==| Fear Extraction point games |==

Defeating the forces of Armacham was only the beginning. The F.E.A.R. Extraction Point expansion pack takes you to the next chapter – now Alma is looking for retribution!

--Additional Weapons to fight a supernatural army of terrifying new enemies and familiar foes
--Different bone-chilling environments heighten the intensity
--Join a completely new mission with an even more horrifying storyline

minimum requirements:
Windows 2000/XP
Processor: P4 1.7 GHz
DirectX 9
512 MB RAM
Free hard drive space: 5 GB
3D Accelerator 64MB DirectX 9
DirectX-compliant Sound Card

License:

Free Trial Version

DOWNLOAD FEAR GAMES

Tiny Dialer 1.1 (Mobile tools)

Tiny dialer is handy tool that replaces regular dial-up service of Windows. Among with all standard DUN features of Windows, it has many unique options that will make your web-surfing a piece of cake.


Small status window will never hide the application you are currently working with. And convenient system tray icon will allow you to access all program features with a mouse click.

Unique Features

Multiple ISP (Internet Service Provider) support.
Unlimited phone numbers for each ISP. Tiny Dialer will dial them sequentially.

Auto reconnect option available. Tiny Dialer will re-establish connection automatically if it was dropped for some reason.

Powerful dialup statistics available. You can see daily and monthly total connection time, as well as detailed traffic report.

Flexible SDK for adding plug-in with even more features!
Full Install and Uninstall support

Log
This will log connection progress into text file.

Notify
This plugin will monitor webpage(s) and popup a window when information on a specified page was updated. You will never miss important news any more.

Send Msg
Once connected or disconnected, this plug-in will send a message to any window on your computer. Send Msg is for programmers only, you will need to correct a DLL file extension in order to use it.

Statistics
This plugin will log time spent in the internet as well as amount of received and transmitted bytes. Daily and monthly stats are available.

Traffic Info
This will repeatedly show connection time and current CPS (characters per second) rate in status window.



DOWNLOAD TINY DIALER

== | Internet Explorer 8 Beta |==

With Internet Explorer 8 promised to arrive in 2008, Microsoft has taken a huge step forward this week by announcing the first public beta of the new browser.

Predictably named 'Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1' the browser won't be the radical (and much needed) overhaul seen between IE6 and IE7. Instead the primary difference will be 'Acid2' compatibility - in a nutshell: compliance with universal web standards so that everything on a web page looks and works as it should. This sounds obvious but, with designers constantly having to configure sites to work with multiple browsers, it isn't and should solve a vast array of programming problems and speed web page design. Firefox 3 will also pass Acid2 tests.

In addition to this, IE8 will also add ACR (automatic crash recovery) - saving your web pages in event of a crash - something most other browsers have had for years, expand its phishing filter (and rename it 'Safety Filter') to encompass malware threats and add a context sensitive right click menu (postcodes offer map searches, etc).

Grab it from the link below and for those obsessed with the minutiae check out the full release notes. Having tested out the beta myself, Firefox and Opera fans have nothing to fear, but IE users will get a little closer to knowing what it feels like to use a decent web browser...

== | Learn How Is Your Internet Privacy Is At Risk |==

Minimizing the risks related to the Internet security is of primary concern for any online

business site. Internet security is very important and must be guarded severely at all

costs. Minimizing the risks related to online security will ensure that you will be able to

attract many customers to your online sites. Many security measures can be installed in an

online site for lessening the risk of Internet security.

If the customers are not sure about the security of their personal details and financial

statements, they will never conduct online business. Internet privacy security is very

important for any online business site.

Internet privacy is at risk due to the presence of different elements. The presence of

spyware is one factor of risk for Internet privacy security. The spyware that is present in

your computer can track your online behavior. Spyware software is enabled with the advanced

features that allow the spyware manufacturers to surreptitiously track the actions of a

computer user. The information gathered through this process can be used to commit frauds

and other illegal activities.

The cookies that are deposited in your computer when you visit different sites can also pose

a risk to your Internet privacy security. Cookies are data that is sent from a website to be

stored in your computer. The cookies of the different websites can be used to track the

user’s activities for a particular span of time. If the information falls into wrong hands

many illegal activities can take place as a result. With the advancement in technology, it

is very natural to be worried about online privacy and security.

A person with a criminal intention is always on the look out for ways and means to invade

Internet privacy security of the people. If he can get information about a person’s bank

details and other personal details, he can misuse them. The person can assume your identity

online and deal with your bank or other agencies in your capacity. The victim may be

completely unaware about the fraud that is taking place in his name. This can lead to the

huge losses to the person whose privacy has been invaded.

You will have to adopt various means to safe guard your Internet privacy security.

Installing a spyware in your computer can be one option for you to safe guard your privacy.

The software will efficiently remove all traces of the presence of any kind of spyware from

your computer. If it is difficult to remove all spyware installed in your computer, seek

online advice on the manual removal of such spyware.

Imagine yourself in a situation where someone else is able to monitor every move that you

make. This is a terrifying situation to face. The best way for you to escape such a

situation is to install the best security features in your computer. You will then be able

to surf online peacefully without constantly worrying about your Internet privacy security.

==| How to Make Money From Your Blog |==

StevePavlina.com was launched 19 months ago. 12 months ago it was averaging $4.12/day in

income. Now it brings in over $200/day. I didn’t spend a dime on marketing or promotion.

In fact, I started this site with just $9 to register the domain name, and everything was

bootstrapped from there. Would you like to know how I did it?

This article is seriously long (over 7300 words), but you’re sure to get your money’s worth

(hehehe). I’ll even share some specifics. If you don’t have time to read it now, feel free

to bookmark it or print it out for later.

Do you actually want to monetize your blog?

Some people have strong personal feelings with respect to making money from their blogs. If

you think commercializing your blog is evil, immoral, unethical, uncool, lame, greedy,

obnoxious, or anything along those lines, then don’t commercialize it.

If you have mixed feelings about monetizing your blog, then sort out those feelings first.

If you think monetizing your site is wonderful, fine. If you think it’s evil, fine. But

make up your mind before you seriously consider starting down this path. If you want to

succeed, you must be congruent. Generating income from your blog is challenging enough —

you don’t want to be dealing with self-sabotage at the same time. It should feel genuinely

good to earn income from your blog– you should be driven by a healthy ambition to succeed.

If your blog provides genuine value, you fully deserve to earn income from it. If, however,

you find yourself full of doubts over whether this is the right path for you, you might find

this article helpful: How Selfish Are You? (It talks about how to find the right balance

between your needs and those of others.)

If you do decide to generate income from your blog, then don’t be shy about it. If you’re

going to put up ads, then really put up ads. Don’t just stick a puny little ad square in a

remote corner somewhere. If you’re going to request donations, then really request

donations. Don’t put up a barely visible “Donate” link and pray for the best. If you’re

going to sell products, then really sell them. Create or acquire the best quality products

you can, and give your visitors compelling reasons to buy. If you’re going to do this, then

fully commit to it. Don’t take a half-assed approach. Either be full-assed or no-assed.

You can reasonably expect that when you begin commercializing a free site, some people will

complain, depending on how you do it. I launched this site in October 2004, and I began

putting Google Adsense ads on the site in February 2005. There were some complaints, but I

expected that — it was really no big deal. Less than 1 in 5,000 visitors actually sent me

negative feedback. Most people who sent feedback were surprisingly supportive. Most of the

complaints died off within a few weeks, and the site began generating income almost

immediately, although it was pretty low — a whopping $53 the first month. If you’d like to

see some month-by-month specifics, I posted my 2005 Adsense revenue figures earlier this

year. Adsense is still my single best source of revenue for this site, although it’s

certainly not my only source. More on that later…

Can you make a decent income online?

Yes, absolutely. At the very least, a high five-figure annual income is certainly an

attainable goal for an individual working full-time from home. I’m making a healthy income

from StevePavlina.com, and the site is only 19 months old… barely a toddler. If you have a

day job, it will take longer to generate a livable income, but it can still be done part-

time if you’re willing to devote a lot of your spare time to it. I’ve always done it full-

time.

Can most people do it?

No, they can’t. I hope it doesn’t shock you to see a personal development web site use the

dreaded C-word. But I happen to agree with those who say that 99% of people who try to

generate serious income from their blogs will fail. The tagline for this site is “Personal

Development for Smart People.” And unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your

outlook), smart people are a minority on this planet. So while most people can’t make a

living this way, I would say that most smart people can. What if you don’t know whether or

not you qualify as smart? Here’s a good rule of thumb: If you have to ask the question,

you aren’t.

If that last paragraph doesn’t flood my inbox with flames, I don’t know what will. OK,

actually I do.

This kind of 99-1 ratio isn’t unique to blogging though. You’ll see it in any field with

relatively low barriers to entry. What percentage of wannabe actors, musicians, or athletes

ever make enough money from their passions to support themselves? It doesn’t take much

effort to start a blog these days — almost anyone can do it. Talent counts for something,

and the talent that matters in blogging is intelligence. But that just gets you in the

door. You need to specifically apply your intelligence to one particular talent. And the

best words I can think of to describe that particular talent are: web savvy.

If you are very web savvy, or if you can learn to become very web savvy, then you have an

excellent shot of making enough money from your blog to cover all your living expenses… and

then some. But if becoming truly web savvy is more than your gray matter can handle, then I

would offer this advice: Don’t quit your day job.

Web savvy

What do I mean by web savvy? You don’t need to be a programmer, but you need a decent

functional understanding of a variety of web technologies. Which technologies are “key”

will depend on the nature of your blog and your means of monetization. But generally

speaking I’d list these elements as significant:

*

blog publishing software
*

HTML/CSS
*

blog comments (and comment spam)
*

RSS/syndication
*

feed aggregators
*

pings
*

trackbacks
*

full vs. partial feeds
*

blog carnivals (for kick-starting your blog’s traffic)
*

search engines
*

search engine optimization (SEO)
*

page rank
*

social bookmarking
*

tagging
*

contextual advertising
*

affiliate programs
*

traffic statistics
*

email

Optional: podcasting, instant messaging, PHP or other web scripting languages.

I’m sure I missed a few due to familiarity blindness. If scanning such a list makes your

head spin, I wouldn’t recommend trying to make a full-time living from blogging just yet.

Certainly you can still blog, but you’ll be at a serious disadvantage compared to someone

who’s more web savvy, so don’t expect to achieve stellar results until you expand your

knowledge base.

If you want to sell downloadable products such as ebooks, then you can add e-commerce, SSL,

digital delivery, fraud prevention, and online databases to the list. Again, you don’t need

to be a programmer; you just need a basic understanding of these technologies. Even if you

hire someone else to handle the low-level implementation, it’s important to know exactly

what you’re getting into.

A lack of understanding is a major cause of failure in the realm of online income

generation. For example, if you’re clueless about search engine optimization (SEO), you

will probably cripple your search engine rankings compared to someone who understands SEO

well. But you can’t consider each technology in isolation. You need to understand the

connections and trade-offs between them. Monetizing a blog is a balancing act. You may

need to balance the needs of yourself, your visitors, search engines, those who link to you,

social bookmarking sites, advertisers, affiliate programs, and others. Seemingly minor

decisions like what to title a web page are significant. In coming up with the title of

this article, I have to take all of these potential viewers into consideration. I want a

title that is attractive to human visitors, drives reasonable search engine traffic, yields

relevant contextual ads, fits the theme of the site, and encourages linking and social

bookmarking. Plus I want each article to provide genuine value to my visitors. So I do my

best to create titles for my articles that balance these various needs. Often that means

abandoning cutesy or clever titles in favor of direct and comprehensible ones. It’s little

skills like these that help drive sustainable traffic growth month after month. Missing out

on just this one skill is enough to cripple your traffic. And there are dozens of these

types of skills that require decent web savvy to understand.

This sort of knowledge is what separates the 1% from the 99%. Both groups may work just as

hard, but the 1% is getting much better results for their efforts. It normally doesn’t take

me more than 60 seconds to title an article, but a lot of mental processing goes into those

60 seconds. You really just have to learn these ideas once; after that you can apply them

fairly routinely.

Whenever you come across a significant web technology you don’t understand, look it up on

Google or Wikipedia, and dive into it long enough to acquire a basic understanding of it.

To make money from blogging it’s important to be something of a jack of all trades. Maybe

you’ve heard the expression, “A jack of all trades is a master of none.” That may be true,

but you don’t need to master any of these technologies — you just have to be good enough to

use them. It’s the difference between being able to drive a car vs. becoming an auto

mechanic. Strive to achieve functional knowledge, and then move on to something else. Even

though I’m an experienced programmer, I don’t know how many web technologies actually work.

But I don’t really care. I can still use them to generate results. In the time it would

take me to fully understand one new technology, I can achieve sufficient functional

knowledge to utilize several of them.

Thriving on change

I would say that your greatest risk isn’t so much that you’ll make mistakes that will cost

you. Your greatest risk is that you’ll miss opportunities. You need an entrepreneurial

mindset, not an employee mindset. Don’t be too concerned with the risk of loss — be more

concerned with the risk of missed gains. It’s what you don’t know and what you don’t do

that will hurt you the worst. Blogging is cheap. Your expenses and financial risk should

be minimal. Your real concern should be missing opportunities that could have made you

money very easily. You need to develop antennae that can listen out for new opportunities.

I highly recommend subscribing to Darren Rowse’s Problogger blog — Darren is great at

uncovering new income-generating opportunities for bloggers.

The blogosphere changes very rapidly, and change creates opportunity. It takes some brains

to decipher these opportunities and figure out how to take advantage of them before they

disappear. If you hesitate to capitalize on something new and exciting, you may simply miss

out. Many opportunities are temporary. And every day you don’t implement them, you’re

losing money you could have earned.

I used to get annoyed by the rapid rate of change of web technologies. It’s even more rapid

than what I saw when I worked in the computer gaming industry. And the rate of change is

accelerating. Almost every week now I learn about some fascinating new web service or idea

that could potentially lead to big changes down the road. Making sense of them is a full-

time job in itself. But I learned to love this insane pace. If I’m confused then everyone

else is probably confused too. And people who only do this part-time will likely be very

confused. If they aren’t confused, then they aren’t keeping up. So if I can be just a

little bit faster and understand these technologies just a little bit sooner, then I can

capitalize on some serious opportunities before the barriers to entry become too high. Even

though confusion is uncomfortable, it’s really a good thing for a web entrepreneur. This is

what creates the space for a college student to earn $1,000,000 online in just a few months

with a clever idea. Remember this isn’t a zero-sum game. Don’t let someone else’s success

make you feel diminished or jealous. Let it inspire you instead.

What’s your overall income-generation strategy?

I don’t want to insult anyone, but most people are utterly clueless when it comes to

generating income from their blogs. They slap things together haphazardly with no rhyme or

reason and hope to generate lots of money. While I’m a strong advocate of the ready-fire-

aim approach, that strategy does require that you eventually aim. Ready-fire-fire-fire-fire

will just create a mess.

Take a moment to articulate a basic income-generating strategy for your site. If you aren’t

good at strategy, then just come up with a general philosophy for how you’re going to

generate income. You don’t need a full business plan, just a description of how you plan to

get from $0 per month to whatever your income goal is. An initial target goal I used when I

first started this site was $3000 per month. It’s a somewhat arbitrary figure, but I knew

that if I could reach $3000 per month, I could certainly push it higher, and $3000 is enough

income that it’s going to make a meaningful difference in my finances. I reached that level

15 months after launching the site (in December 2005). And since then it’s continued to

increase nicely. Blogging income is actually quite easy to maintain. It’s a lot more

secure than a regular job. No one can fire me, and if one source of income dries up, I can

always add new ones. We’ll address multiple streams of income soon…

Are you going to generate income from advertising, affiliate commissions, product sales,

donations, or something else? Maybe you want a combination of these things. However you

decide to generate income, put your basic strategy down in writing. I took 15 minutes to

create a half-page summary of my monetization strategy. I only update it about once a year

and review it once a month. This isn’t difficult, but it helps me stay focused on where I’m

headed. It also allows me to quickly say no to opportunities that are inconsistent with my

plan.

Refer to your monetization strategy (or philosophy) when you need to make design decisions

for your web site. Although you may have multiple streams of income, decide which type of

income will be your primary source, and design your site around that. Do you need to funnel

people towards some kind of order form, or will you place ads all over the site? Different

monetization strategies suggest different design approaches. Think about what specific

action you want your visitors to eventually take that will generate income for you, and

design your site accordingly.

When devising your income strategy, feel free to cheat. Don’t re-invent the wheel. Copy

someone else’s strategy that you’re convinced would work for you too. Do NOT copy anyone’s

content or site layout (that’s copyright infringement), but take note of how they’re making

money. I decided to monetize this site with advertising and affiliate income after

researching how various successful bloggers generated income. Later I added donations as

well. This is an effective combo.

Traffic, traffic, traffic

Assuming you feel qualified to take on the challenge of generating income from blogging (and

I haven’t scared you away yet), the three most important things you need to monetize your

blog are traffic, traffic, and traffic.

Just to throw out some figures, last month (April 2006), this site received over 1.1 million

visitors and over 2.4 million page views. That’s almost triple what it was just six months

ago.

Why is traffic so important? Because for most methods of online income generation, your

income is a function of traffic. If you double your traffic, you’ll probably double your

income (assuming your visitor demographics remain fairly consistent). You can screw almost

everything else up, but if you can generate serious traffic, it’s really hard to fail. With

sufficient traffic the realistic worst case is that you’ll eventually be able to monetize

your web site via trial and error (as long as you keep those visitors coming).

When I first launched this blog, I knew that traffic building was going to be my biggest

challenge. All of my plans hinged on my ability to build traffic. If I couldn’t build

traffic, it was going to be very difficult to succeed. So I didn’t even try to monetize my

site for the first several months. I just focused on traffic building. Even after 19

months, traffic building is still the most important part of my monetization plan. For my

current traffic levels, I know I’m undermonetizing my site, but that’s OK. Right now it’s

more important to me to keep growing the site, and I’m optimizing the income generation as I

go along.

Traffic is the primary fuel of online income generation. More visitors means more ad

clicks, more product sales, more affiliate sales, more donations, more consulting leads, and

more of whatever else that generates income for you.

With respect to traffic, you should know that in many respects, the rich do get richer.

High traffic leads to even more traffic-building opportunities that just aren’t accessible

for low-traffic sites. On average at least 20 bloggers add new links to my site every day,

my articles can easily surge to the top of social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, and

I’m getting more frequent requests for radio interviews. Earlier this year I was featured

in USA Today and in Self Magazine, which collectively have millions of readers. Journalists

are finding me by doing Google searches on topics I’ve written about. These opportunities

were not available to me when I was first starting. Popular sites have a serious advantage.

The more traffic you have, the more you can attract.

If you’re intelligent and web savvy, you should also be able to eventually build a high-

traffic web site. And you’ll be able to leverage that traffic to build even more traffic.

How to build traffic

Now if traffic is so crucial, how do you build it up to significant levels if you’re

starting from rock bottom?

I’ve already written a lengthy article on this topic, so I’ll refer you there: How to Build

a High Traffic Web Site (or Blog). If you don’t have time to read it now, feel free to

bookmark it or print it out for later. That article covers my general philosophy of

traffic-building, which centers on creating content that provides genuine value to your

visitors. No games or gimmicks.

There is one other important traffic-building tip I’ll provide here though.

Blog Carnivals. Take full advantage of blog carnivals when you’re just starting out (click

the previous link to learn what carnivals are if you don’t already know). Periodically

submit your best blog posts to the appropriate carnivals for your niche. Carnivals are easy

ways to get links and traffic, and best of all, they’re free. Submitting only takes

minutes. Use the easy sign-up form at Conservative Cat. Do NOT spam the carnivals with

irrelevant material — only submit to the carnivals that are match for your content.

In my early traffic-building days, I would do carnivals submissions once a week, and it

helped a great deal in going from nothing to about 50,000 visitors per month. You still

have to produce great content, but carnivals give you a free shot at marketing your unknown

blog up to a certain level. Carnivals are like an open-mic night at a comedy club — they

give amateurs a chance to show off their stuff. I still submit to certain carnivals every

once in a while, but now my traffic is so high that relatively speaking, they don’t make

much difference anymore. Just to increase my traffic by 1% in a month, I need 11,000 new

visitors, and even the best carnivals don’t push that much traffic. But you can pick up

dozens or even hundreds of new subscribers from each round of carnival submissions, so it’s

a great place to start. Plus it’s very easy.

If your traffic isn’t growing month after month, does it mean you’re doing something wrong?

Most likely you aren’t doing enough things right. Again, making the mistakes is not the

issue. Missing opportunities is.

Will putting ads on your site hurt your traffic?

Here’s a common fear I hear from people who are considering monetizing their web sites:

Putting ads on my site will cripple my traffic. The ads will drive people away, and they’ll

never come back.

Well, in my experience this is absolutely, positively, and otherwise completely and totally…

FALSE. It’s just not true. Guess what happened to my traffic when I put ads on my site.

Nothing. Guess what happened to my traffic when I put up more ads and donation links.

Nothing. I could detect no net effect on my traffic whatsoever. Traffic continued

increasing at the same rate it did before there were ads on my site. In fact, it might have

even helped me a little, since some bloggers actually linked to my site just to point out

that they didn’t like my ad layout. I’ll leave it up to you to form your own theories about

this. I think it’s probably because there’s so much advertising online already that even

though some people will complain when a free site puts up ads, if they value the content,

they’ll still come back, regardless of what they say publicly.

I think most mature people understand that it’s reasonable for a blogger to earn income from

their work. I think I’m lucky in that my audience tends to be very mature — immature people

generally aren’t interested in personal development. To create an article like this takes

serious effort, not to mention the hard-earned experience that’s required to write it. This

article alone took me over 15 hours of writing and editing. I think it’s perfectly

reasonable to earn an income from such work. If you get no value from it, you don’t pay

anything. What could be more fair than that? The more income this blog generates, the more

I can put into it. For example, I used some of the income to buy podcasting equipment and

added a podcast to the site. I’ve recorded 13 episodes so far. The podcasts are all ad-

free. I’m also planning to add some additional services to this site in the years ahead.

More income = better service.

At the time of this writing, my site is very ad-heavy. Some people point this out to me as

if I’m not aware of it: “You know, Steve. Your web site seems to contain an awful lot of

ads.” Of course I’m aware of it. I’m the one who put the ads there. There’s a reason I

have this configuration of ads. They’re effective! People keep clicking on them. If they

weren’t effective, I would remove them right away and try something else.

I do avoid putting up ads that I personally find annoying when I see them on other sites,

including pop-ups and interstitials (stuff that flies across your screen). Even though

they’d make me more money, in my opinion they degrade the visitor experience too much.

I also provide two ad-free outlets, so if you really don’t like ads, you can actually read

my content without ads. First, I provide a full-text RSS feed, and at least for now it’s

ad-free. I do, however, include a simple donation request in the bottom of my feeds.

If you want to see some actual traffic data, take a look at my 2005 traffic growth chart. I

first put ads on the site in February 2005, and although the chart doesn’t cover pre-

February traffic growth, the growth rate was very similar before then. For an independent

source, you can also look at my traffic chart on Alexa. You can select different Range

options to go further back in time.

Multiple streams of income

You don’t need to put all your eggs in one basket. Think multiple streams of income. On

this site I actually have six different streams of income. Can you count them all? Here’s

a list:

1.

Google Adsense ads (pay per click and pay per impression advertising)
2.

Donations (via PayPal or snail mail — yes, some people do mail a check)
3.

Text Link Ads (sold for a fixed amount per month)
4.

Chitika eMiniMalls ads (pay per click)
5.

Affiliate programs like Amazon and LinkShare (commission on products sold, mostly

books)
6.

Advertising sold to individual advertisers (three-month campaigns or longer)

Note: If you’re reading this article a while after its original publication date, then this

list is likely to change. I frequently experiment with different streams.

Adsense is my biggest single source of income, but some of the others do pretty well too.

Every stream generates more than $100/month.

My second biggest income stream is actually donations. My average donation is about $10,

and I’ve received a number of $100 donations too. It only took me about an hour to set this

up via PayPal. So even if your content is free like mine, give your visitors a means to

voluntarily contribute if they wish. It’s win-win. I’m very grateful for the visitor

support. It’s a nice form of feedback too, since I notice that certain articles produced a

surge in donations — this tells me I’m hitting the mark and giving people genuine value.

These aren’t my only streams of income though. I’ve been earning income online since 1995.

With my computer games business, I have direct sales, royalty income, some advertising

income, affiliate income, and donations (from the free articles). And if you throw in my

wife’s streams of income, it gets really ridiculous: VegFamily.com advertising, direct book

sales, book sales through distributors, web consulting, affiliate income, more Adsense

income, and probably a few sources I forgot. Suffice it to say we receive a lot of

paychecks. Some of them are small, but they add up. It’s also extremely low risk — if one

source of income dries up, we just expand existing sources or create new ones. I encourage

you to think of your blog as a potential outlet for multiple streams of income too.

Automated income

With the exception of #6, all of these income sources are fully automated. I don’t have to

do anything to maintain them except deposit checks, and in most cases I don’t even have to

do that because the money is automatically deposited to my bank account.

I love automated income. With this blog I currently have no sales, no employees, no

products, no inventory, no credit card processing, no fraud, and no customers. And yet I’m

still able to generate a reasonable (and growing) income.

Why get a regular job and trade your time for money when you can let technology do all that

work for you? Imagine how it would feel to wake up each morning, go to your computer, and

check how much money you made while you were sleeping. It’s a really nice situation to be

in.

Blogging software and hardware

I use WordPress for this blog, and I highly recommend it. Wordpress has lots of features

and a solid interface. And you can’t beat its price — free.

The rest of this site is custom-coded HTML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL. I’m a programmer, so I

coded it all myself. I could have just as easily used an existing template, but I wanted a

simple straightforward design for this site, and I wanted the look of the blog to match the

rest of the site. Plus I use PHP and MySQL to do some creative things outside the blog,

like the Million Dollar Experiment.

I don’t recommend using a hosted service like Blogger if you want to seriously monetize your

blog. You don’t get enough control. If you don’t have your own URL, you’re tying yourself

to a service you don’t own and building up someone else’s asset. You want to build page

rank and links for your own URL, not someone else’s. Plus you want sufficient control over

the layout and design of your site, so you can jump on any opportunities that require low-

level changes. If you use a hosted blog, you’re at the mercy of the hosting service, and

that puts the future of any income streams you create with them at risk. It’s a bit more

work up front to self-host, but it’s less risky in the long run.

Web hosting is cheap, and there are plenty of good hosts to choose from. I recommend

Pair.com for a hosting account. They aren’t the cheapest, but they’re very reliable and

have decent support. I know many online businesses that host with them, and my wife refers

most of her clients there.

As your traffic grows you may need to upgrade to a dedicated server or a virtual private

server (VPS). My web server is hosted by ServInt.net. What I like about ServInt is that

they have a nice upgrade path as my traffic keeps growing. I’ve gone through several

upgrades with them already, and all have been seamless. The nice thing about having your

own server is that you can put as many sites on it as the server can handle. I have several

sites running on my server, and it doesn’t cost me any additional hosting fees to add

another site.

Comments or no comments

When I began this blog, I started out with comments enabled. As traffic grew, so did the

level of commenting. Some days there were more than 100 comments. I noticed I was spending

more and more time managing comments, and I began to question whether it was worth the

effort. It became clear that with continued traffic growth, I was going to have to change

my approach or die in comment hell. The personal development topics I write about can

easily generate lots of questions and discussion. Just imagine how many follow-up questions

an article like this could generate. With tens of thousands of readers, it would be insane.

Also, nuking comment spam was chewing up more and more of my time as well.

But after looking through my stats, I soon realized that only a tiny fraction of visitors

ever look at comments at all, and an even smaller fraction ever post a comment (well below

1% of total visitors). That made my decision a lot easier, and in October 2005, I turned

blog comments off. In retrospect that was one of my best decisions. In fact, I wish I had

done it sooner.

If you’d like to read the full details of how I came to this decision, I’ve written about it

previously: Blog Comments and More on Blog Comments.

Do you need comments to build traffic? Obviously not. Just like when I put up ads, I saw

no decline in traffic when I turned off comments. In fact, I think it actually helped me.

Although I turned off comments, I kept trackbacks enabled, so I started getting more

trackbacks. If people wanted to publicly comment on something I’d written, they had to do

so on their own blogs and post a link. So turning off comments didn’t kill the discussion —

it just took it off site. The volume of trackbacks is far more reasonable, and I can easily

keep up with it. I even pop onto other people’s sites and post comments now and then, but I

don’t feel obligated to participate because the discussion isn’t on my own site.

I realize people have very strong feelings about blog comments and community building. Many

people hold the opinion that a blog without comments just isn’t a blog. Personally I think

that’s utter nonsense — the data just doesn’t support it. The vast majority of blog readers

neither read nor post comments. Only a very tiny and very vocal group even care about

comments. Some bloggers say that having comments helps build traffic, but I saw no evidence

of that. In fact, I think it’s just the opposite. Managing comments detracts from writing

new posts, and it’s far better to get a trackback and a link from someone else’s blog vs. a

comment on your own blog. As long-term readers of my blog know, when faced with ambiguity,

my preference is to try both alternatives and compare real results with real results. After

doing that my conclusion is this: No comment.

Now if you want to support comments for non-traffic-building reasons like socializing or

making new contacts, I say go for it. Just don’t assume that comments are necessary or even

helpful in building traffic unless you directly test this assumption yourself.

Build a complete web site, not just a blog

Don’t limit your web site to just a blog. Feel free to build it out. Although most of my

traffic goes straight to this blog, there’s a whole site built around it. For example, the

home page of this site presents an overview of all the sections of the site, including the

blog, article section, audio content, etc. A lot of people still don’t know what a blog is,

so if your whole site is your blog, those people may be a little confused.

Testing and optimization

In the beginning you won’t know which potential streams of income will work best for you.

So try everything that’s reasonable for you. If you learn about a new potential income

stream, test it for a month or two, and measure the results for yourself. Feel free to cut

streams that just aren’t working for you, and put more effort into optimizing those streams

that show real promise.

A few months ago, I signed up for an account with Text Link Ads. It took about 20 minutes.

They sell small text ads on my site, split the revenue with me 50-50, and deposit my

earnings directly into my PayPal account. This month I’ll make around $600 from them,

possibly more if they sell some new ads during the month. And it’s totally passive. If I

never tried this, I’d miss out on this easy extra income.

For many months I’ve been tweaking the Adsense ads on this site. I tried different colors,

sizes, layouts, etc. I continue to experiment now and then, but I have a hard time beating

the current layout. It works very well for me. Adsense doesn’t allow publishers to reveal

specific CPM and CTR data, but mine are definitely above par. They started out in the

gutter though. You can easily double or triple your Adsense revenue by converting a poor

layout into a better one. This is the main reason why during my first year of income, my

traffic grew at 20% per month, but my income grew at 50% per month. Frequent testing and

optimization had a major positive impact. Many of my test failed and even made my income go

down, but I’m glad I did all that testing. If I didn’t then my Adsense income would only be

a fraction of what it is now.

It’s cheap to experiment. Every new advertising or affiliate service I’ve tried so far has

been free to sign up. Often I can add a new income stream in under and hour and then just

wait a month and see how it does. If it flops then at least I learned something. If it

does well, wonderful. As a blogger who wants to generate income, you should always be

experimenting with new income streams. If you haven’t tried anything new in six months,

you’re almost certainly missing some golden opportunities. Every blog is different, so you

need to test things for yourself to see what works for you. Failure is impossible here —

you either succeed, or you learn something.

Pick your niche, but make sure it isn’t too small

Pick a niche for your blog where you have some significant expertise, but make sure it’s a

big enough niche that you can build significant traffic. My wife runs VegFamily.com, a

popular vegan web site. She does pretty well within her niche, but it’s just not a very big

niche. On the other hand, my topic of personal development has much broader appeal.

Potentially anyone can be interested in improving themselves, and I have the flexibility to

write about topics like productivity, self-discipline, relationships, spirituality, health,

and more. It’s all relevant to personal development.

Pick a niche that you’re passionate about. I’ve written 400+ articles so far, and I still

feel like I’m just getting started. I’m not feeling burnt out at all. I chose to build a

personal development site because I’m very knowledgeable, experienced, and passionate about

this subject. I couldn’t imagine a better topic for me to write about.

Don’t pick a niche just because you think it will make you money. I see many bloggers try

to do that, and it’s almost invariably a recipe for failure. Think about what you love

most, and then find a way to make your topic appealing to a massive global audience.

Consider what will provide genuine value to your visitors. It’s all about what you can

give.

A broad enough topic creates more potential advertising partners. If I keep writing on the

same subtopic over and over, I may exhaust the supply of advertisers and hit an income

ceiling. But by writing on many different topics under the same umbrella, I widen the field

of potential advertisers. And I expand the appeal of my site at the same time.

Make it clear to your visitors what your blog/site is about. Often I visit a blog with a

clever title and tagline that reveals nothing about the site’s contents. In that case I

generally assume it’s just a personal journal and move on. I love to be clever too, but I’

ve found that clarity usually yields better results than cleverness.

Posting frequency and length

Bloggers have different opinions about the right posting length and frequency. Some

bloggers say it’s best to write short (250-750 word) entries and post 20x per week or more.

I’ve seen that strategy work for some, but I decided to do pretty much the opposite. I

usually aim for about 3-5 posts per week, but my posts are much longer (typically 1000-2000

words, sometimes longer than 5000 words, including the monster you’re reading right now).

That’s because rather than throwing out lots of short tips, I prefer to write more

exhaustive, in-depth articles. I find that deeper articles are better at generating links

and referrals and building traffic. It’s true that fewer people will take the time to read

them, but those that do will enjoy some serious take-away value.

Expenses

Blogging is dirt cheap.

I don’t spend money on advertising or promotion, so my marketing expenses are nil.

Essentially my content is my marketing. If you like this article, you’ll probably find many

more gems in the archives.

My only real expenses for this site are the hosting (I currently pay $149/month for the web

server and bandwidth) and the domain name renewal ($9/year). Nearly all of the income this

site generates is profit. This trickles down to my personal income, so of course it’s

subject to income tax. But the actual business expenses are minimal.

The reason I pay so much for hosting is simply due to my traffic. If my traffic were much

lower, I could run this site on a cheap shared hosting account. A database-driven blog can

be a real resource hog at high traffic levels. The same goes for online forums. As traffic

continues to increase, my hosting bill will go up too, but it will still be a tiny fraction

of total income.

Perks

Depending on the nature of your blog, you may be able to enjoy some nice perks as your

traffic grows. Almost every week I get free personal development books in the mail (for

potential review on this site). Sometimes the author will send it directly; other times the

publisher will ship me a batch of books. I also receive CDs, DVDs, and other personal

development products. It’s hard to keep up sometimes (I have a queue of about two dozen

books right now), but I am a voracious consumer of such products, so I do plow through them

as fast as I can. When something strikes me as worthy of mention, I do indeed write up a

review to share it with my visitors. I do have very high standards though, so I review less

than 10% of what I receive. I’ve read over 700 books in this field and listened to dozens

of audio programs, so I’m pretty good at filtering out the fluff. As I’m sure you can

imagine, there’s a great deal of self-help fluff out there.

My criteria for reviewing a product on this site is that it has to be original, compelling,

and profound. If it doesn’t meet this criteria, I don’t review it, even if there’s a

generous affiliate program. I’m not going to risk abusing my relationship with my visitors

just to make a quick buck. Making money is not my main motivation for running this site.

My main motivation is to grow and to help others grow, so that always comes first.

Your blog can also gain you access to certain events. A high-traffic blog becomes a

potential media outlet, so you can actually think of yourself as a member of the press,

which indeed you are. In a few days, my wife and I will be attending a three-day seminar

via a free press pass. The regular price for these tickets is $500 per person. I’ll be

posting a full review of the seminar next week. I’ve been to this particular seminar in

2004, so I already have high expectations for it. Dr. Wayne Dyer will be the keynote

speaker.

I’m also using the popularity of this blog to setup interviews with people I’ve always

wanted to learn more about. This is beautifully win-win because it creates value for me, my

audience, and the person being interviewed. Recently I posted an exclusive interview with

multi-millionaire Marc Allen as well as a review of his latest book, and I’m lining up other

interviews as well. It isn’t hard to convince someone to do an interview in exchange for so

much free exposure.

Motivation

I don’t think you’ll get very far if money is your #1 motivation for blogging. You have to

be driven by something much deeper. Money is just frosting. It’s the cake underneath that

matters. My cake is that I absolutely love personal development – not the phony “fast and

easy” junk you see on infomercials, but real growth that makes us better human beings.

That’s my passion. Pouring money on top of it just adds more fuel to the fire, but the fire

is still there with or without the money.

What’s your passion? What would you blog about if you were already set for life?

Blogging lifestyle

Perhaps the best part of generating income from blogging is the freedom it brings. I work

from home and set my own hours. I write whenever I’m inspired to write (which for me is

quite often). Plus I get to spend my time doing what I love most — working on personal

growth and helping others do the same. There’s nothing I’d rather do than this.

Perhaps it’s true that 99 out of 100 people can’t make a decent living from blogging yet.

But maybe you’re among the 1 in 100 who can.

==| How To Make Money From The Internet |==

A guide to the easiest ways of how to make money from the internet armed with a computer and

a bank account.

Ways to Get Money from the Internet
The basic way to get money from the Internet is to promote products via ads. These ads are

placed on your own website or on someone elses such as a search engine in the form of

sponsored ads.

The product might be your own product or someone elses where you participate as an affiliate

and receive commissions on sales.

How Much Money Could You Make from the Internet ?
With your own product you would make a profit on each sale based on your sale price minus

the cost of materials, shipping and other expenses.

Own Product Example
You market an eBook priced at $49 for download from your website and use a 3rd party payment

provider such as ClickBank.

Each month you have 1,000 visitors to your website and a sales conversion rate of 5% so your

revenue is $2,450 per month.

Now consider expenses like web hosting at $10 per month and credit-card processing fees of

8% giving costs of $206 per month.

So, in this example your profits are $2,234 monthly.

Affiliate Marketing Example
You have a website about fishing where you review equipment and have product links carrying

your affiliate tracking code.

Your website gets 10,000 visitors a month and 10% click on a product link. 10% of these

people purchase an average of $100 of merchandise. You get paid 5% commission.

So 1000 people click and 100 buy a product and you are paid 5% of $10,000 in commission.

You only have web hosting costs of $10 per month to deduct.

This nets you $490 per month profit.

Own Product or Affiliate Marketing ?
From the above examples it is clear which is the most profitable approach to take. However,

you may struggle to develop your own product, yet you can immediately access 1000's of other

people's products via the affiliate marketing route.

The affiliate commission on eBooks is generally far higher than physical goods so you can

make good money marketing other people's eBook products rather than developing your own.

For physical products, successful affiliate marketers generally create sites that recommend

the products such as sport's equipment. If the price of the products is high, you can make

good money.

How to Make as Much Money as Possible
Which ever route is taken you need to balance the following factors for maximum profits:

Maximize Visitors
The more people that see your ads, the more will click and buy. Some ways to maximize

visitors are:

Add more content and pages to your website
Optimize your website for search engines
Get more links to your website
Advertise your URL in Google adwords and pay per click search engines
Advertise your URL offline in classified ads
Maximize Click-throughs
Pre-sell products with reviews, articles and related information then provide links in easy

to find places.

Maximize Profit
Adjust the selling price to balance sales volumes at the point where maximum profit is

produced.

Minimize costs by reducing shipping costs and administration costs. One of the best ways to

do this is to market digital products such as software and e-Books that don't require

physical shipping.

Maximize commission. Look for large commission percentages and high conversion rates in

affiliate partnerships.

== | "Pay-Per Click" Ad Campaign: Earn More By Spending Less |==

by: David Riewe


What is "Pay-Per Click"? "Pay-Per Click", is an easy to understand advertising strategy. There are around 300 million searches at major search engines everyday. This causes 80% of internet traffic. Placing your websites on these search engines is very important in reaching as many potential customers as possible. But in order to be seen and clicked most frequently, your website should be viewed at the top most of the search list. Most people only reach up to the third page of a search engine so the lower your rank, the lesser the chance you will be clicked. In "Pay-Per Click" advertising, you pay to be always visible on the internet. You select keywords or key phrases about your website, and the highest bidder ranks the best. There is no upfront cost. You only pay after a visitor clicks your link. This is why it is called "Pay-Per Click".

Everyday millions of people around the world click on Pay-Per Click Advertising Campaign. With the booming internet industry and the ever growing online business, an ad of virtually anybody on the planet can be seen on the internet anywhere in the world.

The "Pay-Per Click" advertising campaign is the premier growth area in online marketing. Last year, an estimated $741.2 million was spent on "Pay-Per Click" advertising. The usual search engine optimization can take weeks or even months to produce results. "Pay-Per Click" advertising can attract customers at an instant. Why? Because, this cutting edge ad campaign can be placed on any website and can be viewed by potential online customers, anywhere, anytime and all the time. The only challenge is placing the ads on proper websites that will attract possible customers for a specific product or services.

"Pay-Per Click" advertising campaign attracts the right consumers at the shortest possible time. This is the most cost effective way of marketing products or services. You can also monitor the customers who visit your site, what they are looking for and what they are buying. With the right creativity on using the right search-phrases, we can direct the right people who are willing to do business with us.

"Pay-Per Click" advertising can easily be managed 24 hours per day and 7 days a week through the internet. This allows you improve the campaign strategy by effectively responding to the activities of both customers and competitors.

So what are you waiting for? "Pay-Per Click" now and let your business take the fast route to success.

== | Web Site Promotion: Give Your Online Promotion An Instant Boost |==

by: Ken Leonard Jr


Promoting a web site the right way means using a multi-layered system. If you are expecting big sales from a one or two method web site promotion plan, you are in for a rude awakening...

Most useful promotion methods take some time to really kick-in. For a sudden surge of traffic to your web site, think about adding some well-placed targeted advertising into the mix.

Any web site, including yours, will require continuous testing. From the headlines to your sales letter, and right down to the price you are charging, you have to apply three very important ideas:

1) Test
2) Test again
3) Repeat

To get your testing into gear, it helps to start a Pay Per Click ad campaign or buy some targeted ezine ads. Within a week, you can have some serious targeted traffic so you can get an idea of what's working and what's not.

Google AdWords is a good place to learn the Pay Per Click game. If you can get the hang of AdWords, you can get some good traffic fast. You are going to pay for each visitor you get, but your other free and low-cost promotion methods will help to balance your spending. Adwords advertisers get to use built-in ad click and sales/lead conversion tools at no extra cost. This makes it easier to put the testing formula above into action.

If you want to speed up the AdWords learning curve, which can be very frustrating and expensive, you really should check out this helpful resource... http://adwords.kljonline.com This best- selling resource will save you tons of money otherwise wasted on trial and error when you don't know what you are doing, besides saving you months of learning time.

Another way to get fast traffic to your web site is to buy top sponsor or solo ads in related email and online newsletters. There are services available that will place an ad for you in many different quality ezines at once. The ad is seen by your target customers, so you get quality traffic as long as your ad copy pulls. Quality traffic is more likely to translate into leads and sales than poor quality traffic.

Buying Pay Per Click and ezine advertising can help you make up for a slow start with your web site promotions. Your free and low-cost promotion methods will give great results over time. A good mix of free promotion traffic and paid advertising traffic will give your product or service the online exposure it deserves!

== | How to get 50 High PR One Way Links Each Month |==

by: John Gergye


It’s easy. So easy it’s almost criminal. But I can get one-way High PR links whenever I want.

How?

Come closer. Let me whisper in your ear.

It involves articles, the google toolbar and a tracking sheet.

That’s it’s. Because there’s really nothing to getting high PR one way links.

Two Must Finds

All you do is find sites to post your articles on that do a good job of directing pagerank (PR) to their articles pages. Sadly many do not.

Others may but they don’t include that coveted live link from your article.

This just means you’ll have to look a little harder. Since the crown jewel in your search for sites to submit articles to is to find those with other articles that show lives links. And the pages they’re on sport at least PR 3 or higher.

Here’s why this is so powerful. You’ll typically get the lion’s share of that PR. Since unlike a links page, quite often the only external link is to the author’s web site.

Just think. While others are thrashing around trading links, you’re quietly developing high search rankings by simply submitting articles. Nifty seo twist on the idea of article marketing isn’t it?

Your Tracking Sheet

Setting up your tracking sheet is simple too. You want at least three headings including website URL, PR, Live Link.

What goes in the first should be obvious.

Jot down the PR of the article pages themselves in the second.

The third you simply note “Y” for yes if there is a live link from the article’s resource box back to the author’s web site. Or “N” for no if there is not.

Now for the tedious part - finding sites to host your articles.

Typically article banks, directories and the like are NOT going to be your best bet. Sorry. I’m not saying you shouldn’t submit articles to them as part of an overall article marketing scheme. Just don’t do so in the hopes of snapping up many high PR one way links is all.

Instead you want to use Google to help you find individual web sites that post articles. There are many ways to find them. Let me share one.

One Way to Find Sites to Submit to

Simply search on your “target keyword phrase + articles”. And don’t forget the quotes. Doing so tells Google to return all pages with both the keyword phrase and the word articles on them. This should return a healthy list of sites in that keyword niche that host articles.

Now you want to do this search in Internet Explorer with the Google toolbar turned on.

At each site visit a few article pages that have been around for awhile. (Sometimes sites will show the date posted. Other times you just have to kinda guess which might have been there longer.) Keep an eye on the PR of those pages. Checking out three or four such pages should give you an idea of the PR potential. Note the highest PR you find on your tracking sheet.

Also take note if the links in the resource box are live or not.

Once you run through the first list try another focus keyword. Or try a related niche. Just be aware you’ll start to see peats and repeats.

Still don’t stop until you’ve got a nice starter list of 25-30 sites that have higher PR and a live link back.

After you’ve got your list write the best, most informative, helpful article you can. No self promotion. No affiliate links. No hype whatsoever.

Then have at it. Submit it to the list you just developed.

If you’ve got a better than average article you can expect at least 10 or maybe even 15 out of 30 sites to post it. And you’re on your way. Just like that you’ve got 10-15 higher PR one way links. Which is probably more than most of your competitors have. And that’s just one article.

That’s right. Once you’ve got one article in motion, look for more sites. Write another high quality article. Submit it first to those who posted your previous article. They should be your favored class and get first crack at your new one. Then submit it to the rest.

Pretty simple isn’t it? Yet this pretty much lays out how I get 50+ high PR one way links each month. Now you can too.

== | A Slice Of The Google Pie |==

by Cameron White


Everyone knows that Google makes billions every year. The question is how can you get a slice of this rather big pie? The answer lies in linking people to other peoples websites.

The best part is that you don't even need your own website for this. When someone visits Google and clicks on your link, they will be directed to someone elses website. If they make a purchase from this website, you will earn up to a 75% commission on the sale.

It doesn't get any easier then that. The two questions I'm most commonly asked is where do I find websites to link to, and how to I get people to click on my links. The answer to the first question is to join Clickbanks Affiliate Network. This is free to do and provides thousands of websites to promote. Join Them Free At www.clickbank.com The Answer to the second question is to use Google Adwords. This is a powerful Google Program that allows you to place adverts on Google Search.

Try typing a keyword into Google. Notice the adverts on the right hand side? This is known as pay per click marketing and is one of the most powerful and cheapest forms of marketing on the internet. Advertisers bid on keywords to get their advert seen when customers search for a related topic. When people click on their advert, they pay the amount they bid. Lets say it's $0.10.

The people that click on these adverts are taken to a website. When they make a purchase, the advertisers earn up to 75% of the sale. Case Study: Lets assume you advertise a product selling guitar lessons. Everytime somone makes a purchase, you earn a commission of £29.95. You bid $0.10 per click to advertise on Google. You place your advert saying "Learn How To Play Guitar".

Let's say 100 people click on your advert. That will cost you $10. If only 4 out of 100 people make a purchase you will earn $119.80 less $10 you spent on advertising. Thats a $109.95 profit for simply placing one advert. Your advert runs on autopilot, once you have set it up.

Now imagine if you set up a few differnt adverts, each advertising a different product. You could soon be making a very decent income from adveritsing on Google. I hope I have opened your eyes to the possibily of making money with Google.

== | 5 Free Ways to Increase Your Website Traffic |==

by: Suzanne Morrison Copyright 2004 Suzanne Morrison

I don't know about you, but when I first entered the world of internet marketing I thought I could just submit my newly finished website to a few search engines, then sit back as the visitors flocked to my site.

I imagined that people would arrive on my website, as if by magic, purchase goods, and perhaps come back again for more.

A week or so later I came down to earth with a big bump.

I realised that it would take a bit of time and effort to see the results that I was dreaming about!

Since my reality check, I have learned all about the weird and wonderful ways of internet marketing.

In this article I will tell you about my top 5 free ways of increasing website traffic.

All these methods are completely free and if you spend some time on them you will find that they work consistently.

(1)Writing Articles

Writing an article on a subject related to your website and getting that article published has two major benefits:

- People who are interested in your article will read it and often click on the URL in your resource box find out more. This gets you another free targeted visitor. Targeted, because that reader wants to find out more on the subject of your article, which is hopefully related to the subject of your website.

- Every publisher of your article must also publish your "resource box". Adding a resource box with your URL to all of your articles will increase the number of links leading back to your website, which in turn helps to increase your search engine position

For a list of directories to submit your article to, see Article Submission Directories

(2)Forum Networking

There are many discussion forums on the internet, on every topic you could possibly imagine.

Most discussion boards allow posters to attach a "Signature" with their post containing additional information about themselves, such as their name, URL and sometimes even an advertisement.

By visiting a few forums regularly and participating in the discussions, asking and answering questions, you can build up trust with other forum members, whilst at the same time getting free exposure for your website.

Just try to make a useful contribution to the forum - be sure to read the forum rules and don't spam!

(3)Reciprocal Linking Website Traffic

Reciprocal linking has two main benefits for you.

Firstly, the more links that you exchange, the more chance there is that someone will follow a link from another site and land on your website.

Secondly, your website will be perceived more importantly by search engines.

The more links you have from other sites, the greater your chance of getter ranked more highly by all the search engines.

Here are some Dos and Don'ts to help you get more out of your link exchanges.

- Do link with sites that will be of interest to your visitors.

- Don't link with pages that have unorganised link directories with hundreds of links on each page. This won't benefit you with increased traffic or search engine rankings.

- Do link with sites that have a clearly labelled "Link Directory" from their main page. You aren't likely to get much traffic from a hidden or hard to find link directory.

- Don't use link farms or FFA pages. You are unlikely to get extra traffic using these methods and the search engines may penalise you.

- Do use link directories to help you find link partners. You can find some Link Exchange Resources here

- Do stay organised. Use link exchange software, or a spreadsheet to keep track of the link exchanges you have requested and the contact details of the webmasters.

(4) Email Signatures

This is a very simple, but often forgotten way of increasing your website visitors.

Most of us are sending lots of emails a day, but many of us just sign them with just our name, or perhaps nothing at all.

Instead, why not end your emails with a short signature containing your name, a bit about your website along with the URL?

Keep the signature short (4 lines), to the point and avoid hype or SHOUTING.

You may be surprised at the extra visitors you receive through doing this. It's amazing how curiosity will lead the recipients of your email to click on your link!


(5)Using Traffic Exchanges

Finally, this is one easy way to guarantee instant hits to your website. You can build up credits for free by surfing or building up a downline to surf for you.

The downside of this method is that the visitors you receive from traffic exchanges are not as targeted as the visitors that you will receive via the other methods that I have described.

The reason for this is that people surf traffic exchanges for one reason - to earn as many credits as possible in as short a space of time as possible!

This gives you a challenge - how do you attract the attention of someone who is looking at your web page for 20 seconds or less?

Here are two tips -

- Know your market - spend some time surfing on the exchange that you are advertising on and pay attention to the types of web pages being advertised. Make sure that the pages you advertise are going to interest your target market.

- Use a short, simple attention grabbing page that can be read in a few seconds - there is no point advertising a huge page of text that takes 5 minutes to read. The chances are, your visitor will get bored and click on the "next" button without giving your page a fair chance.

Regularly invest some time in each of these 5 traffic generating methods and you will see your web statistics moving in the upwards direction before you know it.

==| Amazing Secrets Of A Free Traffic Generation MASTER |==

by: Willie Crawford Copyright 2004 Willie Crawford

Without traffic to your website, you're not going to make any money in your online business (unless you're able to tap into someone else's traffic).

For many websites... especially new sites, one of the fastest, surest ways to drive traffic to the site is pay per click search engines. The RISK in using pay per clicks is that you don't know how well that traffic is going to convert before you've paid for it. You can adjust your webpages and your pay per click listing fairly quickly, but today I want to share with you two of my MAJOR free traffic generation methods.

The most powerful weapon I've used in my marketing arsenal lately is actually... blogging. A blog is simply an on-line diary or weblog. Since they are usually updated frequently, the search engines love them and visit them often.

The way that I use my blogs is that when I make a post, I include a link to a site or webpage that I want spidered by the search engines. Google actually visits my blogs daily, and takes snapshots of everything there, and follows links from the pages, and takes snapshots of those pages! So, I make minor changes to pages that I want to get ranked higher, and then I "help" Google to find those updated pages. It's a simple, ethical, and very powerful method.

I'm fairly new at blogging, but I'm quickly getting the hang of it. Most of what I know about blogging I learned from a course by my friend Paul Short. The course is called RSS Exposed. I recommend you get a copy of Paul's course today and set aside 2 hours to digest it. Get it at:
http://www.profitautomation.com/app/adtrack.asp?AdID=109478

Paul is like me... he's very busy, and doesn't have time for fluff. So his course is under 100 pages, and it's all "stuff" that you can read and then immediately implement.

Does this stuff work thought. My friend Stephen Pierce taught me that NOTHING is more powerful than concrete PROOF. So let's look at how I rank for a few keywords that I'm focusing on right now. I'll show you with a few of the more than 100 niches that I have top 10.... often top 3 rankings for. I know that showing you these examples may attract the attention of potential and existing competitors, so I won't show you the most lucrative ones :-)

Readers who know me, know that my real online success started with a simple soul food or southern cookbook! That one cookbook still generates a very nice six-figure income! This season of the year, I know that people are on-line searching for holiday recipes and also gift-giving ideas. My logs show me how my market finds me... keywords and sources. They show that for the cookbook, most find my site through Google, with MSN being a distant second. Here's how I ranked for a few cooking related terms (as of November 21st, 2004):

Soul Food Recipes - #2 out of 1,220,000
Soul Food - #3 out of 8,840,000
Soul Food Cookbook - #2 out of 273,000
Deep Fried Turkey Recipe - #3 out of 257,000
Deep Fried Turkey Recipes - #4 out of 302,000
Sweet Potato Pie - #2 out of 614,000
Sweet Potato Pie Recipe #2 out of 394,000
Fried Chicken Recipe - #2 out of 861,000
Fried Chicken Recipes - #2 out of 1,160,000
Southern Fried Chicken - #2 out of 436,000
Deep Fried Turkey - #14 out of 330,000
Pound Cake Recipe - #2 out of 547,000
Macaroni And Cheese Recipe - #1 out of 207,000
Collard Green Recipe - #4 out of 21,200
Southern Recipes - # 15 out of 4,970,000
... I guess I need to work on that last listing :-)

One of my other markets is "Internet Marketing," and those looking to start or improve upon an online or home-based business. How do I rank there? Here are a few of the thousands of terms that bring me in free search engine traffic (again based upon my website logs):

Internet Marketing 101 - # 1 out of 5,550,000
Internet Marketing Course - #2 out of 10,600,000
Free Internet Marketing Course - #2 out of 11,800,000
Free Internet Marketing Lessons - #2 out of 2,810,000
Homebased Business - #9 out of 1,930,000
Homebased Business Course - #1 out of 522,000
Free Homebased Business Course - #1 out of 483,000

For those of you without your own product, let's see how I do with products I have reprint rights to. One is a web copywriting course by Bob Serling called Power Copywriting For The Internet. When someone is searching for that course they search on very specific terms... but... since their search is so specific, a higher percentage of them will buy when they get to my website. This is a more niche market, but some of my rankings are:

Internet Copywriter + Bob Serling - #1 out of 985
Web Copywriting + Bob Serling - # 7 out of 918
Web Copywriting Course + Bob Serling - #5 out of 16,400
Power Copywriting For The Internet - #2 out of 128,000

Another product that I have reprint rights to is an excellent course on how to increase your website, and advertising, conversion rates. It's called, "Small Changes - Big Profits." Here's my ranking on keywords customers have recently used to find (and buy) this product:

Increase Website Conversion - #6 out of 2,480,000
How to Increase Website Conversion - # 6 our of 2,490,000
Note that when you enter that last phrases, Google tells you that "how to" is a very common phrase and therefore not included in the search. However, notice that Google found an additional 10,000 pages when I gave it that expression. Ok, so I'm confused too :-)

My second most powerful weapon right now is that I write lots of ezine articles... like this one. Since 1998, I would estimate that I've written over 300. Those articles are a very powerful way of getting one-way links to my site. Those articles are a powerful way for people with specific problems or interest to find my sites.

Here's a simple example of how powerful articles can be. I know for a fact that the majority of people in network marketing aren't doing that great. I also know why. The proof that I know what they are doing wrong, and how to correct it, is provided by the fact that I was recently the #2 producing representative in a major network marketing company for 2 consecutive months. The only reason I wasn't #2 longer is that I've only been with the company a little over 4 month, and that in my fourth month, I was the #1 top producing rep in the entire company!

Recognizing what many network marketers are doing wrong... especially those that market over the internet, I wrote an article on the topic. This article targeted those who wanted to know why their network marketing is failing. So if you go to Google and enter...

"Network Marketing Failing" without the quotation marks, you'll see that the returns for webpages featuring my article take up the entire first page. If a person were to type in the statement "My Network Marketing Is Failing" my page ranks #1 out of 312,000. Do people search on these terms? Not as many as search on more competitive terms, but why not go after easier terms... why not go after "the low-hanging fruit."

People do visit my sites after reading the hundreds of articles that I've written, and they do make purchases and join my network marketing team. That's proof that writing and properly using articles is a very powerful traffic generation technique. I have lots of resources on how to properly do this inside my private membership site. If you're not a member, you should join today. Inside the site you'll find lots more solid, usable information like you just gotten in this article.

I've just shared with you two of my most powerful free traffic generation methods. I actually know HUNDREDS but only use a handful. I believe that it's better to get really good at using a few rather than tinkering with (but never mastering) many. You need to do your research and find the techniques that work best for you.

If you'd like a really comprehensive course on website traffic and sales generation methods, I recommend John Reese's Traffic Secrets Course. Check out John's course to learn a ton of ways to outflank your competition at:
http://www.profitautomation.com/app/adtrack.asp?AdID=110203
It's 14 DVD's, so realize that it will throw a LOT of information at you. Make sure that you pick just a few techniques he covers, and then put them into immediate action rather than letting the sheer volume of information overwhelm you.

As I've demonstrated, being a master at generating free, responsive traffic doesn't have to be complicated or even difficult :-)

==| How do I drive traffic to a brand new website? |==

by: Richard Grady Copyright 2005 Richard Grady

Every single day, more and more people upload brand new websites to the Internet. I don't have any figures but there must be hundreds of thousands of new pages being added daily (if not considerably more!)

The one thing that all of these new websites need in order to make their existence worthwhile is traffic, which leads me to one of the most common questions I am asked and the subject of this newsletter:

'How can you generate traffic to a brand new website?'

Of course, there are a number of different answers to this question and what I would do myself is probably very different to what a completely new Internet entrepreneur would do. The reason I say this is that the first thing I do when launching a new site is make use of my existing website traffic by advertising the new site on my other established sites. In addition, I have the luxury of a large mailing list which I can use to drive traffic to the new site.

I appreciate that anyone starting out in online business won't have these options open to them (and in fairness, neither did I when I first started), so let's look at things from the beginning. Day one of your first website.....

It is a fact that the quickest and probably most effective way of bringing targeted traffic to your website is by paying for it. Now before you rush off and sink $50 into one of those '50,000 hits for $50' schemes, DON'T, this isn't what I mean. Those schemes are largely a complete waste of money. Even if you get the traffic that you are promised (as opposed to some software script visiting your site and pretending to be a visitor), it will not be targeted and therefore there is a very low chance that the traffic will generate sales. When I talk about buying traffic, I mean by using the pay- per-click services offered by most of the big search engines.

You probably already know the sort of thing I mean - for example, Google Adwords. Pretty much any search on Google will display a list of adverts down the right-hand side of the page and these are all paid adverts. Every time you click on one of them, the advertiser pays Google a fixed amount which could be anything from 5 cents upwards (depending upon how competitive the keyword is).

Pay-per-click allows you to be very selective about which keywords your advert is shown for and this allows you to target your advertising perfectly. Other big names in the pay-per-click market include Overture, Espotting and Findwhat.

Now, before you all start emailing me and saying that you already knew about PPC let me just say that I am well aware that people know about it. The problem (as I see it), is that people aren't using this type of service because of the fact that they don't want to spend any money on advertising. That's all well and good but the fact is that the Internet is getting more and more competitive each day and the chances of you building a successful website business from scratch without investing any money are tiny to say the least.
drive traffic
If you want to attract a decent level of traffic to a brand new website in a short period of time, it is almost a necessity that you use pay-per-click on one of the main search engines. If you don't, then the growth of your traffic levels will be painfully slow and inconsistent at best.

When I launched my very first websites I invested heavily in pay-per-click advertising. At one point, I was spending over $6000 a month on Google Adwords alone!!! Seriously I really was spending that much money. It was a constant battle to tweak the website sales copy and continue to test the advertisement text just to make sure that my sales were covering the advertising payments each month. At the time I was probably just about breaking even but buying traffic in this quantity meant that I was able to fine-tune my sales pages and start to build up a list of mailing list subscribers.

Once you have got to the stage where you know your sales pages are converting visitors into buyers, then you can start to gear up with other methods of getting traffic to your site - writing articles, linking strategies, viral methods (ebooks etc), using your eBay 'About Me' page, using your link as a signature when you post on forums etc. All of these methods will win you traffic (and in most cases it will be completely free) but it will take time for the traffic to build to a worthwhile level. If you rely solely on free traffic, you really will be building your business one hit at a time.

Of course, once the free methods of gaining traffic start to pay off, you can begin to wind down your paid methods, though you may not want to - after all, if you are earning more in sales than you are paying for your pay-per-click traffic, why stop it?

As your portfolio of websites grows, you will also be able to share the traffic around a bit by linking to your own sites and of course, if you are capturing your visitors email addresses, you will be building a mailing list of people interested in the products you are offering.

Like I say, I appreciate that the above may not be the ground-breaking secret that you were hoping for but as with so many things online, there really is no secret. Achieving success is simply about taking action and whilst you can succeed online by spending very little money, the chances are that you will succeed a lot quicker by making a bit of an investment. You don't have to be spending thousands of dollars a month as I was but any new business owner should be prepared to invest a few hundred dollars a month in order to get things off the ground....

==| How To Find The Top Keywords Relating To Your Theme |==

by: Jeff Schuman


Have you ever wondered what people are searching for online? More specifically have you ever wondered what people are searching for as it relates to the theme of your website?

Let's say you have a website built around the theme of music downloads. Here are 2 easy ways to get a list of keywords you can use to build your home page and then build more pages around each specific word.

1. Do a search by typing in music downloads here:
http://www.pixelfast.com/overture

As of November 2004 the keyword phrase" music downloads was searched 1,068,310 times. We can also see that "free music downloads" was searched 1,169,992 times.

As you look down the list you will find all kinds of combinations of keyword phrases with the words "music downloads" included in them.

You can build specifc web pages centered around each keyword phrase. You will find that lesser searched keywords have less competition and therefore will be easier for you to make it to the top of a search engine and generate free traffic.

For example the keyword phrase " free mp3 music download" was searched 22,360 times. This would be a great keyword phrase to target in comparison to the more generic phrase "music downloads."

2. Take a look at what people are willing to pay for a keyword here:

http://www.team-schuman.com/7searchkeywordtool

When typing in "music download" it brings up the keyword, number of searches, and the top 5 bids. It also brings up a complete list of possible keyword phrases and what people are paying for them. You can use this information to find affiliate products relating to each specific keyword phrase and then build additional web pages relating to each specific one. You can add these keywords to your home page and then join 7Search as an affiliate and add pay per click text to your pages.

Then get paid by 7Search when someone clicks on an ad relating to that keyword. I do this to generate hundreds and thousands of dollars each month. It is a great way to make some money on your site for generating traffic to it. Here are examples on 2 of my websites. You will see the text ads for the Top 10 websites at the top of each page.

http://www.team-schuman.com

http://www.sites-plus.com

If you are looking for top keywords being searched in a broad range of categories then subscribe to the "Keyword Report" here:
http://www.team-schuman.com/wordtracker

Click on the link for Keyword Report and you will receive the top 500 keywords people are searching for delivered to you by email every week. Then use the Overture and 7Search keyword tools to find more specific keywords you can build websites and web pages around. This is a great strategy and a great way to get started making money with your own theme website and web pages around that theme.

Remember this simple point. People go to the internet to find information. They will type in all kinds of keyword phrases and variations of those keywords. The more web pages you can build targeting those specific keywords the better off you will be when it comes to increasing your website traffic and making more money online.

==| Need more traffic to your website? Three sites that will increase your traffic for free! |==

by: Sher Holloway



What good is a website if no one visits? And how do you get traffic to your website without spending a fortune? Getting visitors to your website doesn't have to be hard and you don't have to spend hundreds of dollars to find out how to get more traffic. It just involves some common sense.

What do you do when someone wants to visit your house, but doesn't know where it is? You give them directions to find it. The same applies to your website. You've got to tell potential visitors how to find it. The more people you tell, the more people you will have visit.

Below are three places that can increase your website traffic for free. All you have to do is put some elbow grease into it and these websites can help serve as the map to your site.

1. DMOZ. http://www.dmoz.org: If this isn't your first website, I don't have to tell you how important it is to be listed in DMOZ. But just in case this is your first trip around the net, you HAVE to be listed in DMOZ. Why? The short version is because a listing with them will ensure listings with others. Go there right now and spend some time looking for the perfect category for your site. Once you've found it, click on "suggest URL" and enter your information. DMOZ is selective, so be sure your website is in tip top shape first.

2. Family-Content: http://www.Family-Content.com. The owner of Family Content, Donna Schwartz Mills, is providing a wonderful service to webmasters. Essentially you write a short article on any subject about which you have some knowledge. Whether it's how to wax a mustache or how to bake bread or how to make a million dollars, everyone has something to write. Spell check your article, check for errors in grammar and most importantly, add a resource box at the end. Once you submit your article to Family Content other webmasters are allowed to use your content for free in their websites or ezines so long as they keep your resource box intact. Every person that reads your article... and that can amount to A LOT...will also have the opportunity to visit your website. Not sure what a resource box is? You'll see mine at the end of this article.

3. The Business Owner's Idea Cafe: http://www.IdeaCafe.com.

This is one of the best sites for small business owners and people who hope to someday be small business owners on the net. They've been mentioned in everything from The Wall Street Journal to Business Week to USA Today. The Business Owner's Idea Cafe can help you increase traffic to your site for free in two ways.

First of all, they have a vast message board of sorts that covers a variety of topics. Search the boards, called Cyberschmooz, to find a topic to which you have something to contribute. Write a well thought out reply and as you should already be in the practice of doing whenever you post to any message board, add a link to your website after your name.

If you've been in business over six months, you should also submit your "biz profile" in their "Biz Celebrities" section. If you're accepted, your website will be prominently displayed on the front page of their site along with a story about you and what you do. It's not easy to get listed and for goodness sake, don't try to submit your business the very first time you visit their site. But, once you've become familiar with who they are, what they do and what they are looking for, you have a shot.

There you have it. Three places you can visit on the Internet that can dramatically increase the traffic to your website completely free. You can start right now and before you know it, you'll see a jump in the number of visitors to your website. What are you waiting for? Get busy!




About the author:
Be sure and visit http://www.MomAndHerVisit http://www.MomAndHerMoney.comtoday for lots more free information about working from home."Make more, spend less, be happy!"