinMart

We are five and a half weeks away from Christmas already. It seems like Christmas was just here. I hate shopping. It's an expensive time of year due to Christmas and several birthdays. Sometimes I have a hard time coming up with ideas for what someone might like.
One new idea is custom pins. There is a website called PinMart that offers stock lapel pins and custom pins. Some of them are really cool, especially the 3D cast pins. They are made of pewter or zinc and offer a very high level of detail. Animals work great for 3D pins. A rubber mold is used to create 3D pins while 2D die struck pins are made by stamping metal with a die. 3D custom pins have more dimension and detail than 2D pins.
Other custom pin options include Cloissonne hard enamel with a smooth glassy finish, etched soft enamel pins, made in the USA pins, and printed pins. If you have a photo you would like to turn into a pin, printed pins are a great option. It takes about 15 days to create a custom printed pin.
PinMart also sells custom lanyards. Lanyard options include printed polyester, printed tube, quick ship, woven logo, full color and stock lanyards. Full color lanyards allow for an image or design to be repeatedly printed over the lanyard in full color.
Custom rubber bracelets are also available. They are a great idea if you have a cause you would like to show support for or use as a fundraiser. Production time is 10 - 12 days and options include glow in the dark silicone, screen printed, debossed, enbossed or color filled logo, and multi color silicone.
Custom embroidered patches are also offered by PinMart. They are a great idea if you have a new patch idea for Boy Scouts. Several different patch backing options are available. They include iron on, velcro, temporary peel and stick, or no backing. A virtual sample is created from your artwork. When you are satisfied with the sample, the design is digitized, so that sewing heads have a pattern to follow. Color for the backing is selected and backing attached to the sewing heads. The design is then stitched on. When the design is completed, the patch is trimmed and the backing of your choice is attached.
Free quotes are available for all custom items. Shipping is also free.

Monday, November 07, 2011

Internet marketing in the Middle East

Internet marketing in the Middle East is on the rise. Between 2009 and 2010, Twitter users in the Middle East were estimated to be from 15,000 to 40,000. However, that number was way off. The number of Twitter users in the Middle East is actually around 5.5 million.
The number of Facebook users in the Middle East is around 15 million.
It's amazing how internet use has just exploded in countries which aren't even fully developed. The internet provides a great way for people to connect with each other, no matter where they are physically located. The internet is also a great way to attract customers to a business. I have a magazine back issues website and several blogs. I use social media to advertise them. Selling old magazines without the internet would be pretty difficult. I could advertise in local papers, on the radio and television, but it's a small niche and probably not very profitable locally. Thanks to technology and the internet, I created a website, promoted it, and now have customers all over the world purchasing magazines from me. I will ship outside the United States, so every one in the world is a potential customer.
Internet marketing takes a lot of skill, time to learn and time to keep updated on the latest techniques. It's a field which is always changing. Those skilled at internet marketing in the Middle East need to learn search engine optimization in order to be found in search engine results. Learning about keywords and finding the proper analysis tools is important. Website design and development knowledge is needed in order to have a visually attractive website. Email marketing, social media, smartphone app creation and adword campaigns are also crucial to the success of a website.
Internet marketing in the Middle East provides a great opportunity for financial success. A successful website has the potential to turn into a full-time work at home job. Areas of the Middle East are poor, so the idea of success and earning a lot of money is a draw to those hoping to do better than those before them. Over the years, I've earned money from the internet. I don't have hours and hours a day to devote to it though, so I've only made a supplemental income. The internet provides these bright, young kids in the Middle East who own a computer and have lots of spare time, an opportunity for success normally only dreamed about. It will be interesting to see what happens in the Middle East as new generations raised on technology grow up. Hopefully they will use the internet and technology for good purposes.

Friday, October 28, 2011

Butterfinger pie is my favorite post-Halloween dessert!

Guest post written by Annie Krisp

I love how just about anything can be baked into a pie and it's delicious. I don't think that it's hard to believe that, so of course Halloween candy is another great option to put into pies to make them even better. As soon as they start putting it out in stores, I like to make sure that I grab a few bags of candy here or there so that I'll have enough candy to include in all of my baking and not just to give out to trick or treaters.

I mean, I guess that you could just buy a whole lot of bags of candy at a time to make sure that you have enough, but I'm not really in the habit of doing that. I'm continually finding new recipes for desserts with candy online with my wireless internet providers Corvallis that I discover I don't have the proper candy to prepare. So I guess that's my excuse in regards to that.

But my favorite dessert may be my butterfinger pie because it's my favorite candy bar.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Test

The dissimilar leisure sabotages another antique underneath the trapped crossroad.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Reputation Management Consorte Marketing

In this poor economy, many people are getting laid off and looking to themselves to find ways to generate an income. One way of doing this is to think about the things you know and enjoy, and find a way to make money doing it. Basically, turn a hobby into a business.
That's what I did with my magazine back issues website. I enjoy reading and subscribe to a few different magazines. I always hated throwing them away when I was done reading them. Magazine subscriptions are expensive. Reading a magazine once and throwing it away when I was done seemed like such a waste. Sometimes I saved them, but after a while you get a pretty big pile of old magazines. I never looked at them either. What I did was build a website and sell them. Luckily I work as a programmer, so I had the know how to do it. I just had to learn a little HTML, CSS and search engine optimization (SEO). Now I have a whole world of people that buy my magazines when I'm done reading them. Nice green way to recycle magazines and make a little extra money doing it. Not much, but it helps. The generated income from turning my hobby into a business should increase as my inventory increases too. I still have to store quite a few magazines, but now they have a purpose.
Starting your own little business is tough though. For a business to survive, it needs customers. You need to advertise your business, so that people will find you. You also need to strive to make sure you and your business have a good reputation. Nobody is going to buy a product from a company with bad reviews. In this day and age of the internet, Twitter and Facebook it's not hard to find reviews on a company or information on the person/people running a company. If you have bad reviews or negative information floating around about you in cyberspace, you could lose customers.
There is a reputation management company that might be able to help. Consorte Marketing will research you and your business's online reputation. They will give you a report of all the information out there about you and where it is located. They will also give you a strategy for repairing your reputation. Some of the information out there is permanent, but some can be removed. They might be able to help persuade an unsatisfied customer to change a bad review to positive, or come up with a way to push a negative article from page 1 on Google to lower level pages.
If you run a business and are worried about negative information surfacing, Consorte Marketing would be worth a look. Consorte Marketing's reputation management tweets can be followed on Twitter.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Blogsvertise 10 Paid Blogging Tips Make Money

I've mentioned Blogsvertise before, but feel the need to mention it again. I've been getting quite a few tasks the past 6 months, about 4 - 5 per month. If you've never tried paid blogging, that doesn't sound like a lot though. Paid blogging is easy, but it's hard to get tasks. Signing up at a paid blogging site doesn't mean you are suddenly going to make tons of money blogging. You have to have a good, established blog with regular, recent posts. I have 6 blogs, 1 which I have totally neglected and will get to someday. The 5 I do keep up with, I try to post on each one at least once per week. Sometimes it's more like once every couple months, but they are blogs I've had for a while. This blog was started 5 years ago. The most recent blog, my healthy living naturally blog, was started over a year ago. Life and work make it hard to fit in blogging, but if you start a blog and make an effort to keep it active, over time, it will pay off.
My soap opera blog is my best performer. That one and my recipes blog are the ones I have the easiest time figuring out what to write. I also really enjoy soap operas for some unknown reason.
My tech-tips blog also does well. I have one post that get almost 1000 hits per month. It was a useful tip that helped me out and has been helping out lots of others.

A few tips if you want to blog and/or make money blogging:

1. Post regularly - content is key
2. Write about something you enjoy, even if you think no one would be interested. Someone out there somewhere probably also enjoys it.
3. "How to posts" are a good bet.
4. Get post ideas from magazines, what's trending on Twitter or Google searches, your daily life, etc.
5. Sign up with Blogsvertise and whatever paid blogging service you can find. Although, I've joined all of the paid blogging sites I have found and Blogsvertise is the only one still giving me tasks. Smorty gave me quite a few when I first joined, but that was years ago. They don't really seem to be active anymore.
6. Add Google Adsense to your blog.
7. Sign up with Amazon.com's affiliate program
, LinkShare and CommissionJunction. I haven't had much luck with LinkShare.com or CommissionJunction, but I haven't put much effort into it either. I have had a few small payments from Amazon. There is also ClickBank, but I haven't done anything with them in a few years after they had a change of terms.
8. List your blog with with all of the major search engines, minor ones if you want to.
9. After you write a post, advertise it. Link to the post from your Twitter/Facebook/Google+ account. Use pingomatic, digg, delicious, etc.
10. Use the Google Keywords Tool to find keywords with low competition, but a lot of monthly searches.
BONUS. Be patient.

Making money from a blog takes a lot of time. I wish I had been more diligent about posting more frequently, but I am glad I have been able to post as much as I have over the years. The more I post, the more I see my effort paying off, so maybe by the time I am ready to retire I will be generating a full time income. That's my plan anyways. Although the way things are going this past year, I think I'm going to have to step that plan up.


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Friday, September 02, 2011

Toaster oven, a college studen't best friend

Guest post written by Pam Long

I've decided that I don't want to ever get a meal plan again. I just hate the dining hall food. I got so sick of it last year, especially after I started eating off campus before and had some normal food again. So this year, I'm not getting a meal plan for college. Instead, I invested in a toaster oven because you can basically make almost anything that's a simple dish that you would make in an oven. Well, at least that's my theory so I'm trying to prove it with all kinds of really great recipes.

I like to look through a whole bunch of recipe blogs to come up with all kinds of dishes to try out in my toaster oven. While I was online looking up some of these recipes, I ran across a site about satellite internet packages. After I looked through I sent it to my mom and told her to Click Here to switch over her home internet service to it.

I've made all kinds of really great sandwiches, but I'm even more excited about making all kinds of dishes.

Friday, July 29, 2011

Laptops

Back in the spring of 2004, when I was pregnant with my youngest son, I bought my first laptop. It was a good thing I did because a few months later I ended up on bedrest. The laptop came in very handy. It was a Dell Inspiron E1405. A nice little portable laptop with a 14.5" screen. It came pre-installed with Windows Vista, not the greatest operating system. Applications tend to crash and it runs out of memory frequently, so a regular reboot is necessary. I didn't plan on buying another laptop for a long time, but about 6 months ago, I didn't have much choice. The screen on my laptop started not staying up. It was a gradual process. At first, it would stay up if it was in a certain position and then over time it wouldn't stay up at all. I had to prop the screen up to use it. That was ok, but I got tired of not being able to sit on the couch with it, so I sucked it up and bought a new laptop.
Laptops have really come a long way in the few short years since I last bought one. They have tons of hard drive space, lots of memory and fast processors. They are really on par with desktops. I'm pretty sure I'll never buy another desktop. I have my old laptop sitting on my desk with the screen propped up serving as a secondary desktop. It's working out pretty well.
There's a lot of different laptop brands out there. It's hard to choose from all the options. Various brands include dell, gateway, sony, hp, samsung, acer, and asus laptops. I ended up going with an HP for my new laptop. I've had it about 4 months. It's really nice, very slick. The operating system is Windows 7, which is a major improvement over Windows Vista. Needing to reboot is a rare occasion and makes me very happy as I tend to have a lot of stuff open at once and find it a pain to reboot and reload everything.
Mechanically, the screen hinging seems put together much better than my old dell. The only part that took a little getting used to was the mousepad. It is all touch, no buttons. The keyboard is really nice. The keys are kind of set down into the computer more than on my dell.
I really hope my new HP holds up better than my old Dell did.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

A Trip to Aruba

Guest post written by Linda Creighton

My husband and I spend the evening looking for places to help us remodel the house when it gets a little warmer. We've been looking for painters and looked at service from www.HomeProImprovement.com. We have been talking about all the changes we want to go through with on this old house. I think it is waaaaay overdue. After talking about the house for a while, I suggested to my husband that we finally take a vacation. We both have all this vacation time and money saved up, and it's about time that we do something for fun instead of juts worrying about necessities!

Ever since I mentioned that idea to my husband, he's really been on board..maybe even moreso than I am. We've been looking at a whole bunch of places and I think we want to visit Aruba most of all. We've been to many places, but Aruba hasn't been one of them. I think would be a great getaway, right?

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Regis and Kelly

Guest post by Jewel Cole

Regis and Kelly Live is my favorite talk show. They are great together and always have awesome guests. Recently they had Josh Groban on. He is such a amazing singer.

Regis is so funny. He somehow tends to keep set on edge throughout the whole show. My mom loves him too. We even went to see him when he was in Pigeon Forge, TN, for the grand opening of the Titanic Museum. He was just as funny in person. His jokes were fresh and relevant to the town we were in.

Kelly's stories of her children are always so funny. She seems to have a great life. It is like she understands how complicated being a mom can be. She is a beautiful woman who inspires me to do better for myself.

Even on days when she is hosting the show without Regis, she can hold ! it together. I like the way she interacts with the audience and callers on the phone.

I can't wait to watch Regis and Kelly everyday on my satellite tv from CableTelevision.net. It is the highlight of my day. It is my Me Time. I will be looking for it tomorrow as soon as I get up.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Topamax lawsuit O’Hanlon McCollom Demerath Lawyers

Giving kids any kind of medication these days is scary. Medication is full of toxic chemicals and may cause all sorts of side effects.
One such drug called Topamax is used to treat epileptic seizures in kids and adults. It is an anti-convulsant. It is also used to treat migraines. One side effect is cleft lip or cleft palate. This is a condition where the lip or palate fail to completely fuse together. It is a birth defect. The defect can range from minor, where there is a small, notched lip to major, where there is an open groove that extends from the roof of the mouth to the nose.
Luckily there are lawyers out there who can help you get compensation for damages caused by taking bad medications, like that in a Topamax lawsuit. One group of lawyers who could help are:

O’Hanlon, McCollom & Demerath – Personal Injury Lawyers – 808 West Avenue, Austin, TX. 78701 – 512-494-9949

They understand the dangerous effects of Topamax and that the defect is not your fault. Their combined experience, expertise and training make them well qualified to handle complex liability claims, so that you can get the compensation you deserve.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

MyLikes.com Payment Paid to Tweet

Received my first payment from MyLikes.com. Pretty cool. Wasn't much, but with time it will add up. Payouts are made on Fridays to your PayPal account. Payments are made when you have an account balance of $2.00.
The idea of MyLikes.com is you are given a list of items to "like" on Twitter and/or Facebook. When someone clicks on the link in your "liked" item status update, you get paid. The most I've made for 1 "like" is only 22 cents, but this figure will increase as you gain more followers. It's a pretty easy way to get paid using Twitter.
See my earlier post for more details on MyLikes.com.
BTW, you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ice_princess_81.


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Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Bloggers: Help Save MyBlogLog From Closure

Back when I first started this blog, I looked into finding various ways to get traffic. One way is to join forums and become part of a group. One of the popular sites at the time was MyBlogLog. I joined and found it to be pretty cool and useful.
The part I liked the best about it was you could view your site stats. It told you what link readers came from, what pages they viewed and what links they clicked on. The free version only gave you the top 10 for each list. You had to upgrade to see the full list. The free version told me more about site visitors than any other stat site I found though.
BTW, if you can recommend a good stat site, which gives you all of that information in a clear, simple list, please let me know.
Lots of people I met when I used to autosurf were also on MyBlogLog. There were lots of active users on there. Found some pretty useful blogs at MyBlogLog.
Not really sure why I stopped using MyBlogLog. Probably lack of time, but I stopped around the time Yahoo took over just because it was a pain logging in. I couldn't just stay logged in and always go to my homepage when I typed in http://www.mybloglog.com. I would always get logged out automatically and then get redirected to sign in with my Yahoo account. Just an extra step that was annoying.
Unfortunately, Yahoo didn't do much with MyBlogLog once it became owner, and they have now decided to completely shut it down on May 24, 2011. Pretty sad because all of the bloggers and their info are still there. You can still get the great stat info on your sites. It's all still the same as when I first joined. It's a great site for bloggers to connect.
Luckily, BlogCatalog also feels that MyBlogLog is a great site with lots of untapped potential because they want to buy it and resurrect MyBlogLog. Unfortunately, Yahoo isn't really interested in selling. They just want to shut it down. As an email from BlogCatalog points out, Yahoo should just sell it to BlogCatalog and donate the money to those in need. Great idea! Japan would be a great place to start.
BlogCatalog and BloggersUnite.org have joined forces to save MyBlogLog and are asking bloggers to write a post explaining to Yahoo that selling MyBlogLog is a much better idea than just shutting it down.
Here's the link if you are interested in helping save MyBlogLog.

BloggersUnite + MyBlogLog + BlogCatalog is "The Right Thing."


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