Every webmaster knows the importance of link building. Without at least a few links linking to the website, it is doomed to fail. The reason links from other websites are so important is that they can affect the website’s pager rank, traffic, as well as many other statistics. I have always thought that link building services are services that can help webmasters make their websites more popular. Even if I try to make my website popular on my own, I know that I can additionally ask somebody else to help me make it even more popular. I also want to always make sure that links pointing to my blog are quality links that will not do more harm than good.
Main Category, Web
Sites like Flickr have been growing in popularity for the last few years. Taking photos and uploading them to sites like Flickr has been a hobby of many enthusiasts. Unfortunately, some people try to take advantage out of it, and are selling pictures taken from Flickr on sites like eBay. Usually, they claim that they are their own, which of course is not true. It is not easy to identify such people, and even if you are the one who took the pictures, it will not be easy for you to track each photograph you have made. Even if you are using some tool to detect duplicate images, it is easy to change the size of the picture by slightly cutting the bottom or right/left side of it. This way it should be impossible to track whether your photos are being posted anywhere else. Your best bet is to watermark your pictures.
Of course, if you are taking pictures simply for fun, then you are not going to lose any money because someone is selling your pictures. If would be a completely different situation if you were a professional photographer because people who downloaded your pictures from Flickr could undercut your prices very easily. That is because they would have no costs associated with downloading your pictures. I am not saying that sites like Flickr are a bad thing, but I am simply reminding everyone that it is easy for people to take someone’s work and claim it as their own.
Tech, Web
Wikipedia is currently the king of all online encyclopedias. Until now, there were no real competitors which would undermine that. Naturally, there were some sites which tried to repeat the success of Wikipedia. However, they either lacked funding, had the wrong motivation, or were simply released too late. Currently, the largest competitor of Wikipedia is Google’s Knol. I believe that Knol might achieve a big success because it is backed up by Google. Google might implement ads on Knol, and it might even share part of the revenue with the creators of pages. This could bring a lot of users from Wikipedia to Knol, especially those who hope to be paid for their hard work.
In some countries, sites like Wikipedia are very controversial. Until very recently, Chinese Internet users were prohibited from seeing some of the Wikipedia pages. This was due to the fact that they were considered to be inappropriate by the Chinese government. The site has been reported to be unblocked in several major cities in this country, including its capital city. As China was hosting Olympics in August 2008, the International Olympic Committee was urging the Chinese to give free access to Internet to everybody before the Games started. Wikipedia, as well as other sites, are still having a hard time in China. Not such a long time ago, a person who is probably China’s number one dissident, was jailed for three and a half years in prison. It was stated that it was because of publishing “inappropriate” articles on the Internet.
Biz, Web
Do you sometimes wonder whether participating in contests is a good idea or just a waste of time? So far I have participated in quite a few contests. Different contests have different entry requirements. I am not going to write about those contests that require entrants to pay a certain amount of money, because I do not think participants should be charged for such things.
The contests I am usually participating in do not have high requirements, although the exception was one contest where ten highest ranked posts written by ten different bloggers were winning an award. All of the winners of that particular contest put a lot of work into writing their posts.
Generally, I am more interested to participate in contests that will give me something valuable for my blog, like a link back, or directed traffic. I especially like if the organizer promises to link back to each participant just for entering the event.
I am almost always avoiding contests that have high entry requirements, and want me to do at least a few things like leave a comment, subscribe to RSS feed, write a post, and so on. Additionally, if there are many participants, and there will be only one winner, then do not get your hopes up too high.
To sum up, I would like to say that the right contests can be really great. Simply participate in contests you are interested in, and make sure you have a chance to win.
Blog, Web
EBay is an online marketplace where you can buy and sell almost everything. Some time ago I discovered that you can register literally anything for sale, as a baby was registered on German eBay and the price was set as 1 euro. The baby was eight months old and the description stated that it was for sale because it cried too much. EBay removed this auction and it is interesting whether the child would be actually sold if eBay would not be fast enough. While the story might scare some people, the mother of the baby assured that it was just a joke. What do you think about it? Should we be joking about such things?
Whatever is our opinion about eBay we have to admit that it is doing quite a good job removing many auctions due to the breach of their ToS. EBay does not allow any auctions, but it differs from country to country. For example, in UK and Ireland eBay prohibits the sale of knives and this includes sets of kitchen cutlery. It might sound silly to a lot of us, but this is just an example that eBay does not allow sellers to sell everything.
Web
There are millions of blogs out there. While bloggers communicate with their readers with written language, I am wondering how attractive it would be for readers to view videos of bloggers speaking on various subjects. Qik Video Streaming allows streaming videos from mobile phones, and such content could appear on blogs or related sites like Facebook. I am pretty sure that video streaming blogs will not replace traditional blogs. On the other hand, I am also pretty sure that some bloggers will want to integrate video streaming to some degree. Qik Video Streaming has a latency of around 1-2 seconds, so it is pretty efficient. Time will tell how popular it will become. While it may not become very popular within a year or two, I think that video streaming will gain on popularity when fast broadband connections will be even more accessible. Many Internet users have download limits set by their Internet service providers so they cannot download as much data as they would like. However, this is also likely to change and this is one of the reasons why video streaming might gain on popularity in the future. Of course, it does not mean that regular blogs will disappear.
Blog, Tech, Web
Blogging requires a lot of dedication, so over the course of time, you might have abandoned one of your blogs. Maybe months might have passed and you did not add any new content. You barely receive any visitors, and have very few RSS subscribers. Is it worth restarting such a dormant blog? I believe it might be a good idea for a few reasons:
-This blog will have an older domain. Older domains seem to be more trusted by search engines. This means that your articles might get ranked higher in search engines.
-Existing back links are another reason why restarting your old blog is a good idea. Relevant back links often lead to increased traffic. Old blogs often have a lot of links coming from various sources.
-Existing subscribers. If you create a new domain, in the beginning you are not going to have any subscribers. Even if you currently have very few RSS subscribers left, at least you will have a few loyal readers from the start. Of course, if your blog has been abandoned for a very long time, then there might not be many subscribers left.
I think that there is no doubt that there are many advantages to restarting a dead blog.
Blog, Web
Email has become increasingly popular during the last few years. This, however, led to many people abusing it. Spam is an example of people abusing email. I am sure you do not want to be classified as a spammer, or somebody who sends unwanted emails. If that is the case, simply make sure that you personally know the recipient. Of course, there are also other rules that email users may wish to follow:
-If you decide to have an email box, check it regularly. Email etiquette requires that emails should be responded to after the maximum of a few days after receiving them. It is the best if you answer the same day you received an email. If this is a spam or unwanted message that you received, you do not have to respond at all.
-While composing a message do not forget to insert a subject. People like to know in advance what an email is going to be about before they open it. Make sure you are specific, but you also do not have to reveal too much information.
-Do not use capital letters in your emails. On the Internet it is considered to be the same as shouting, so try to avoid that.
Web
Almost everybody who watches Jon Stewart from the Daily Show knows that you cannot believe everything he is saying, because his program is a so-called fake news show. However, things are different on the Internet. With so many new websites being created, you might not realize that what you are reading is not true. There are many hoax websites on the Internet with the goal of misleading their readers. Some of them are more misleading than others. Let us look, for example, at MoonBeam Enterprise, which advertises as an ultimate place to buy your property on the Moon. Probably, you would not fall for it, but you will be surprised to find out how many people actually fell for this hoax. My advice is, whatever you read or watch on the Net, be prepared for misleading websites and scammers.
It is so easy to get scammed these days. For example, you might have received a scam email like this: “Congratulations! You are the 1,000,000th 1-800-Mail visitor! YOU WON $400! Recently, we have reached 120,000 members. 1-800-Mail has over 4,000,000 visits monthly, so we decided to give cash prizes every 1,000,000th visitor every month. This month, you are the one of 4 winners who will get $400 from 1-800-Mail!”
When you click on the link, you will be redirected to a website which looks like 1-800-Mail, but apparently has a different domain address. After I visited the site, you might be asked for your PayPal email address to “claim the reward”. You have to realize that the email could be used to spam you in the future, and that they would not pay you anything. Watch out for such type of scams, because some are more dangerous than others. You can benefit a lot from using the Internet, but you should also be aware of potential dangers.
Tech, Web
Not everyone is a SEO expert, but many people have some knowledge about it. The truth is, however, that basic knowledge of SEO is not enough to make every website successful. A person might have some idea about SEO, but it might not be enough to make the wisest decisions concerning the SEO of a website. SEO is a complicated topic. A lot has been written about it in the past. Many people decide to dedicate numerous pages to this important knowledge. Even if you are not a SEO expert, you can always benefit from the knowledge of somebody who has a lot of experience in this field.
Main Category, Web