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Thursday, April 21, 2005 |
Over the last few weeks, I've been doing a lot of work testing blogs and RSS feeds. As part of that research, I've been building some test websites to see how the tools work together.
At 21st Century Small Business, I've been experimenting with the Webmax Studio site builder and I like it a lot. Even on this old slow Macintosh, it works great. I believe that even a beginner can put together a great website using their services. You can get a free 10-day trial (information on the bottom of every page of the site).
I've been working on that site to integrate RSS feeds from PRweb.com and other sites. I'll be adding integrated feeds from some of my blogs, blogs I recommend, news feeds, and other resources in the near future.
On 21st Century Webhosting, I've been working with the new version of WordPress (1.5) that can create both blog entries and stand-alone pages out of the blog chronological structure. I've been creating a number of pages targeted at specific subjects related to modern webhosting and I'm bringing in information from Amazon.com, Yahoo!, About.com, WikiPedia, and other sites. Most of the pages have a lot of dynamic content built using PHP and various feed processors. It's been an interesting experiment and I'm looking forward to building this site with more information as I have time.
On 21st Century Marketing Tools, I've been experimenting with using WordPress and a links program I licensed to store links to sites that I recommend and use in my marketing efforts. I'm not interested in exchanging links on this site -- the directory will be hand-built to point to sites I want to use myself and which may be useful to you, too.
Over the last half-year, or so, I've been working with PHP-Nuke on A Portal for Cherokee County, NC and on Dilbeck Communications. Because of all the time I've been devoting to experimenting with the new tools, I've fallen behind on updating all the sites -- and being sick for a few days and having to get my taxes together last week didn't help, either.
I like PHP-Nuke, but it can be intimidating to beginners and even experienced webmasters. It helps if you have a very good grounding in both HTML and PHP before customizing and extending PHP-Nuke, but I like the sites and the tools they offer and look forward to extending them in the future.
I've added an RSS newsfeed to my Forum on JohnDilbeck.com and I'll be syndicating it over several sites in the coming weeks. You can see an example of this syndication on the home page of JohnDilbeck.com. I'm looking forward to more conversations there and hope this will help introduce new visitors to the forum.
As much as I like PHP-Nuke, it doesn't do everything I want to do, so I've started a new site at Residual Income Gazette where I'll be talking only about creating residual income through online marketing. I've yet to finish customizing the installation, but I'm getting close. I look forward to adding content to the site over the coming months and I invite you to drop in and take a look around.
Between illness, thunderstorms, and probably too much experimentation on new websites for my own good, I've gotten behind on some of my correspondence, and I'm looking forward to catching up on all of that soon.
One of my primary goals for May and June is to add a considerable amount of content to A Year From Now -- Act on Your Dreams!. I have some good ideas on expanding the site in a new direction and I've been talking to an experienced editor and writer to take over the newsletter duties so we can participate more with our valued visitors. Even though the site has been neglected for a couple of months, it's attracting hundreds of new visitors every month and I look forward to working with Dennis to make the site grow into what we've been imagining and discussing.
In the meantime, I've signed up for over a dozen new blogging services and I like some of them and don't like others. When I have some time, I'm going to talk about them and then I'll discontinue the ones I don't like.
I've started at least two dozen blogs over the last few months so I could quickly get some experience with them, and more and more I'm liking WordPress over all the others. I'll probably be cancelling all but a half-dozen or so blogs so I can concentrate on writing about what I'm learning rather than spreading out so wide and learning as much as I can in a short period.
While I like WordPress more than the others I've tried, I also like Blogger and I'll continue developing several blogs there. Some, such as John Dilbeck Musings are hosted on Google's site, blogspot.com. Some, such as MurphyNC28906.com are managed by blogger, but the actual pages are FTPed to one of the servers I use for several of my other sites so that it's actually hosted on one of my domains. I'm doing this for several reasons, one of which is to see whether I get better natural search results using my own domain or letting Google host them for me for free. The jury's still out on this at this time.
One thing I've already noticed is that I get better search results on Yahoo and MSN than I do on Google when searching for keywords I use a lot on my blogs, such as "Murphy NC" (without the quotes in the search). I'm getting first page results on Yahoo, MSN, and Ixquick, but not always on Google. I'm not sure why, but I am very happy to see Yahoo and MSN giving Google come competition.
If you have any comments on any of this, I'd love to hear from you.
Context Tag: websites
7:41:09 AM 
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Wednesday, January 5, 2005 |
It looks like I picked the right year to focus on adding more blogs and more RSS (also known as XML) feeds to my sites!
From the Pew Internet & American Life Project site:
By the end of 2004 blogs had established themselves as a key part of online culture. Two surveys by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in November established new contours for the blogosphere: 8 million American adults say they have created blogs; blog readership jumped 58% in 2004 and now stands at 27% of internet users; 5% of internet users say they use RSS aggregators or XML readers to get the news and other information delivered from blogs and content-rich Web sites as it is posted online; and 12% of internet users have posted comments or other material on blogs. Still, 62% of internet users do not know what a blog is.
If you're one of the 62% who don't know what a blog is or what RSS is all about, let me recommend the following sites to start learning about them.
RSS was co-developed by Dave Winer and you should read about Radio Userland, the product I use to manage this blog and nearly 5,000 pages on several websites. Also, be sure to read All about RSS.
Another good resource, and one that keeps getting better, is written by Ken Evoy. One of Ken's claims to fame is presiding over the company that developed Site Build It!, which I think is the best web design, hosting, and promotion service on the planet. I am one very happy customer. The product just keeps getting better. Visit the Site Build It! link first so you can see where he's coming from. Then, go read the information he wrote about RSS: Really Simple Syndication for his Site Build It! customers.
I spent several months in late 2004 developing my blogging infrastructure and staking my claim on several blogs at blogger.com. Now that the development work is mostly done, I can pass along newsworthy information to a wider audience faster and more efficiently than ever before.
Also, from the other side of the story, I use Radio Userland to read others' RSS feeds using the news aggregator that is built in. I subscribe to a little over 50 feeds and read them on a more-or-less daily basis. It's a lot easier to read the RSS feed and then click on a link that interests me than it is to remember to go to all 50 of those sites and try to find the new information.
I'm to the point now that I'd rather get newsletters and site updates in an RSS feed than in an email message or newsletter.
I have commented on quite a few blogs and I always meet an interesting person on the other end when he or she responds to my comments.
One of the most interesting recent developments -- for me at least -- has been the addition of RSS feeds to the Site Build It! customer forums. Now, instead of having to go to the forum every day, I added the RSS feed and I can easily read down the list of posts to see which ones I want to read and perhaps respond to. This is a very busy forum, and the addition of the RSS feed has shaved a couple of hours off my forum reading time every day.
I think we'll be seeing much more about blogs (also known as weblogs or journals), RSS, XML, and similar topics this year.
If you have a business with information that changes on a regular basis, you should look into blogs and RSS syndication.
2:38:11 AM
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Sunday, December 19, 2004 |
I've been telling you for a long time how much I like Site Build It! and how much the tools included with this outstanding website design, hosting, and promotion service have helped me earn more with my sites.
From now until midnight on Christmas Day, you can buy one SBI account and get a second one free. That's an outstanding bargain and I just wish I had the time and energy to take advantage of it.
If you are looking for a way to build a site that attracts targeted visitors instead of sitting there and growing cobwebs, this is your opportunity.
You can get both sites for the price of one -- or you can keep one and give it to a friend, relative, or colleague to help them build their business, too.
I host my Act On Your Dream! site using Site Build It! and I couldn't be happier. I haven't had the time to build that site to where I want it, but that will be one of my major priorities in January and February.
I can tell you, however, that I've been using the tools that are included with an SBI site to help me on all my other websites, even though they are hosted on other services.
If I were starting all over from scratch and if I were only going to build a few websites, there is no doubt in my mind that I'd use Site Build It! to do it.
If you want to build your business and promote it online, don't pass up this opportunity! If you wait just one second after midnight on December 26, you'll miss the special sale. Don't delay.
7:19:36 AM
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Saturday, December 4, 2004 |
Your opportunities with ShopForT1 continue to increase on a regular basis, as more and more Cognigen agents are seeing that T1 (and larger circuit) sales have closed and they are seeing the commissions. You are encouraged to take the time to understand what you have to offer here, since ShopForT1 is one of the absolute best deals around today.
You find a need for bandwidth, the lead is entered into the system, and a technical professional closes the sale for you! It just doesn't get any better than that!
With the advent and ever-increasing demand for VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol, or broadband phone) services for businesses, ShopForT1 is aligned with both Broadvox and Packet8 to provide a bundled solution for customers. This can be a tremendous cost savings for businesses, since a data-only T1 is typically less expensive than an integrated T1 line (combining data and voice circuits). The ShopForT1 closers understand this and are explaining it to customers as a cost-effective option on a regular basis.
The carriers that are represented by ShopForT1 are also noticing the tremendous success, and are continually amazed at the number of orders that are closed. As a result of this, these carriers are regularly offering very generous spiffs, bonuses, and increased commissions to compensate ShopForT1 (and you, the agent) for this continued success.
Is there really an opportunity here? You bet!
Consider that within the United States there are well over a MILLION T1 lines being used. This is a substantial market for you to go after. Now, consider that if a T1 line has been in place for more than 2 years, it is very likely that the customer is paying much more than he should be for it. If that T1 line has been in place for more than 3 years, it is almost certain that the customer is paying more than he needs to for that service. Even "techno-savvy" customers sometimes find it difficult to understand how ShopForT1 can offer such low prices from top-tier carriers. One ShopForT1 closer tells the story that one customer didn't believe the prices he was being quoted by the closer over the phone, so he asked the closer to print the quote and get it notarized, and then fax it to him!
How can ShopForT1 offer such prices from these top-tier carriers?
The name of the game is VOLUME. Based on the volume of business that ShopForT1 provides to all of our carriers every month, those carriers guarantee the best prices possible. That's why the closers don't hesitate to tell the customer which carriers are being quoted, because the guarantee is that the customer cannot go to that same carrier directly and get a better price on the same service.
For you, the agent, ShopForT1 can represent a gold mine. Consider that you don't need to close the sale -- the sale is closed for you by a professional technical consultant at no cost to you or the customer. Also consider that a T1 line or larger circuit is almost always sold on a 1, 2, or 3 year contract. This means that you have a guaranteed commission every month from that customer for the life of the contract, and may ALSO get a one-time bonus or spiff from it.
It just doesn't get any better than this.
Well, we have said that before and it still continues to get better and better, with more tools being added regularly. Don't miss the boat on this tremendous opportunity.
6:29:40 PM
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Cognigen agents now have the opportunity to market Packet8, 8x8's broadband phone service for both business and residential subscribers. Using high-speed connections to make voice and video calls over the Internet, Broadband Phone (a.k.a. VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol) is one of the biggest growth industries around, and Packet8 is ranked as one of the top three services available.
Packet8 is an affordable and easy-to-use broadband telephone and videophone service. Designed with both residential and business customers in mind, Packet8 allows anyone with broadband (high-speed) Internet access to use their regular phone to make UNLIMITED calls to anywhere in the U.S. and Canada for as little as $19.95 per month. Business plans start at $34.95. Packet8 subscribers with videophones can make video calls for as little as $29.95 per month. All Packet8 subscribers get world wide UNLIMITED calling to other Packet8 subscribers at no extra charge.
From now until midnight (PST) on December 31, 2004, all customers who sign up for Packet8 services from a Cognigen representative will receive a $19.95 discount off activation. For this limited time, the discount has been increased from $5.00 to $19.95. Prior to this promotion, the initial charge to the customer was an activation fee of $24.95 and the first monthly service fee of $19.95.
5:45:22 PM
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Ken Evoy's free Internet search utility has just gotten better, if you have any interest in RSS, XML, and blogs, or specialty hubs and directories.
Search It!, which does NOT involve downloading anything to your computer, is a utility that makes it easier to find information relating to business and ecommerce on the Internet. By using a multi-step process (usually three steps, but sometimes four), it will build the searches for you and go to the appropriate search engine, directory, or content site to find the information in which you are interested.
One item you'll see in the Step 1 dropdown box is "Reference Library for Content." By selecting that, Search It! will automatically populate the Step 2 box with appropriate choices. There is a link to get help for using the tool once you have selected your choices for Step 1 and Step 2.
The new searches listed in the Reference Library for Content choice in Step 1 are:
Yahoo! RSS Domain Search
Feedster Blog/RSS Search
Syndic8.com RSS Search
Google RSS Content Search
Yahoo! RSS Content Search
It's taken me years to learn how to search for some of these things and where to go to find them, and Ken has just given you that power for free.
Not only that, but he just added four more searches related to hubs and directories. Select "Specialty Hubs and Directories" in Step 1, and you'll see the following new searches in Step 2:
Google Wide
Google Tight
Yahoo! Wide
Yahoo! Tight
The help link below Step 1 and Step 2 gives information on how to use these new searches.
I use Search It! just about every day. It's easy to use. Leave the small window open in the top-left corner of your screen so it will be available when you want to find something of interest. The more I use it, the better I like it.
I was surprised to see that I have several sites listed in the top 10 for both the Yahoo! Wide and Tight searches for the following keywords: Step 3 = "Murphy NC" and Step 4 = "travel". It looks like the work I've been doing for the last several months is starting to pay off.
4:47:02 PM
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Friday, November 5, 2004 |
As I wrote back on July 20th, I was sick for some time and just wasn't able to get anything done.
Boy, did that change!
Between then and now, I've been adding to websits and blogs every day.
New websites: A Year From Now -- Act on Your Dream!, Dilbeck Communications, and Cherokee County, North Carolina.
AYearFromNow.com is hosted on what I think is the best web design, webhosting, and website promotion service available on the planet: Site Build It!. I haven't had the time to really flesh out this site yet, but that is planned for this winter. Are you interested in telling your success story?
DilbeckCommunications.com is hosted by Hosting With Us and this is a great webhosting service that offers quality hosting, outstanding support, and good prices. To build this site, I had to learn PHP-Nuke and PHP programming, but now that I know how to do it, the site is coming along nicely.
CherokeeCountyNC.com is a portal for residents of, and visitors to, Cherokee County, North Carolina, where I live. I've been thinking about building this site for about a year and after I learned PHP-Nuke it seemed to be just what I wanted to build the site. It, too, is hosted by Hosting With Us. I'll probably be putting most of my efforts into expanding and maintaining this site.
With email getting so bogged down by spam and spam filters, I've decided to look into other ways to communicate and I've been looking at options for building blogs and syndicating the content.
Now, I know that I've been blogging ever since I started my subdomain on EditThisPage.com and Dave Winer and Userland were on the bleeding edge of blogging, even before it had a name. I've been using Radio Userland for years to build my static sites and to maintain this blog. Over the years, many others have joined in and there are now many tools for blogging. I've been experimenting with Blogger.com and running my feeds through FeedBurner.com to parse the Atom files that Blogger uses, instead of the more-common RSS. I've managed to get syndication working for all my blogs and you can see this at work at JohnDilbeck.com/blogs/.
I'm also experimenting with using Blogger to build static pages on CherokeeCountyNC.com, so, a couple of days ago, I changed the settings so that Blogger.com will FTP the Cherokee County, North Carolina Blog to blog.cherokeecountync.com. My thinking is that this will build new static pages on the site, in addition to the dynamic pages built by PHP-Nuke. I believe that the search engines will index the static pages better than the dynamic pages, but I don't know this for sure, and that's why I'm testing it.
It's been a wild couple of months, but a lot of progress has been made. Feedburner.com was a great find and I heartily endorse their products. Blogger.com was also a great find and I endorse their product as well.
After the hacker problems I had on GeorgiaDragRacing.com, I've been removing almost all the scripts from my static sites and moving towards other services that I can integrate into my sites using FTP and/or javascript.
Some work better and some not as well. So far, I'm not sure which I think is the best. Still testing.
At this point, I don't have any plans to build any more sites over the next three months, but I have some ideas for new sites this spring. Over the next few weeks, I'll be updating my sites and fleshing out the new ones. You're invited to visit!
5:39:01 AM
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Saturday, June 12, 2004 |
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Monday, June 7, 2004 |
Over the last few weeks, Cognigen has introduced four new services related to long distance phone calling, domain registration, webhosting, and wireless service.
PNG Power 3000 -- Flat rate long distance service with 3000 anytime minutes for $29.95 per month. No need to switch long distance...
HostingWithUs Web Hosting Service -- Quality web hosting from $5.95 per month! No setup fee nor a 3, 6, or 12 month prepay to get our low prices. Be sure to check out the features and low prices on bulk reseller hosting which is ideal for online marketers who have many websites. (I know I'll be getting one of these accounts later this month.)
DomainsWithUs Domain Name Registration -- A domain name of your choice, registered at $9.75 per year. Search all the extensions. All popular features are included.
FonCentral Specializing in T-Mobile -- Great personal and family plans, get a free phone with up to a $100 cash back. Cellular portability available!
These are the four newest products available from Cognigen. You can see all our services at my Cognigen sales site.
In addition to the products listed above, we offer services from some of the best telecommunications businesses in the world. You can choose from long distance calling services, bundled local and long distance, 800 toll-free services, high-speed Internet access (including DSL, T1, T3 and higher), phone calling cards, dial-up Internet access, broadband phone (VoIP), dial-around long distance, conference calling, voice messaging, web services, wireless cell phones, satellite TV, computers and more. Many of these services are available to both residential and business customers -- often at the same price!
All products are not available at all locations. The web page for each product will help you determine what is available at your home or office.
I appreciate your business!
12:09:09 PM
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I just noticed that my SFI sales team, while still a very young venture, already has affiliates on five continents.
Only with the invention and wide distribution of the Information Superhighway would something like this be possible with the expenditure of so little money in promotion and advertising.
Of course, it is also a testament to SFI Marketing Group, a company that has been investing millions of dollars and years of effort to build a great marketing organization. I've been a team leader for just a few months, but it's only because of all the effort they put into building the infrastructure, hiring a great staff, creating training systems, programming their computer systems, negotiating contracts with suppliers, and handling shipping and customer service that I've been able to jump in and start building a sales team with them so quickly.
I'm looking forward to helping the affiliates who have joined my team build successful home businesses of their own. Together we'll help each other succeed.
Thanks to each of you!
A company is only as good as the products we sell, and I'm happy to see our selection of quality products grow and improve.
If you're interested in building a home business of your own and you're willing to invest time, effort, and two or three dollars per day to promote and grow it, I invite you to join my sales team, too.
10:40:01 AM
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Thursday, April 1, 2004 |
Recently, Google.com and WordTracker.com joined forces to
create a site that makes it simple to do quick research for
finding niches that may be profitable for your website.
You can test it at NicheBot.com.
It's easy to use. If you need more detailed research, they
refer you directly to WordTracker.com.
Last October, I wrote an article on building web traffic,
and I updated it earlier today. You can learn more about
finding niches and building traffic to your site there.
I recommend several tools that I use on my sites.
The updated article is:
Building Website Traffic.
Finding a niche and building a site with real, helpful
content is the only way that I know of to compete with the
big companies that have much more time and more people than
we'll ever have. They can control the general keywords and
can afford to spend thousands of dollars in advertising
every month.
For those of us with smaller budgets and less resources,
we have to be more agile and look for treasure in the
niches.
If you can identify a niche and build a website that has
great content, you can build traffic and eventually
monetize that traffic by selling your products, services,
or recommending products for sale through affiliate
programs or arranging to get finders fees for sending
targeted leads to other companies.
You can learn a lot more about this from Ken Evoy.
He teaches you how to find profitable niches in his
Affiliate Masters Course which you can download free. It's in PDF format.
6:04:43 AM
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Back in January, 2004, SFI Marketing Group introduced
their new Veriuni Store, which makes well over 700
products available for their affiliates to sell.
I started analyzing the store in February and researching
keywords and phrases in March and April.
As soon as I finished the emergency work I had to do on GeorgiaDragRacing.com in May, I turned my attention to building
my version of the SFI Veriuni Store on JohnDilbeck.com.
I did this for a couple of reasons. Some of the affiliates
on my sales team were having trouble finding all the
products they could sell and building links to them.
So, I, to the best of my knowledge, built a site that
links to all the current products using simple HTML. Now
anyone on my sales team can find a product they want to
link to and use my code as a sample they can modify by
replacing my SFI ID with theirs and posting the links
to their sites or blogs.
The other reason is so that I can attract new customers
and sell the products myself. Please feel free to visit
the store and purchase whatever strikes your fancy.
We offer hundreds of magazine subscriptions at competitive
prices. I invite you to subscribe to the magazines of your choice.
5:50:42 AM
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I got side-tracked in May. For several months, I've been
fighting one or more hackers who have been breaking into
my brother's site at GeorgiaDragRacing.com and
installing software that attacked other computers and ran
an Internet Relay Chat -- both of which are not allowed by
our hosting company who have been working with us to put
a stop to this.
On May 5, 2004, I received a notice from our SysAdmin that
the hackers had installed software once again and he had
detected and deleted it. He told me that he'd been patient
for a long time, but this was the final notice. One more
break-in and our account would be cancelled and we'd have
to find another company to host the site. There are over
2,500 pages on that site!
Since I didn't know how they were breaking in and I'd done
everthing I knew, it was time for drastic action. After a
long talk with David, my brother, we decided to completely
rebuild the site and remove all the scripts that we were
using to power the photo album, bookstore, forum, and
news updating. It was going to be a big job, but it would
be less work than moving everything -- including thousands
of photos -- to another site.
So, I looked for alternate ways to do what we'd been doing
with PERL and PHP scripts. We decided to create a blog
at blogger.com for the news updates, which can now be
found at gdrn.blogspot.com. The photos will be
hosted at ImageStation.com until we find another site that
is easier to use. The bookstore was completely rebuilt
using javascript and direct links to Amazon.com and the
forum was deleted in favor of the mailing list hosted by
Yahoo groups.
So, I had to completely redesign everything and rebuild
all the pages of the site. It took about three weeks of
working around the clock to get it finished, but now we're
moving on using the new tools. Most of the functionality
was saved, but it was a huge job and it pulled me away
from the other tasks I had scheduled for this month.
There are probably quite a few broken links on the site
and I'll have to find and squash those bugs as they
come up.
So, why am I telling you about this?
When building a business on the Internet, you may not
always have total control over what happens. We had
to make a decision and I had to do a lot of work to
do our best to keep the site open. Now, we're running
no custom scripts and nobody but me knows the password
to the site. Hopefully, that will foil the hackers.
In this case, the bad guys won the battle, but I still
intend to win the war.
5:37:29 AM
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Will Local Search Live Up to its Hype?. The potential exists for more geographic-specific search results and advertising, but meeting Web users' needs and getting local businesses to advertise remain challenges, say executives of search and online directory companies. [eWEEK Technology News]
6:52:14 PM
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Wednesday, March 31, 2004 |
Net Hoaxes Snare Fools All Year. Infinite power supplies, 87-pound house cats and dehydrated water do not exist. Yet people continue to be fooled by online hoaxes. It's that time of year again, so watch out. By Joanna Glasner. [Wired News]
7:30:22 AM
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About a year ago, I started recommending, to anyone who would listen, that it was important to put full addresses, city, state, zip code and phone numbers with area codes on their websites.
Sharon Fling has been predicting the importance of promoting small local businesses on the Internet for a couple of years now, and those who have followed her advice are very well placed as we see more of the major search engines incorporate local searching in their arsenal of search tools.
Google now offers local search results -- something they've been working on for months -- and their implementation is coming along nicely.
For example, I just entered "restaurant 28906" on their search page, and at the top of the results it shows a heading link for "Local results for restaurant near 28906" followed by three local restaurants with their address and phone number.
If you click on the link just mentioned, it brings up a page of restaurants near Murphy, NC sorted by distance. It even lists the mileage and direction to the restaurant with a link for directions.
At the top of the page are other categories related to restaurants.
Right below that is a compass icon with a link to see the listings on a map of the region.
Clicking the link brings you to another page with a Mapquest map showing numbers indicating the restaurants. There is a legend to the right of the map showing the restaurant indicated by each number, with a link to the restaurant.
Mapquest maps for our mountain area are not extremely accurate and I often get erroneous results, but this map looks mostly accurate -- although not 100%.
If I click on my favorite restaurant in Murphy, Shoebooties Cafe, next to its number in the legend, it brings you to a page dedicated to Shoebooties, with its location noted on the map and a button for getting driving directions.
I'm less satisfied with MapQuest's driving directions, since they give you a 23 minute, 12 mile drive to get to a location that is about a 30 second walk from the main intersection in downtown Murphy. The last two or three steps in the directions are accurate, but I have no idea why they start where they do, way out west of Murphy a long way from the town.
Regardless of the deficiencies of the MapQuest directions, the Google implementation of local search is accurate and fast.
Let's try another. How about "antiques 28906" or "real estate 28906"?
For antiques, it lists three shops in the local section at the top of the page, but misses Pickled Parrot Antiques which is right in downtown Murphy and starts with a shop over two miles away. Pickled Parrot Antiques is listed first in the regular search results, right below the local results -- so there are still some bugs to be worked out for the most accurate results.
For real estate, the link to the full page is more accurate than for antiques. It correctly lists the downtown real estate agencies and extends outwards from there. This is clearly useful.
While the Google local results feature is not as accurate as being listed in the yellow pages, it is free and fast. As time goes by, I'm assuming it can only get more accurate as Google improves their algorithm and cross-linking.
I think you'll find this to be a very useful tool.
Looking for a bagpiper near you?
On a lark, I tried searching for "bagpiper 28906" and learned that Clay Will lives about 40 miles southeast of me on the north shore of Lake Rabun in Georgia. I bet I never would have found him in the local yellow pages!
But, just when this looks great, I tried searching for "musician 28906" and got results that were not very good. I know there are hundreds of excellent musicians within a 20 mile radius of here and none of them are listed.
"pizza murphy nc" correctly lists Downtown Pizza Co (where I had lunch a couple of days ago and enjoyed it) and branches out from there. It misses Papa's Pizza To Go in Murphy, but finds the franchise in Blairsville, Georgia, which it says is about 15 miles south of Murphy, but I'm pretty sure it's a good bit farther than that.
While still a work in progress, Google's local search is decidedly useful, especially for businesses that are most likely to have a website or which may be listed in various directories.
I could probably spend the rest of the day playing with this, but it's time to move on to other tasks!
7:11:59 AM
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Tuesday, March 30, 2004 |
Whether you're an advertiser using pay per click ads on Google or you're a webmaster hosting Adsense ads on your websites, you'll want to know about the new Adsense updates that Google recently released.
Rather than writing about it myself, I'm going to refer you to Ken Evoy's explanation of Adsense and how these changes can be beneficial to you, especially from the viewpoint of a webmaster using these ads to add another stream of income.
Adsense is an important part of my strategy for monetizing my website traffic. If you have a site with any significant traffic, I'd urge you to learn more about Adsense and see if it makes sense to use it to add another stream of income from your site.
The new features make it even better than it already was.
Google has added several things we've been wanting since Adsense was first introduced.
3:27:57 PM
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Sitesell has released a new version of the Quick Tour that shows you the unmatched SBI method of building a website that works!
Aren't you tired of having a website that just sits there month after month and doesn't produce the results you wanted?
Are you just now planning on going online? Don't waste your time and money on systems and hosting that don't work. Site Build It! leads you step by step from defining your concept, to brainstorming your most profitable key words and phrases, to building the pages, registering with the search engines and directories, tracking results, creating a newsletter, and much, much more. Why settle for less when you can have an integrated marketing systems at your fingertips that will lead you to building a site that produces results?
Don't be penny wise and pound foolish! Look at the overall value of SBI compared to any other webhosting service. Spend a few extra dollars now so that you'll get many more back in the long run! SBI helps you produce results unmatched anywhere else.
Take the Quick Tour today!
3:10:07 PM
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Saturday, March 20, 2004 |
I'm sitting here this morning sipping from a steaming mug of PurJava coffee and thinking about how you can most easily get started in marketing affiliate programs on the Internet.
Perhaps you're just getting started and are looking for a way to get your message out without having to learn how to build a website and build traffic to your site.
Maybe a good starting point would be to create and maintain a blog on a regular basis. As you probably know, a blog (short for web log) is an online journal or diary that is displayed in reverse chronological order (last item shown first) and can be as easy to create and maintain as sending email or participating in an online discussion forum. If you can write clearly and put text into a box on your browser, then you can maintain a blog.
I truly believe in blogs for business and personal purposes. Currently, I maintain about a half-dozen blogs. Search engines tend to like them and, if you post quality content, you'll attract a group of regular readers.
For the blog newbie, I believe blogger.com offers the easiest introduction and the simplest software. It's easy to set up and easy to update. When you learn more, you can customize the look of the site and add links to other sites. Be sure to turn on the syndication feature.
The last time I checked, you could have as many blogs as you want at blogger.com. I tend to write about anything that interests me, and it is usually business related, but sometimes I get a burr under my saddle and just want to rant about something!
I think my last rant was either about spam or about people who don't protect their systems from viruses, thus making it more difficult for all of us.
You can see my blogger.com blog at johndilbeck.blogspot.com.
Next up on the list, and my personal favorite is Radio UserLand, which costs $40 per year. It's a more powerful blogging system and you can have multiple categories so that, if you -- like me -- have many different interests, the computer will automatically sort them for you by simply selecting a check box for each category for which you want a message to be routed. You can choose one or more categories for each posting. Dave Winer, founder of UserLand and one of the chief architexts of Clay Basket, which became Frontier and Manila, which then became Radio Userland, created one of the first content management systems for the Internet that was affordable. He was a co-creator of RSS, and had one of the very first blogs.
Radio Userland is more powerful than Blogger.com, has an annual fee, and takes longer to learn. Unlike Blogger.com, RU is a downloadable program that runs on your computer. It's available for several platforms including Windows and Mac. You can download it and use it for a month for free to try it out.
Part of your $40 annual fee pays for up to 40 MB of webhosting on a public server. You can see my RU blog at radio.weblogs.com/0133364/.
I started out a long time ago with Clay Basket, which was the first content manager I ever encountered that was reasonably priced. It was free! It took a long time to wrap my tired old brain around the concept, however.
As the next couple of years progressed, Dave and his team introduced Frontier and Manila, which were, and still are, very powerful content managers. Frontier ran on a particular machine as a user application and Manila was designed for servers and could even allow multiple authors to publish to the same site under the control of one or more editors.
My first weblog is still hosted on one of the first publicly-available Manila servers at EditThisPage.com, but they no longer offer hosting services. You can get a free 14-day trial of using Manila to see what it's all about if you like. At this time, I'm not aware of any commercial Manila hosting services, but the program can be licensed for about $900 per year and you can host as many sites as you'd care on your own server, if you find that of interest.
My Manila website is at johndilbeck.editthispage.com and I update it on a semi-regular basis.
If I only had access to one blog service or software, I'd choose Radio UserLand without a second thought. It has all the power and features I need for blogging, and I also generate all of my static websites using its advanced website building tools. I'm currently managing over 4,000 web pages on a dozen sites and all of them are stored in the Radio UserLand database. It's like no other web management system I've ever encountered. Nothing else even comes close for the sites I like to build.
(Now, if you're just going to concentrate on building one website, I'd have to steer you to Site Build It! or Host4Profit. They don't provide blogging services, but you could have Coranto (discussed below) installed at Host4Profit.)
I have used a program called NewsPro in the past on several sites to maintain a blog, but the lead developer disappeared and the program fell into limbo. This program is a set of PERL scripts that may be hosted on any commercial webhosting service that supports PERL.
You can see one of these blogs on my brother's news page at GeorgiaDragRacing.com/news/.
Since the demise of NewsPro, which was very popular, a team of developers around the world extended it into a new program called Coranto that has much more capability -- at the cost of being more difficult to install and configure. I spent the month of December getting it to run on a couple of my sites, including my main site. It has the capability of generating a static web page for each message I post, and Google loves blogs. The more I post, the more little strands I leave out on the web for people to find me. This will work for you, too.
You can learn more about Coranto at the unofficial site at coranto.gweilo.org.
I really like Coranto, but it took me about a month to really get the hang of it and to learn to configure it to take advantage of just some of its power. You can see some of my Coranto blogs at JohnDilbeck.com/news/, DilbeckConsulting.com/news/, and DetailsNow.com/news/. I'll be installing this script on more sites as I have time.
Even now, though, it takes me most of a day to install and configure Coranto, even for a basic blog.
On JohnDilbeck.com, I went a step further and used the advanced feature of not only including each posting into the normal blog and archives, but also of creating a single stand-alone static page with specific keywords for that story. This is just like creating a normal web page with all the meta tags that make it easy for the search engines to find and index it. You can see this in action by going to JohnDilbeck.com/news/ and clicking one of the headlines in the left column. On my other sites using Coranto, it will take you to the story in the weblog or the archives, but on JohnDilbeck.com, it will take you to the stand alone page for that story, which is also included in the archives. One example is at Cognigen introduces new products.
Once installed and configured, Coranto provides outstanding features and excellent quality. It's a free product and may be too technical for many people to install on their websites. If you go to coranto.gweilo.org you can find the links to the support forum, and you can probably find someone there who will be happy to install and configure it for your site -- for a reasonable fee. If you're really trying to build traffic to your site, I recommend Coranto configured to create stand-alone static pages for every article you post.
(Please don't contact me to help you with this. I just don't have the time.)
Another possibility is DK3.com - Webmasters Resources which offers several things of interest -- both free or ad-free paid services -- including a complete Web Portal, webhosting, discussion groups, mailing list and more. The Web Portal offers the most power, but also takes the most effort to learn and use. I have a free portal that I've played around with and later this year plan to develop a site based around SFI and its opportunity and products.
I haven't done much with the portal I have there, but I'm surprised at how well it ranks in a couple of the search engines with practically no effort on my part, so far. You can see it at John Dilbeck Recommends. It is more complicated than a blog, and provides many of the same services as Dave Winer's Manila. This portal is open-source software and you can find it by searching for PHP-Nuke.
Eventually, I'll be using this site to recommend books, services, tools, and so forth to help folks build their home businesses.
When I was just getting started a few years ago and had no money to spend on this, I made extensive use of the free tools offered by Bravenet.com and even though I'm not using their tools these days, I recommend them highly. They've been around forever and look as if they are a good choice, especially when you're just getting started.
I may still have a free site hosted by them. Let's see. Nope. It's gone. So, let's see what it takes to rebuild it from scratch starting at 11:32 AM. First, go register for the free hosting. Then check out the free and paid templates -- no need to design it from scratch.
(Let me say this about free templates: be very careful. I've researched a dozen or more sources of free templates, and I found many of them to have javascript attached to the links so that no matter what you think you're linking to, it's going to link to what they have pre-programmed. If you use a free template, be sure to get it from a reputable source, and Bravenet.com is as reputable as they come.)
Ok, since I like simple blue designs for my websites, I found a template on the first page that I liked. I moved it to my favorites page and clicked on the button to upload it to my new free website at free site hosted by them. It took only a couple of minutes from clicking the button to upload the template to being able to view the new site. Not bad.
Now, let's go to the hosting manager and see what I can do to spruce it up and link to a few of my sites. The Visual Editor didn't work on my Mac, but to be fair that may be because I have a lot of options turned off in my browser. I limit what javascript can do and don't run java. If you use a Windows machine, it will probably work just fine for you. (But, I don't know that for sure.)
So, let's try the Text Editor.... Nope, didn't work for me, either. This isn't unusual since most sites ignore Mac users when programming custom tools.
So, let's download the file, edit it locally and re-upload it. How do I do that? Let's try the File Manager.... Nope.
OK. What happens if I enable Java and try the editor, again?
Well, it's been an hour. Enabling Java didn't make any difference. It's not working on my Macintosh. So, enough of that. Let me know if it works for you using your PC, OK? Feel free to discuss it in the appropriate section of my forum.
In addition to free webhosting, they have a new service they call their web journal, which is a cross between a blog and a portal. It looks like it will do everything you can do with blogger.com and some of the things you could do with a portal from DK3.com.
Yesterday morning, after writing the message on a discussion forum that became this article, today, I created my Bravenet.com-hosted web journal at johndilbeck.bravejournal.com and I'm happy with how easy it was to set up and how well it works -- even with a Macintosh.
I find that I get good results from my various blogs, discussion groups, mailing lists, and websites. Blogs are the easiest to maintain, and can be used to start building your mailing list -- which in the long run will become your most valuable asset. I'll save discussion of this topic for another article.
I'm very interested in this topic and have been blogging since before there was a word for it.
I'm sure there are other excellent blog services and tools available. The main thing I would look for is whether they are well-indexed by Google and/or Yahoo before I invested a lot of time or effort into creating and maintaining my blog.
Anyone who doesn't have at least one blog is missing a very good opportunity for marketing on the Internet. As long as you update it on a fairly regular basis and write something interesting with truly useful information, it will be indexed regularly by the search engines and your visitors will come back. The more you can get them to interact, the better the whole system will work.
Give quality content first, build traffic, PREsell your offers, and then monetize it.
All the best,
JD
(Ordinary people are making extraordinary money working from home on the Internet! Go to 21stCenturySales.com and sign up for my newsletter. Do it today!)
2:11:35 PM
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Tuesday, March 9, 2004 |
Cognigen recently introduced a redesigned retail website for their products and services. The new site features easier site navigation, and improved Best Rate Calculator to help you lower your long-distance bills, and improved support sections. A wide variety of cost-effective telecommunications services is available.
Cognigen has also introduced the Z-Tel bundled local and long distance services. Alternate plans include unlimited long distance for a flat monthly fee with toll free service and Personal Voice Assistant. All services are not avalable in all areas. See the site for information on what's available where you are.
The Neighborhood by MCI is now available through Cognigen! Take advantage of this bundled package of services offered by one of the biggest names in telecom. All services are not available in all areas.
Cognigen and VMC Satellite have partnered to market the Dish Network. Click the link to see any currently offered specials.
UltraConference Launched -- this exciting new conference calling service is now available with two plans, Flat Rate or Per Minute. Enhanced web interface with outstanding features. International access is available at no additional cost.
8:02:40 AM
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Wednesday, March 3, 2004 |
Broadband over power line vendor rolls out service. WASHINGTON - More than a million residents of Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana will have a new broadband option this month in the first large-scale rollout of broadband over power line (BPL) service, despite concerns that the new BPL technology interferes with other radio frequency devices, including ham radios. [InfoWorld: Telecommunications]
8:25:57 AM
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Tuesday, March 2, 2004 |
...while millions more struggle just to get a few visitors and a few measly sales.
I've mentioned many times before that Site Build It! produces results like no other small business webhosting service does. No other company even comes close.
Now, Sitesell has released a new page of case studies that are detailed recountings of individuals and their experiences with SBI! They've chosen one case study for each of the major categories of small small businesses, and each case study is told in the words of the actual person who built the site.
Ken Evoy, president of Sitesell, describes the site, "From the U.S.A. to Kazakhstan, from Australia to Israel, the case studies show exactly how successful businesses are built online, whether one is a 'pure infopreneur' or a vendor of hard goods, whether you're an economist at a brokerage firm or a novice employee of the world's most famous affiliate. It even shows you how one young man went from 'dead-end asphalt man to cutting edge digital man.'"
I just visited the site and read all the case studies, and I find them to be inspirational. I love reading how real people succeed by finding their niche and then telling the world about what they love doing.
When you visit the case studies site, don't just skim it. Take some time to really read what these folks have to say, and then read between the lines. Feel the emotion they have for their business, for their success, and for SBI!
When is the last time you felt that way about your webhosting service and the tools they provide you? Have you EVER felt it?
When you read the site, pay attention to the "BYOBAM!" factor.
What's BYOBAM?
"Bring your own brains and motivation!"
Each of the people in the case studies began with a desire to do something different and they were motivated enough to research and learn how to accomplish it. Then, using their own brains and the tools SBI provides, they "took the bull by the horns" and started doing something. Motivation, brains, action, and persistence are the keys to success. SBI provides the technical help to make your dream come alive.
Each of these people followed the SBI process of:
CONTENT -> TRAFFIC -> PRESELL -> MONETIZE
This process, fully explained in the ebook that comes with SBI and described in several of the case studies, has been proven to produce outstanding results.
Find the specific case study that most closely matches you and what you want to do. See how someone similar has already succeeded. You can do it, too.
A year from now, it could be YOU who is featured on the case studies site.
12:01:55 PM
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© Copyright 2005 John L. Dilbeck.
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