How to Buy a Netbook

The first batch of netbooks to hit the scene was greeted with awe and surprise. Those tiny laptops, which were once sold at a premium, could be had for half the price of a typical system seemed incredible. Since then, netbooks have taken a backseat to tablets, as the Apple iPad and countless "me-toos" have caused a lull in their production. Furthermore, full size laptops, which used to cost twice as much as netbooks, are now competing in this price range. But that doesn't mean demand for netbooks have fizzled out completely. Sure, the stakes have risen, and netbooks manufacturers are now vying for a spot in a very tight space, which is why the latest crop of netbooks have evolved to include more features, bigger screens and keyboards, and faster parts—all while slashing prices like a Walmart special.

Even though new netbooks aren't launching at a torrid pace, like they were a year ago, the choices are still mind boggling. They're available from all sorts of household names, such as ASUS, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba, Dell, HP, and Lenovo. As a category, netbooks are such a diverse group that it's hard to come up with a single, all-encompassing definition. The best indicators that you're dealing with a netbook are a low price, light weight, and low-powered components. It's likely the system will have a screen on the smaller side and a basic feature set. Still, netbooks vary in screen size, typing experience, and specialty features. On the component side, AMD and Intel are silently going at it, though neither has launched any new chips in a while. Despite their current state, there are certainly enough netbooks that warrant further explanation. Luckily, this netbook buying guide does just that.

Larger Screens, Bigger Keyboards
It's generally easy enough to tell a netbook from other laptops, but to distinguish between systems, you'll need to do a little homework. In the past, screen sizes defaulted to 10-inches with 1,024-by-600 resolutions on almost every single netbook. These days, netbooks are breaking away from this trend. Oversized netbooks like the HP Pavilion dm1z and Lenovo ThinkPad X120e are sold with 11.6-inch widescreens, while the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 and the ASUS Eee PC 1215B are shipping with 12-inch ones. And their resolutions, as a result, are upped to HD-capable ones (1,366-by-768).
Once upon a time, full-sized keyboards were few and far between, but now they exist in netbooks as small as 10-inches. Case in point: The Toshiba NB305-N600 $379.95 at Journey Ed, Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3, and Acer Aspire One squeezed one in to their 10-inch frames. Since the vast majority of newer netbooks are launching with bigger screens (11-12-inches), a full size keyboard is guaranteed.

Usual Array of Features, Some Exceptions
Most netbooks provide an abundance of USB ports, Webcams, card readers, and built-in Wi-Fi. What they usually don't come with is an optical drive. Some, like the Lenovo Ideapad S10-3t and Dell Inspiron Mini Duo , are convertible tablets that have a touchscreen on a rotating hinge. Bluetooth is a frequently bundled feature in netbooks, while embedded 3G modems, which can use cellular signals to acquire broadband speeds, can be found in the HP Mini 5103 and Dell Inspiron Mini 10 .

Atom Platform, Mostly
It used to be that the Intel Atom platform, made up of the Atom processor, integrated graphics, and memory (usually 1GB), was the most widely used in a netbook. Now AMD, with its latest Fusion APUs, has become a big presence in this space. Not only are AMD APUs faster any given Atom processor, but they're as battery efficient and have better graphics capabilities. You're also more likely to find 3GB-4GB memory configuration in AMD netbooks than from Intel ones. The AMD E-350 APU, for instance, can be found in the Lenovo Ideapad , Acer Aspire One 722-BZ480, and HP dm1z.
Intel is already into its fourth generation of Atom processors, the most recent of which are the 1.6GHz Intel Atom N455 and the 1.83GHz Intel Atom N475. These are single-core processors that have been updated with DDR3 memory support. The dual-core version—the 1.5GHz Intel Atom N550—can already be found in a handful of netbooks, and improves performance by up to 20% over the single-core Atoms, without impacting battery life.

What to Consider
Standard netbook batteries start with 3-cell (less than 30Wh) units, but many netbooks are now standardizing on 6-cell batteries. Our battery tests have shown that the smaller batteries will get you anywhere from 2 to 3 hours of battery life on a single charge, while the bigger ones range between 7 to 10 hours. If your activities include trips abroad and all-day classes, consider looking for netbooks that ship with 6-cell options. You'll also find two hard drive choices: solid-state drives (SSDs) and spinning hard drives. The consensus is that spinning drives offer the best gigabyte-per-dollar ratio, and most of them start with at least 250GB of storage space. While SSDs have faster transfer speeds, are durable, and have longer life spans, they command much higher premiums than their spinning counterparts. In an extreme case, upgrading to a 128GB SSD in the HP 5103 will cost you an additional $400, more than the entire price of our review system.

What You Can Do With Them
Don't underestimate the capabilities of these machines. Netbooks are not just limited to Web surfing, compiling spreadsheets, or word processing. You can offload your photos from a digital camera and edit them using a program like Adobe Photoshop Elements 9. With lots of patience, you can transcode video to another format using Windows Media Encoder 11 or edit video footage using Adobe Premiere Elements 9, or run your entire music library off of a program like Apple iTunes. A netbook can play video from sites like YouTube or a movie from an external USB drive, unmarred by distortions and lag. Businesses, too, are considering these pint-size laptops because you can run various e-mail clients, put them on a network, install a VPN client, and secure them with antivirus and antispyware suites.

At the price points we're seeing in the netbook market—namely $300 to $500—sex appeal isn't off limits either on a netbook. The HP 5103 has a sleek-looking aluminum frame, while the Toshiba NB305-N600 uses colors and textures in its favor. Though the future of netbooks remains a big question mark, what with the tablet boom and full size laptops that can be had for about the same price, the demand for them has not fizzled. There's a wide selection for those who want a pint-sized laptop that won't cost them an arm and a leg.

How to Drive More Traffic to Your Blog

Imagine that you’ve taken the giant leap to start a blog to bring more brand awareness and exposure to your small business.

You’ve taken all the necessary steps to build your blog platform and now comes the day when you create your very first blog post. You spend hours crafting a post that is educational, inspirational and positions you as an expert in your field. You’re as proud of this post as if it truly were your own flesh and blood. And, most of all you can’t wait to share it with the world.

So, you hit “publish” and wait for your readers to react to your nuggets of wisdom. (And, you wait and wait and wait…)

Why aren’t you generating any comments? Why aren’t people emailing you thrilled with your expert advice?

It’s called “lack of traffic” and if there’s no traffic to your blog, no one will ever see it. Period.
So, how can you begin enticing readers to visit your blog? Here are ten quick ways to generate a flow of non-stop blog traffic:

1. Create Great Content
Obviously, this goes without saying. But, your content needs to educate, entertain, inspire or offer a solution to your reader’s problems. You want to try to accomplish at least one of these tasks with every blog post.

2. Keep Your Posts Short, Sweet and to the Point
We’re living in an age where short attention spans are the norm. Keep your posts around 500 words so that you don’t lose your ADD readers.

3. Get Your Blog Indexed With the Big Boys
Take the time to index your blog in the top directories such as Dmoz.org, Yahoo, Google and Technorati. You can easily do this manually in less than 30 minutes.

4. Submit Your Blog Feed to Smaller Blog Catalogs
There are hundreds of niche blog catalogs on the Internet. When readers are searching catalogs for blogs to read, you want to make sure that your blog is there. For about $25, you can use a service such as SEOFlicks to manually post to hundreds of blog catalogs.

5. Entice Your Readers to Subscribe to Your Blog
Offer your readers a free goodie (such as a downloadable ebook, whitepaper, audio class, etc.) if they subscribe to your blog. Make sure that your readers can subscribe to your blog through an RSS feed as well as email. You can use Feedburner to manage your subscriptions.

6. Include Your Blog URL on All of Your Social Networks
Include an obvious link to your blog on all of your social networks including: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, Flickr, Slideshare, etc. You’ll be surprised how many folks find your blog through your social networks.

7. Get Involved in the Blog Community
Blogging is a social activity. Read other blogs, comment on other blogs and link to other blogs within your own blog posts.

8. Engage With Your Readers
When your readers make comments on your blog, make sure that you comment back. You want to encourage a natural back and forth dialogue between you and your readers.

9. Offer to Write a Blog Post for a High-Traffic Blog
Research various blogs within your particular industry by heading over to Technorati. Read the blogs, comment on the blogs and interact with the blogger. Once you’ve established a relationship, send them an email politely letting them know that you would be willing to be a guest blogger for them at any time in the future. Include a link to your own blog so that they can check out the quality of your work.

10. Use Your Blog Posts in Your Ezine or Newsletter
Instead of writing a brand new article for your weekly ezine or newsletter, send out the first few paragraphs of one of your past blog posts. Then include a link for the reader to continue reading the post on your blog.
Once you implement these ten strategies, you’ll certainly notice a spike in traffic and begin generating comments and interaction from hundreds (even thousands) of readers in your particular industry.

10 Free Mac OS X Utilities

Apple has outfitted OS X with a bevy of built-in tools designed to make the Mac experience unique in the operation system space, but there are numerous third-party utilities that can enhance your productivity, too. Best of all, many useful Mac OS X utilities won't cost you a dime.

The free Mac OS X utilities showcased in this piece let you quickly rename photo batches, stave off sleep mode, remove junk files, resize windows, completely delete apps without leaving behind digital residue, study and monitor battery life, test Wi-Fi strength and plan a wireless coverage strategy for your home or office, wipe external drives plugged into the Mac, and stay focused on the job at hand (Focus Booster, Think).

These 10 free Mac OS X utilities offer interesting and outright quirky features that should appeal to mainstream and niche audiences alike. They succeed to varying degrees, but all of them are at least interesting. In this story (which will be updated on a regular basis), you'll find short descriptions of each free Mac OS X utility, as well as links to our full-length reviews.

If you're ready to check out free Mac OS X utilities, click the link below to get started. As always, please share your thoughts in the comment section below and recommend your own personal favorite free Mac OS X utilities. They may end up appearing in a future update of this story.

Click here to see "10 Free Mac OS X Utilities" slideshow >

10 SEO and Link Building Mistakes

Mistake 1 
Neglecting On-page Optimization:
I think more people are beginning to understand the importance of on-page optimization when it comes to ranking their web pages. With so much focus on keywords and link building though, often I see webmasters focusing too heavily on the “off page” stuff, without realizing what they do “on” their website is just as important. Proper internal linking, keyword density, LSI, image text, no follow tags, just to name a few, are also very important to search engines. There are free plugins available to help you with a lot of this stuff, so do your due diligence and implement whatever strategies need be.

Mistake 2
Freaking Out When Rankings Plummet:
Go onto any internet marketing forum and you will see this every single time. People are literally freaking out when they see their rankings drop. Most often this is due to a thing we call the Google dance. All new websites go through what is called a “honeymoon” period where their websites rank very well at the beginning, but after a couple of weeks they settle in the search results… usually at a much lower ranking, again, this is natural.
If your websites have age and have dropped in rankings, you may need to work harder to get your position back. You may need to update your content more often, you may need to build more backlinks or you may need to re-evaluate your SEO strategy. Google’s algorithm is changing frequently these days so it’s important to find out what they want, and go give it to them. The days of gaming the system through black-hat techniques is coming to an end.

Mistake 3 
Writing for the Search Engines:
This is one of the biggest mistakes I see being made day in and day out. Webmasters are writing terrible content that is keyword stuffed for the bots. While it is important to have a certain keyword structure within your content so that the search engines know what your content is about, it is very important that you write for the human visitor FIRST. Some say for every 100 words, you should have your keyword inserted once. So, if you have a 1000 word post, you will put your target keyword into the article 10 times. I think this is a good rule of thumb to follow.
Make sure that when you read your article out loud, that it sounds natural and not robotic like. Always remember, if inserting your keyword too often into your post takes away from the natural flow of the article itself… then do not do it. Google is clamping down really hard on over optimized websites. Always write with your target human visitor in mind.


Mistake 4 
Building Thousands of Low Quality Links:
I cannot believe this is still going on with all of the changes Google has made. There are still idiots out there blasting thousands of links to their money sites in the hope of climbing the serps. I was offered 10,000 free links the other day to my website and I told the person to take a run and jump. Those kinds of links are going to have an adverse affect on your ranking. It has to be bloody obvious that Google hates these kinds of links and, if your business is solely dependent on this kind of strategy, then you are playing the fools game. One solid PR5 backlink from a relevant site will be far more powerful than a million links from low quality, non-relevant crappy sites.

Mistake 5 
Not Being Aware of Nofollow and Dofollow:
When I first started out in this industry I had no idea about these two terms. I built a lot of links to one of my first websites and it was taking forever to gain traction in the serps. After a bit of investigating I found that almost all of my backlinks were placed on web pages that were nofollow. Needless to say, those links were just not as effective for rankings as the dofollow links I needed. I’m not saying that nofollow links don’t have their place. In fact, it’s important to have diversity in your linking structure, but most of your links must be dofollow to gain maximum benefit.

Mistake 6 
Expecting Quick Results:
I know when I first started online, I expected to make a lot of money fairly quickly. Boy was I brought back down to earth over the next 6 – 12 months. I almost threw in the towel on more than one occasion because it became very frustrating, trying to make this thing work for me. I built website after website, built a hell of a lot of backlinks, wrote hundreds of articles and participated in all the social media sites, but, it just wasn’t happening as quick as I was led to believe it would.
I realized later on that NOBODY makes money online quickly. They all have to put in the hard work. Your progress can be accelerated if you are willing to spend some cash and outsource a lot of the grunt work, but in my experience, expecting to make money very quickly online usually works against you in the long run. The failure rate is so high because people find this out the hard way.

Mistake 7 
Not Being Consistent:
If you are serious about making money online then you must be consistent every single day with your efforts. This can be the biggest stumbling block for many. It almost was for me. You can work very hard to get top search engine rankings for a particular keyword, but even after the fact, you still have to be consistent with your efforts, else your competitors will overtake you fairly quickly. Everything you do in regards to your online business has got to be consistent. You must put the work in everyday if you are to see the results you’re after. Go read Jeff Olsen’s “The Slight Edge” and practice what you learn.

Mistake 8 
Not Diversifying Your Link Building:
To make your link building look natural, it’s important to gain backlinks from many different sources. Backlinks from just article directories and no other places for example, do not look natural and can hurt your rankings. You need to get links from social media sites, article directories, blogs, blog comments, forums etc. Diversifying your link building looks natural and can put you ahead of your competitors in the search results. A naturally good website will get links from many places, not just one or two.

Mistake 9 
Not Getting High Page Rank Links:
Every day you are backlinking, you should be looking to place your links onto high PR websites. Google values links placed on higher PR websites exponentially higher than low PR websites. These links are obviously harder to get, but that is exactly the point. The harder it is to get a link, the more valuable that link is likely to be. This is why all these push button software programs that can get you thousands of links are crap. You will not come across a software program that gets you high quality backlinks with the push of a button. Anyone who tells you differently is either lying or a moron.

Mistake 10 
Not Updating Your Content Often Enough:
Obviously the more high quality backlinks pointing to your content, the higher your search engine rankings will be. You will then get lots of free traffic. While this is the basic approach that everybody uses to climb the serps, there is another way. Google loves websites that update often. I have built a website that has very few backlinks pointing to it that gets me 10,000 visitors a month from the search engines. The reason for this is because I regularly update my content.
I see webmasters spending so much time building backlinks to their websites every day. This is important of course, but if they actually spent an hour each day writing a new post for their website, they would get far more traffic further down the line. I know this works because I have used this approach many times in the past. With all the Panda’s and Penguins about these days, I have found my websites gain higher search rankings, simply because I always have fresh content on my sites. If you do not want to write every day, then write at least 3 times a week – it helps.

How to Use YouTube to Boost Your Web Site’s SEO Rankings

Seeing that there are more than 20 billion web pages on the internet, the competition to get the best position on the Internet is huge. It is vital to keep in mind that there is not a single SEO technique that will guarantee you the top ranking on a Google results page. However, if you combine strategic on-page and off-page tactics in the right manner, you will get much better results. Search engine optimization is a very special skill, and to get the recipe right will take some time and practice.

There are various search engine optimization practices that you can use to noticeably improve ranking on the top search engines. Social networking is one of these. Social networking websites have become more and more important as an online marketing method and a lot of people are starting to make use of it. Most people you know will probably already be a member of websites such as Facebook and Twitter – and both of them have proven to be very effective as online marketing tools, especially since Google has begun to index Twitter status updates.
YouTube, as well, is quickly becoming a very effective online marketing instrument, since it greatly boosts the number of visitors to your webpage due to the high ranking of videos on Google. Using YouTube for SEO is one of the most effective and inexpensive techniques available currently.

Here are 3 strategies for using YouTube to boost your site’s SEO rankings:

1. Complete the YouTube Meta Tag Data
YouTube is mostly used within the SEO context to get your website on the first page of Google rankings. The most popular videos on YouTube will appear on Google’s search results if they are properly constructed within the YouTube website. In return, when uploading your YouTube video, you may get a higher spot in the search engine results if you have entered the best keywords, descriptions and tags to help your target market find you.

2. Embed Your Video on Your Site
Another way to use YouTube for SEO is to embed your videos into your website content. If you embed the videos into your blogs or website, you increase the chances that more people will view your videos, which leads to a great increase in the popularity of your website, resulting in a higher search engine ranking. Google prefers web pages that have embedded YouTube video content into their websites, and these pages will in most cases get higher rankings than ones without YouTube video content.

3. Create Your Own YouTube channel
Once you have some videos, you can construct your own keyword-rich YouTube channel to house your videos. This channel contains a link to your web page and therefore adds to the number of backlinks that point to your website. Why is that important? Because the search engines favor one-way links back to your site from high traffic sites, and you get more search engine “juice” from such a link.
There are many ways in which you can use YouTube for SEO optimization. You must just make sure that your videos are well designed and constructed properly. Video marketing is drastically gaining ground over websites with just text content – and millions of people all over the world are watching YouTube on a daily basis. This is definitely a market and a strategy that you want to tap into today.

10 Things You Can Do To Get Traffic Right Now

I have been working quite a bit on SEO lately. It works but it is very time-consuming. It is frustrating because every time I create a new Squidoo page, create a new blog post or relevant link I know I will not see immediate results. So what can you do to get traffic to your site now? What if you can’t or will not wait? I believe in long term strategy over short term strategies because tomorrow generally rolls around. However, the two strategies are not mutually exclusive. You can work a short term plan and a long term plan at the same time. Here are 10 things you can do to get traffic relatively quickly to your website:

1. Send an Email to Your List – Ok you already knew this. However, if you are not building a list you are crazy. A targeted email list of people who actually have come to your website and specifically requested info from you about your niche is a gold mine. You should have opt in forms on every page of your website. Being able to send an email blast to a real, interested targeted list of followers is one of the fastest and best ways to generate traffic to your website.

2. Send an Email Blast to Somebody Else’s List – What if you do not have a list? Well see if you can find other people in your field who will allow you to pay for a solo email to their list. There are places like the Warrior Forum where people swap mailings and offer solo email spots on their lists. Here is a list of several reputable places where you can purchase solo ad slots. If you already have a list, even a small one, you can find a few other sites in your niche with quality offers and propose that you mail an offer for them if they mail an offer for you. This way you both benefit from each other’s audiences. Places that accept solo emails.

3. Post Classified Ads – I love Craigslist. They make more money than almost anybody, even without the escort ads. They have not changed their site design since 1980, they don’t care about social media, and they are the best classified ad site out there because they get real eyeballs looking at their ads. Start posting some classified ads for your business on Craigslist. Here’s an article which tells you how to post on Craigslist. There are many other classified ad websites as well. Here’s a list of 36 classified ad websites that I have successfully posted ads to. All the sites are Alexa 100k or less and are easy to post to. The downside with classified ad marketing is that it is very time consuming. If you want to try using a classified ad submission service here is one that will submit your site to 500 classified ad sites monthly.

4. Start a Google Adwords Campaign – I used to spend about $3000-$4000 per month on Adwords. Then they started slapping me, banning me, humiliating me. It was horrible. I guess I just did not know the safe word. I tried to comply with their TOS but it seemed that they just did not want my ads. Now a few years later I received a coupon in the mail for $100 saying they wanted me back. Hmmm? I set up a campaign with normal keywords. My site even has a pop up on it. I started the campaign and it seems to be going fine. Of course time will tell. But it seems as if, at least for the moment, Adwords is back. You might try setting up a campaign. The traffic is generally very good if a bit expensive. But Google Adwords is one of the fastest ways to get traffic, if they run your ads.

5. Start a Yahoo Search Marketing Campaign – Yahoo has traffic. It is not quite as good as Adwords, but they are a little easier to work with. Plus, the prices are slightly lower. Hint: I seem to get better conversions and lower prices for Australian Yahoo traffic. If this market applies to your business, you might try going down under.

6. Purchase PPV Traffic – PPV traffic is short for pay per view traffic. Generally, pay per view traffic is pop ups that you buy on pay per view traffic networks. One network I work with has about 5 million users who have downloaded their applications and agreed to receive ads. When they type in their favorite sites in the browser or search bar, little pop up ads are triggered according to the URLs and keywords they type. The traffic is keyword and/or URL targeted. So, if you want your ad to pop up on your competitor’s site, you can do this with ppv traffic. Remember you only have a second to capture their attention. You must create a landing page which immediately catches their attention and gives them a clear call to action. Generally, email opt ins work best. Here is a site which explains more about ppv traffic.

7. Guest Blogging – Wait a minute, we are supposed to be talking about fast traffic techniques not long slow SEO type of stuff. Getting a guest blog post published on a busy blog that actually has real readers eye-balling your post and commenting is a fast way to get traffic. Once the article is published potentially thousands of readers will see your post immediately. Getting
your post published on an A list blog is also about the best SEO you can get as well. You also have the implied recommendation of the host blogger. Guest blogging is both a long term and a short term strategy for traffic and SEO. Give it a shot. Here is an article which will give you some ideas about guest blog posting.

8. Video Marketing – YouTube is the second busiest search engine after Google. And, of course Google owns YouTube which does not hurt. I have noticed that videos on YouTube show up quickly in search results. Depending on the how hot your topic is, traffic can start flowing pretty quickly too. There are several techniques you can use to get more targeted visitors such as
using your video as a video response to other videos and commenting on other related videos. Do not forget the other video hosting sites such as DailyMotion and Metacafe. Here is a list of 35 video hosting sites that I actually submit videos to.

9. Buy Cheap Paid Click Traffic – This is traffic that Google hates. If you have Adsense on your site, you cannot use any type of incentivized traffic. This is traffic where people are actually either paid or given an incentive to view your site. If you have a site with no Adsense, you can use this type of traffic. The advantage of this type of traffic is that it is cheap. Real cheap. Plus you do get real eyeballs looking at your site because generally they have to type in some sort of code or test to show that they viewed your ad. If your offer is great and appeals to a wide audience you might have a shot with them. I have made sales and recruited affiliates using this type of traffic. Conversions are very low, but you do not need high conversions because you can get so many views for so little. I have paid prices in the neighborhood of $20 for 100,000 views. Two more advantages to this type of traffic is that it is quick and it starts to give your site some momentum in the search engines because of all the views. I suggest using this type of traffic in conjunction with all the other techniques. A site to check out for this type of traffic is Donkeymails.

10. Cold Calling – Are you kidding me? Nope, I am not. Get on the phone and actually call prospects who you think would be interested in your service and direct them to your site. It actually can be fun! Ask them for referrals, ask them if you can add them to your list, Facebook etc. Better yet, go door-to-door and cold call. Get rejected, sweat, and try to close some deals. Get off your iPad and hit the streets. It’s brutal, it works and is more effective than Tweeting. Plus, you could actually make some “real” friends.

8 Ways How to Socialize Your Video Marketing Strategy

If you have a knack for making great video content for your products and services than you’ve already won half the battle. The other half is optimizing your videos so they have a better chance of being found in YouTube’s search engine, otherwise your customers will never find it! What’s the point in producing quality content for your video marketing strategy if nobody is going to see it.

These 8 tips will help you optimize your YouTube videos so you can get as many views as possible:

1. Aim to make a viewer watch the video for at least the first 8 seconds. This is a crucial time to engage a viewer because, if they wander off before those 8 seconds, that view doesn’t count towards your total view count on YouTube. Get their attention first and save your biography for later.

2. Post your YouTube videos on your Facebook page. Sharing them on other networks like Twitter and Tumblr are great, but Facebook has a great “viral quality” for videos compared to other networks, in my experience. Posting your videos everywhere possible multiplies your opportunities for exposure and provides cross-channel traffic between the different social sites.

3. Embed your YouTube videos within your blog posts. I would suggest writing a short blog post to accompany your new videos so you can gain some more traffic to your website as well as giving more exposure to your YouTube channel.

4. If you want people to share it, then ask! People will often do what you request, but you have to come out and ask for it first! Try telling people in the video to share it if they enjoyed it and remind them with non-intrusive text on-screen and in the video’s description.

5. Pay attention to the directions of each website that you submit your video to. There are small differences that you need to be aware of between sites that allow you to upload video content so ensure that you are following them accordingly or your video marketing strategy performance might suffer.

6. Tags are your friends. Get creative and imagine what words your target market is going to type into the search engine that is relevant to your content. Obviously your brand name is a given but add any and all relevant terms and keywords that you could picture someone searching for.

7. Allow people to embed your video. If you don’t, you are limiting people’s ability to share your content.

8. Make your titles and descriptions catchy and keyword optimized. You need to strike the optimal balance between catchy and keyword optimized since you want to attract viewers and higher ranking in the YouTube and Google search results. Make sure your title is clear and accurate. If it’s misleading, you might get the notorious “thumbs down” rating!
Which tip do you see most beneficial to your video marketing strategy?

Tricks Websites Use to Make Money Off

Some days I can almost feel my wallet shrinking in my back pocket as I sit in front of my computer browsing different websites.
There are so many tactics for separating me from my hard-earned cash that it resembles a one-armed bandit more than an unassuming desktop.
In fact, making money online is such big business that a lot of times you may not even realize that it’s happening until it’s already occurred.

Here are 10 tricks that websites use to make money off of us:

1. Adware – As if your proclivity for shopping online isn’t enough of a financial burden, now these websites are collecting your shopping info so they can sell you even more unnecessary stuff. I don’t need someone keeping track of my spending habits, unless it’s my accountant. And now that I think about it, I’m not really so sure about him either.


2. Pop-up ads – Sure, you can filter them out, or just close them yourself… for the most part; but then there are the ones that move around when you try to click on them, or activate an ad regardless of where you click the window. I honestly don’t know how this seemed like a good idea for sales, but I guess it must work on some people because they just keep popping up.


3. Selling your personal info – Why does every e-merchant need to know that you’ve just purchased an ionic air humidifier for $699? I suppose because when you hook a sucker, you’ve just got to brag about it to all of your friends and business partners.


4. Cookies – This is sort of like maintaining a dossier in your files on every person who walks into your business. They know every transaction they’ve ever made with you, which is supposed to make your life more convenient. The truth, however, is that it lets the site owner know how you’ve been using the site so that they can repeat the success they had with you the last time you came by and, you know, bought that humidifier.


5. Masked keywords – Search engines like Google have begun to crack down on such SEO tricks, but regardless it’s still being done. Web owners will post keywords on their pages invisibly by using the same color font as the background. This will then lead you to pages that are irrelevant to your searches and result in earnings for the owner, from site visits at YOUR expense.


6. Memberships – Some websites offer the option to become a member, implying the opportunity for a preferred status or enhanced website experience. As often as not, it merely guarantees the website owner some cash flow and the benefits of membership are seldom worth the added expense.


7. Plagiarism – Theft of content is a serious matter, but when someone needs to monetize their own website and lacks the originality to provide their own, they will steal yours. In such instances when your content is plagiarized, the website owner is literally making money off of you.


8. Shipping and handling – This became such an issue between buyers and sellers on eBay that the TOS had to be re-written. There is a finite amount that needs to be collected in order to ship a product of a specific weight and size to a given address. Anything above and beyond that figure is pure profit.


9. Back-linking – When done reciprocally and ethically, this benefits both parties. However, when a visitor to your website drops links to theirs, it can draw traffic away from you, costing you money, which goes to him instead.


10. Identity theft – Disreputable websites can use the information that they collect from you when you visit and do business with them, and either use or sell that information to third parties for their own use.

Source: http://www.longhornleads.com/

How to Conduct Blog Interviews

Interviewing successful people in your industry is always a great way to boost traffic on your blog. The problem is that most bloggers don’t have a clue how to conduct a proper interview.

More often than not, the blogger fails to squeeze out any semblance of quality information, leaving the interview filled with irrelevant information and the interviewee with no incentive to share the content.
The following are seven crucial tips to know before conducting blog interviews.

1. Introductions
Prior to conducting the interview, spend at least an hour learning about your subject. Take the time to read their about page, look through their latest blog posts, and try to figure out what they’ve been doing lately through Twitter or Facebook.
Then, write a 2-3 sentence introduction that walks the audience through who the interviewee is, why they’re important, and why the audience should pay attention. If you ask the interviewee to introduce themselves, they will do so humbly and the audience won’t get a sense of how important that person is.

2. The Audience
Your goal with any interview is to get the interviewee to provide the most valuable, specific piece of advice tailored to your audience.
If they’ve never read your blog, then it’s your responsibility to tell them everything about your audience, from the age to their personality type.

3. Small Talk
Once you get the interviewee on the other line, start with a few minutes of talking about where they’re from, their family, or even the weather. This makes them feel more comfortable talking with you. In this way, they’ll open up and tell you more of their secrets.

4. Set Expectations
Right before you start the interview, give them an idea of where you intend to take the interview. Tell them the questions or topics so they can structure their responses based on the information you want them to give, in the order you want them to give it.
Also, tell them how long you expect the interview to take and how you are going to record and distribute the content.

5. Transition Through Questions
The only time you should be talking is in between questions. Wrap up the question by summarizing their response.
Then, transition into the next question by connecting it to their previous response. If you put some thought into crafting and organizing the order of your questions prior to the interview, this should come easy.

6. Anything Else You Would Like to Add?
This is the magic question to ask at the end of every interview. Asking them if there is anything else they would like to add has two benefits.
First of all, it’s almost impossible to cover everything with your questions. This gives them an open door to talk about anything that they believe is important. Second, it subconsciously tells them that the interview is about to wrap up, which encourages them to summarize everything they’ve said up to that point in perhaps the most important two minutes of the interview.

7. Thank Them
At the end of the interview, thank them for taking the time, remind the audience of their name, and direct people to their websites.
Don’t ask them to pitch their sites but instead, do it for them.
Immediately after you wrap up the interview ask them if there’s anything you could have done better. They’ll appreciate you asking and you’ll find out how to improve.
It’s a lot of work to conduct the interview, produce, transcribe, then edit the content, but it makes a world of difference in the quality of the results. Go over these seven valuable points to conducting a blog interview prior to meeting your subject to enhance your chances of success.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

How to Connect With Potential Customers on Twitter

Twitter is a wonderful way to stay connected with a wide variety of people, even people you don’t know in the real world. I first learned about Michael Jackson’s death via Twitter. All of the latest plugins I use for WordPress came from Twitter. I’ve attended conferences and had other attendees and even speakers recognize me from Twitter. I can eavesdrop on some interesting conversations by people I would never get to meet in the real world.

But with so many people on Twitter, and the ease of following them, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with noise. If you’re trying to use Twitter for business, this noise seems even louder.
So how do you connect with the right people on Twitter? And even more importantly, how do you turn those connections into business?

1. Use search.twitter.com to find your target customers. Use keywords, hashtags, location or their industry to help find them. Look on their websites for their Twitter addresses. Be creative

2. Follow people who look like they could be a potential customer.

3. Choose six to ten people and follow them more closely. Check out their blog, LinkedIn profile and any other public web presence they have. Add them to a group or list to follow their Tweets more closely. If they publish it online, read it.

4. Over the next few weeks, promote them. Retweet interesting things they say. Use the @reply to comment on their Tweets or to answer their questions. Promote their blog posts or events. Comment on blog posts. Let your universe know who they are.

5. Use the #followfriday hashtag to promote these people. But don’t just put them in a list with a bunch of other people. Include a solo Tweet with your thoughts about why they’re interesting. Instead try: @janedoe is the queen of widgets #followfriday her if you want to know about widgets.

6. Once you’re on their radar, start a personal conversation. Use @replies, then DMs (direct messages) then move onto email or better yet, the phone.
Going from step one to step six can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. After all, no matter what anyone tells you, social networking isn’t something you can automate or outsource. You need to put in the time to build relationships.

If this seems like too much work, consider this: isn’t it far more productive to focus on a small number of potential customers and truly get to know them rather than having a huge list of hundreds (or thousands) of anonymous people who you don’t know and don’t care about?

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

7 Tips on How to Write a Blog Post

Sometimes I simply write a blog post that comes to mind, without really laying it out in any certain form. However, to be most effective, engage your readers and increase sales, there is a system you should use, which I will share with you here. If you want to know how to write a blog post that gets results, you’ll definitely find these 7 tips useful!

This is really an outline, but you’ll find that it makes writing your blog posts much easier – and in the end, makes them more interesting and valuable for your reader too.

Here’s the short version – your blog post should have a keyword phrase, catchy title, image, great content, a call-to-action, even a signature (this looks professional, in my opinion). Last, but definitely not least, a P.S. We’ll go further into detail on each section, so that by the time you finish reading this article, you’ll be excited and chomping at the bit to write your next post!

7 Elements All Blog Posts Should Have
Creating an outline for your blog post makes it SO much easier! I try to include all of these elements, even though I may have no idea what I’m going to write inside the post until I get my outline laid out. Once you get your framework set up, filling in the blanks becomes pretty simple.

1. Now, let’s start with the first element that you need to think about – a keyword phrase!
While you always want to write with your readers in mind, it’s still important that you place some focus on SEO.
Once you have your topic in mind, try to find a good keyword phrase that’s suitable to your post. In this case, I am using the keyword phrase “how to write a blog post.” For those times that there just doesn’t seem to be a keyword phrase that fits, just write for your reader. They appreciate your knowledge and what you share, regardless of whether it is keyword optimized!

2. Write a Great Title for Your Blog Post
Believe it or not, what you choose to title your blog post is almost as important as the main content. After all, if you don’t offer a catchy title, who’s going to read what you have written? In addition, the title of your blog post becomes the title of your page (used in the Title Tag) so it’s important in SEO. Finally, the title of your post will become the “anchor text” that is linked in the search results; in other words, this is what searchers will see when they’re making a decision about which one of the results they want to click on! Super important, make sure your post title is compelling.

3. Images
While it isn’t essential to use an image in your blog post, it does make the page look a bit more attractive and colorful – and images can be used to break up text, so that it doesn’t appear so long and drawn out. In addition, images can actually illustrate points. You can upload your own images, look for free or inexpensive stock photos online, or use well-known sites like Flickr.

4. Writing Your Content
After you have outlined the other elements, start writing your content. It may sound a bit strange to write your content last (since it is the bulk of your blog post), but “fleshing out” the content after you have your outline in place actually makes it a simple process. Think of each point you want to highlight in your post, then expand on each in a separate paragraph or two.

5. Include a Call to Action
While I don’t do this in every post, it really is important to include a call to action if you are promoting a product or service that you really feel will be the solution to your reader’s need. Surprisingly enough, you have to tell many people what action you want them to take! This is why you should include a call to action – tell your reader just what to do next, and how it will benefit him or her.
Never assume that your reader knows what to do next. You wrote the post for a reason, and your reader is reading it for a reason. Entice your readers to take the action you want them to take!

 
6. Add Your Signature
I’ve just started doing this recently, and I really think it’s a great idea. A signature gives your post a personal touch, and lets your readers know who you are. How many times have you read a blog post with no signature, and the word “admin” or something similar in the ‘author’ or ‘written by’ area?
By the way – you can make your own signature for free! There are several sites on the web that allow you to create your own signature, or you can simply sign your real signature and scan it into your computer if you would rather.

7. PS
This is something else I’ve just started doing; in fact, this is my first post to include a PS! I don’t know why I haven’t used it before, or why more bloggers don’t use it. You’ll find a PS at the end of most sales letters and email messages, so why not in blog posts? You can stress your point, and offer a ‘last call to action.’
Well, there you are! 7 tips on how to write a blog post that will attract attention, help your readers and satisfy those little ‘search engine crawlers’ for SEO purposes.
Oh, and one last thing – put links in your posts to other posts on your blog you feel are relevant, and would be of interest to your readers. Enjoy, and here’s to better (and easier) blogging!