Find Motive

The “Should I park my domain name and monetize it that way or should I develop a website?” is a pretty old debate among domainers. And I believe it’s proof that laziness will always win over sensibility.
There are a variety of ways to monetize a domain name. Most domainers who deal with a lot of domain names like to park their domains at Sedo, GoDaddy, or other services that help them monetize the name.
Others build made-for-adsense websites that have little real value, intending to get visitors to click the adsense ads. This is not much different from parking the domain names.Very few domain name sellers or speculators develop real websites or blogs on their domain names. Why?
Even though they intend to sell their domain names, they know that this usually takes a lot of time. Finding a buyer isn’t an overnight process in most cases. Most domains that are finally sold have been owned by the speculator for years.
Parking those domain names is the way they try to cover their costs of registering the names year after year. Most of their domain names will never sell because they want way more than they are worth. Most domain speculators are hoping for that one big sale, kind of like playing the lottery.
During all that time they are holding onto their domain names, they could be building websites, doing affiliate marketing, blogging, and more. The problem is that those things require work. And we all know how much people like work.
Most people who join MLM programs, get involved in domain speculation, or fall for get rich quick schemes do not want to work. They are hoping to fall into thousands of dollars without having to do any real work.
This article won’t win me any popularity contests among domainers. But if the truth hurts, too bad. It is not ALL domainers who are lazy. There are many who work very hard at their profession. They learn to master the traffic their domain name brings in and make a business out of it.
This article is more about those who just go out and register a bunch of domain names they believe are creative, hoping that someone is going to come along someday and give them a bunch of money for what they consider to be creativity.
For some it is their second job or hobby. For others it is a habit. I’ve known domainers who mortgaged their house to buy a lot of domain names they will likely never sell for enough to cover the loan.
In my opinion, the smart move is to develop those domain names into real online businesses. If you own one-word generic domain names that have type-in traffic, this doesn’t apply to you. But if you are like most domainers and you own a bunch of made up domain names, two and three word domain names, etc., then you should think about developing those domain names into a business.A domain name’s real value is in the traffic it generates and what that traffic may or may not buy based on the keywords that helped them find that domain or website in the first place.
Let me rephrase it again. Your domain name is not worth anything more than you registered it for when you first register the name. Once you analyze the traffic that domain gets, it may or may not increase in value.
If just parking the domain name gets very few clickthrus for the ads placed on it, then your domain name is not worth but a few pennies over the price of registration.
All it proves is that a few people who end up on that domain name will click an adsense ad. To a business, that means nothing. It doesn’t even prove that any of the traffic generated by that domain name will actually buy something.
However, if you create a business plan that matches the domain name, and you develop a website based on that business plan, and people do actually buy products, services, subscribe, join, or click through to your affiliates, you show that the domain name you own has business potential.A business owner is much more likely to buy your domain name if it has a proven profit potential than if they just think you have a cute catchy short domain name.
It can be as easy as installing free wordpress software and picking a free theme for your blog and writing to it daily with original content.
The bonus is that it may also rank well for your keywords if you do it right and know a little about seo and social bookmarking.
If you develop a business model that is just moderately successful and you add that it has a good ranking for some key phrases, the value of your domain name is quantifiable and much more appealing to anyone that may consider buying it from you.
My opinion is based on having developed hundreds of websites and blogs and having bought and sold over 500 domain names.
There are a few people around who have bought and sold more than I have.
There are domainers who have made a lot more money than I have by monetizing their domain names or by directing the traffic from their domain names directly to websites that are owned by businesses.
But, again, they have the right domains and tools to do that with. Making up domain names or owning a bunch of 2-3 word domain names does not mean you will be one of these. You won’t be. Those I referred to in this article should begin thinking about developing their domain names if they want them to have any actual value.

RSS is a family of web-feed formats that is used for web syndication. It can also be used by news websites, weblogs and podcasting, among others. The acronym can refer to various standards such as Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0), Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91 and RSS 1.0) and the RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and RSS 1.0)
RSS Backgrounder
Several similar formats already existed for syndication before RSS, but none was able to achieve widespread popularity or are still in common use today like it. This is primarily due to the fact that most were envisioned to work only within a single service. The RDF Site Summary which is the first version of RSS was created for use on the My Netscape portal. This eventually became known as RSS 0.9. A prototype that simplified the format and incorporated parts of a new scripting news format was produced in response to comments and suggestions made to the existing version. It was considered an interim measure as an RSS 1.0 like format was suggested through the so-called Futures Document.
The format was left without an owner when Netscape lost interest. Since it is becoming widely used, a working group and mailing list was set by various users and XML notables to continue its development. An RSS fork was created when two companies claimed ownership of the existing RSS.
A format grouped under an RSS 0.92 heading contained incremental changes to the existing format. Meanwhile, another group went on to produce RSS 1.0 which was based on RDF specifications but was more modular. When the RSS 0.92 was released, it contained minor and supposedly compatible set of changes to RSS 0.91. A subsequent draft was published for RSS 0.93 and RSS 0.94 by the same creator. RSS 0.93 was almost identical to 0.92 while the 0.94 reverted changes made in 0.93 and added a type attribute to the description element.
A final successor to the RSS 0.92 known as RSS 2.0 was released in September 2002 which emphasized “Really Simple Syndication” as the meaning of the three-letter acronym. It removed the type attribute added in RSS 0.94 and allowed users to add extension element using XML namespaces. Although several versions of it were released, the version number of the document model remained unchanged.
The adoption of the RSS format by New York Times became the starting point for such a format to becoming a standard. This format enabled it to offer its readers the ability to subscribe to RSS news feeds related to various topics. The RSS 2.0 specification was assigned ownership to Harvard’s Berkman Center for the Internet and Society. The creation of the new format and the raising of the version number were criticized and were answered with the creation of RSS 3.0, which is a non-XML textual format. It was only intended as a parody and very few implementations were made.
A preliminary draft of RSS 1.1 was produced to fix 1.0 by removing little-used features, simplifying the syntax and improving the specification based on the more recent RDF specifications. However, such work eventually became a mere academic exercise. RSS 1.1 never prospered.
Apple Computer, Inc. released Safari 2.0 with built-in RSS Feeds capabilities. It delivered the ability to read RSS feeds and bookmark them while having built-in search features. An independent project intended to create RSS 3 failed to gain backing from anyone in the industry.
Microsoft proposed its Simple Sharing Extensions to RSS, informally named Real Simple Synchronization. Together with the Outlook team, it eventually announced the adoption of the feed icon first used in the Mozilla Firefox browser. This effectively made the orange square with white radio waves the industry standard for both RSS and related formats such as Atom. Opera followed suit when they added the orange square in the release of Opera 9. The start of 2006 saw the re-launching of the RSS Advisory Board to work for the further development of the RSS format.
Usability Problems and Solutions
One of the major problems in RSS usability is the absence of consistency in the manner of subscribing. Some sites use the RSS icon such as the orange XML icon but other sites don’t have any icon but instead use words such as subscribe, feed or web-feed. There are even sites that don’t have any icon or word with any link at all. Still there are sites that use different icons for RSS. One offered solution is putting a text link in very small type at the bottom of the page which may prove to be unsatisfying to say the least. Another is sticking out with the orange XML icon as it tends to stand-out and have a link next to it describing what the RSS is and how to use it.
It can be very difficult when a browser starts spewing undecipherable code after clicking an orange button with an unfamiliar acronym. Apple has recently come out with the Safari to handle RSS feeds or send it off to a chosen aggregator. A look into the Safari’s preferences at the RSS pane will reveal a dropdown menu for setting which application is desired as default news aggregator.
It is important to make software usable. Usability then was all about computer-human interaction and a lot of software remain as such. However, the Internet has given rise to new software that centers on the interaction between humans. This has been seen in discussion groups, social networking, on-line classified ads and of course, the e-mail which are all softwares that mediate between people. In this case, social interface is equally important.
RSS or news feeds in general, is like getting a subscription to a magazine except that there is no need to regularly check for new issues to come out. Through RSS, the user is informed about sites which are particularly being watched instead of checking a dozen or hundred of websites everyday. This technology is very useful but there seems to be an information overload prevailing in the system.
Some suggested solutions include visualization or collaborative filtering through smart search terms. The solution is about identifying the echoes and grouping them. When RSS readers collect updates, these results to so many unread items which make it very difficult to determine which one to read first. There are a few things to remember when subscribing to feeds. It is impossible to read everything even if all your time is devoted to reading. Even contents of a limited number of feeds may involve a lot of reading. It is important to know how to use the RSS technology before it manages to drown the user and render it useless.

India SEO a Professional Internet marketing Firm located in Chandigarh, northern part of India, since 1999 has launched anoutsourcing of organic search marketing services at economical rates to its strategic SEO partners and customers  in UK, US, Canada,Australia, and other Europeans countries with the beginning of 2009.IndiaBook CEO says “Recent recession in financial market has open a new door of opportunity for the Indian SEO agencies to provided SEO services world wide because of advantage of cost-effective services,increased efficiency, increased productivity, shared risks, reduced operating costs, increased quality, better services and more time to focus on core competencies.”IndiaBook CEO further says “In these days SEO approach is not only important but crucial in any marketing mix. We cannot depends upon on our in house SEO consulting team, the pace of change has been obviously too fast for any company that is not dedicated to SEO as its core competency. We have also established our position as a major SEO authority in last 9 years. If any body see our portfolio of more than 500 sites, couldn’t possibly doubt our knowledge and expertise in thesubject”IndiaBook is already into natural search engine positioning service since 1999 and already successfully completed website optimization of more than 500 websites. IndiaBook has more than 50 work station for search engine optimizers and team leader of SEO division has more than 10 year of search service expertise.India Book SEO company India offers all type of Internet search engine optimization services including competitor analysis, keyword research,on page optimization, link building, directory submission, blog reviews, social book marking, SEO content writing, article writing,article submission and press release distribution services to its outsourcing customers in UK, US, Canada, Australia and Europeans countries.IndiaBook SEO services India ensures highly qualitative, timely delivered and competitive affordable SEO rates to outsourcing customers because of location advantage in India, low labor cost, high volumes and 9 years of our search marketing expertise. We sign Non-Disclosure Agreements and understand secrecy better because of been already into SEO outsourcing services .We also offer customized SEO solutions even at customer sites to make complete secrecy and workonly at back end. Our global SEO optimization services outsourcing model makes sure we deliver maximum targeted result to you.

Search Engine Marketing: Drawing traffic to your real estate website

What is search engine marketing (SEM)? and why it’s important for getting ahead of your competition in real estate marketing.

Time and time again, it has been said that affiliate marketing is, without a doubt, the quickest and most efficient way of earning a living online. There are a variety of reasons for this. For starters, most affiliate programs do not require any enrollment fees. There is no financial investment on the part of the affiliate. Secondly, the affiliate is only tasked with pre-selling the affiliate merchant’s products. The sales page, the payment processing, the digital delivery, and the post sales services shall be borne by the affiliate merchant.These shouldn’t mean that the affiliate should want in commitment, however. As a matter of fact, an affiliate’s success wholly depends on how much commitment he could give the program, and how much effort he could invest to pursue such commitment. Sometimes, this requires some monetary expenses. Getting a web host, for example, as well as a domain name, would necessitate some cash to be laid out. Getting professionally made graphics to make his website attractive can also cost some dough, in the event that the affiliate cannot do this for himself. PPC advertising can equally be just as costly, if not even more, if the affiliate would ever decide to utilize this option.But not everything needs to come at a price. There are vital tools that would help ensure the affiliate’s success, and they can be availed of for free.Here are the top five tools under this category. Knowing them would give you the edge you need. Using them would give you the head start that would push your online enterprise to the next level.WordPress. WordPress is a movable-type blog. It is a software program you could download and use to create your own blogs which you could upload in your own server. You won’t have to settle for the words “blogspot” or “livejournal” or “xanga” to be attached to your URL. You could host your blog under its own domain name, or as another page in your main website. Blogs are great marketing tools. They get indexed quite quickly by the search engines, and often, the figure prominently well in the search engine results pages (SERPs). They could also give your main website the backlinks it needs to boost its own page rank. Additionally, a blog can be customized to become your main website. The primary advantage of this approach is the convenience you’ll receive when it comes to publishing content. Download the WordPress client for free from www.wordpress.com .NVU Website Creator. Macromedia Dreamweaver is too expensive? Microsoft Front Page is too complicated? Then the NVU Website Creator is the program for you. This software program streamlines the website creation process through an interface that is easy to use, but powerful enough to make professional-looking web pages. Download the client for free from www.nvu.com .Backlink Builder. If you’re maintaining your own website, either as a review center for your affiliate program’s products, or as an affiliate mall for the same, or even as a blog which promotes the aforementioned digital items, you will need to build a thorough list of backlinks to increase your page rank. The higher your page rank is, the better chances it will have of appearing in the first few pages of search engine results. Don’t know where to start? Use the free tool available at www.webconfs.com/backlink-builder.php to discover all the places where you could leave some links to your website.Keyword Selector Tool. Keywords are the primary ingredients of any search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. You will use them for your meta tags, your h1 tags, your ALT tags, your page title, and your content. You will even use them for the articles you will submit to the many article directories in the World Wide Web. The proper use of keywords would result in the more efficient documentation of your website so that the search engine spiders will have an easier time finding your web pages for any relevant query. And since 80% of the traffic that you will be able to generate for your website would come from the search engines, keywords become the most essential aspects of your site building efforts. Need to find the right keywords? Go to www.nichebot.com and use their powerful tool to determine the profitability of the keywords related to the affiliate products you will be promoting.Statcounter. You will need to study your website’s statistics so that you’ll know what you’re doing wrong, as well as replicate what you’re doing correctly. For this purpose, simply copy and paste the code that will be provided by www.statcounter.com to get in-depth reports about the performance of your website.All of these tools would improve your performance as an affiliate. And the fact that they all come without charge just makes the deal even sweeter. Try them out. Chances are, you will realize that the best things in life can be free after all.

The one who wants to enter in this web world and desires for a long time survival, then he/she should be familiar with each and every terminology used in this field. If user considers all the important factors before choosing a hosting plan then only he/she will be able to have a successful future in this world .User should not choose any of the plan, rather he/she should opt the best and most suitable one and this can only be made possible by fetching more and more informations and also by studying properly all the requirements. New comers should start from the basics .They should learn the meaning of each and every term used and also in addition those factors that can affect his/her selection.

Web Host

Web host refers to a computer connected to the internet. Web host can also be termed as ‘web server’. The computer that is playing the role of the web server needs to be more powerful than normal PCs and the function of this web server is to serve up websites.

The website content of the user will remain will on this computer, so as the people who are surfing on the internet can get a way to access his/her website.

There can be three main categories in which the web host can be classified based on the economic factor and common features:

1. Free Hosts:

The users who are not professional but are making website only as a hobby then for them free hosting can be a good option. In free hosting space, bandwidth and other features provided are very limited. With free web hosting one can not only make his/her website successful but is also suitable for personal websites or for temporary usage. Generally free hosting enforces pop-up, text or banner ads. Reliability, best performance and customer support lacks in case of free hosting as well. When a user registers for a free host then the word free host gets added with the user’s domain name that gives an adverse effect in the eye of the visitors.

2. Shared Hosts:

The next type of the web hosting to be discussed is shared hosting. This hosting service is used by many of the web sites .This type of hosting service is Suitable for personal, small and medium businesses. This service can be used by paying $1 to $25 per month. The features provided by this service vary from very limited space/bandwidth to semi-dedicated servers. The users host their website by this type of hosting service and it has its own top level domain facility. No doubt that shared web hosting is quite better than free hosting but still it does not provide 100% satisfactory services. In case of shared hosting one server is shared by the number of websites so its performance and availability gets affected. More websites usually means less performance. If less number of websites are hosted by one server then it will be more expensive, but in this case there are more chances of reliability. There are many companies allowing customers to host multiple websites with different domains under a single account.

3. Dedicated Hosts:

The next type of hosting is dedicated hosting. This type of hosting is most reliable hosting. In this type of hosting a full server is dedicated to a single customer. Generally this type of hosting is used by large businesses, professionals and very active websites dealing with thousands of visitors daily. The customers having dedicated hosting can have their total control over the server as well as able to create as many websites as they like. Customers can run their own hosting company on a rented dedicated server. Payment module is mentioned according to specifications and services provided with the server, which varies from $100 up to about $800 dollars per month.

4. Collocated Hosts:

Now the other type of hosting service to be discussed is collocated hosting. This service is very much similar to dedicated hosting. The difference between collocated hosting and dedicated hosting is that in collocated hosting the customer owns the server hardware instead of renting it. In this service the server will be placed in provider’s data center. This service is more expensive than dedicated hosting.

5. Reseller Hosts:

In reseller hosting the providers offers web server storage to their customers, and resells the web server storage to them. Generally providers offer resellers a discount price.

6. Other Hosts:

Including the above type of hosts there are also many other hosts such as email hosts, media hosts, data hosts, etc but these hosts will not be discussed in this article.

Domain Name

Domain name is the name which shows the place where one’s website is located. The actual address of the website is a set of numbers. Each and every web server has its own unique address. Domain name indicates the real addresses of every websites. One can easily remember the domain name of any of the website. Remembering domain name is easier than recalling the IP addresses.

Space / Storage

Space is one of the services provided by the web host. It plays a very important role in the website development. It happens many times that the customer requires more space but the host fails to provide it, so customer should be very careful while choosing the web host. Storage is the amount of web server’s disk space available for customer’s website files, images and databases. Space can be according to the requirement; it can be as small as 5MB in some free hosts and as big as 300GB for some dedicated servers. Earlier prices of the space were very high but prices reduced significantly during the last few years. The hosting plans offering 3GB of space for less than $10 a month can be easily available.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth can be defined as the amount of data transferred from web server to clients’ internet browsers. When ever a person outlook a page the data is transmitted from the server to that person’ PC. If any one is having audio, video and images in his/her website then the bandwidth consumed is more in comparison of the website having only text contents. The bandwidth available in free hosting can be as low as 100MB per month where as in some dedicated servers the bandwidth available is as high as 2000GB a month. The customers who don’t want to pay more for bandwidth can easily find hosting plans offering 75GB of monthly data transfer for less than $10.

Server Type

Generally server means the operating system than runs the web server. Some common types are Windows, Linux and UNIX. Server type refers the server side scripting and database types. The difference between Windows server and Linux/UNIX is that Windows runs ASP and ASP.NET with Access or SQL Server databases where as Linux/UNIX servers usually runs CGI, PHP or JSP with MySQL or Oracle databases. The other difference is that Windows servers are more expensive than Linux/UNIX servers.

Databases

As server type is discussed earlier also, we are able to know that there are different types of databases available. The mostly used is MySQL as it is open source GPL (free) software and can serve a lot of online applications’ requirements such as forums, content management, mailing lists, etc. MySQL, rather its features are limited. MySQL is sufficient for small concern but it is not powerful for the complicated large business sites. Large business requires more powerful databases such as Oracle or SQL Server.

.

Server Side Scripting

Usually the new comers prefer to use PHP as server side scripting. The reason behind this is that there are hundreds of open source (GPL) PHP scripts that are able to fulfill the webmaster’s requirements. However PHP also has some limitations in features required by advanced websites same as in the case of MySQL, due to this limitation some professional web developers prefer to use ASP.NET or JSP. Some other developers still prefer to use Cold Fusion, CGI, ASP or PERL.

Email

Now the next very important aspect to be talked about is Email. At present no one can move further in this computer world with having his/her Email account. The one who is planning to do any kind of activity through computer such as to run a business or to provide any kind of service, then the first thing he/she need to do is to open an Email account. There are many hosting plans that include the feature of having some email accounts with customer’s domain. The availability of number and size of email accounts totally depends on the hosting plan one opted. Generally this feature is not included in free hosting. Small plans provide only about 10 accounts where as big plans do not have the limited number. Usually those email accounts are web based and accessible through POP3 clients as well.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

The other service is FTP. File Transfer Protocol is a usual way of transferring files across the Internet. Most of the webmasters used to upload and download their websites contents through FTP. The process of uploading or downloading is performed by using FTP client software. Webmasters require FTP username and password so as to access their web server. There are any hosts who use to provide more than one FTP account to their customers as per their requirement. Rather FTP is unspecified; it is not advisable as per the security reasons.

Control Panel

Control panel is the service available by many of the web hosting companies to their customers. It is a web based application that helps in managing websites. Some important functions performed by the control panel are that it used to manage email accounts, providing statistics, managing FTP accounts, managing domains and sub-domains and managing databases. The control panel application that is mostly used by the user is cPanel. There are many companies who use to develop their own control panel application.

Uptime

Now after having all the services, the thing of concern which remains is how the user keeps his/her website uptime most of the time. If anyone is having a website with excellent features but it remains down most of the time it will be of no use, as when ever the visitors visit his/her website and found it down then later on they will think twice before visiting it. In result he/she will suffer the loss of visitors. Uptime is very important feature of web hosts and that is usually measured in percentage. If a server remains down near about 30 minutes a day will have an uptime percentage of about 99.98%, which is acceptable for most small to medium business websites. If any of the business website is not having at least this percentage of uptime then that website is not suitable for a business website. Mission critical sites cannot tolerate frequent outages, thus they may use web monitoring services to notify web administrators immediately when an outage happens.

Price

Finally the factor left is price. In this option also there is a great variability found like for example customer is having option to choose between the prices ranging from 0 to $1000 per month. For most personal, small and medium websites the total amount of cost involved is just $15 per month. Thus its not at all advisable for business website owners to select very cheap plans let say less than $5 because this price can lead to huge cost indirectly afterwards.

Fresno Web Design – The Most Important Factors to Contemplate When Selecting a Professional FresnoWeb Design Service

One of the most effective growth strategies for any endeavor is expanding into new markets. And what is the highly recommended way to offer your products and services and reach these new customers? Establishing an excellent online presence, of course. Once you decide the kind of web site your business needs, you’ll have to hire a web design service. There are some essential things that you should consider when selecting a professional Fresno web design service.

First-rate Customer Service

There is a popular marketing preceptthat states that, “The customer always comes first”. This is particularly true for web design. You are paying good money for a web site that is more than just another business card or brochure. You are depending on this web site to expand your business and raise your revenues. You ought to make sure the Fresno web design service you hire provides top-quality customer service. They should be readily accessible to customers, to deal with questions, clear up doubts, or simply just be there for you.

Consider, as well, the types of services provided. Creating a web site involves more than just the graphics design. The service you select should be able to convey your marketing goal, what you wish to achieve with your web site. They should keep in mind your demographics and plan the site accordingly. They must know about keyword research. Why have a web site if there will be very little traffic? A serious Fresno web design service should be able to handle these issues.

Competitive Rates

You might be tempted to choose the lowest bidder, but heed this warning: you get what you pay for. A professional Fresno web design service will offer competitive rates, but never the cheapest rates. Top quality has its price, and if you’re relying on your new web site to expand your business, the investment will be well worth it.

Estimated Delivery Time

Another essential point to consider when selecting a professional Fresnoweb design service is what their estimated completion date might be. With the amount of individuals conducting business online, you’ll want to make sure your web site is up and running as soon as possible. If you establish a realistic deadline, a serious web design service should be able to not only complete the project in timely fashion, but also deliver a web page that is exactly what you envisioned to accompany you to greater success.

To sum up, there are countless Fresno web design services to choose from, but if you contemplate the factors mentioned above, you’ll no doubt make the right choice.

www.TheOutSourcingCompany.com – Alabama Web Design

While SEO and SEM represent the most popular avenues toward reaching a targeted audience, social media optimization (SMO) is gaining momentum. MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and similar properties that form the springboard for communities of like-minded consumers have reached a tipping point. Once a novelty, they have quickly dominated popular media. In the process, they have become the focus of social media optimization.

One of the reasons social media optimization has gained significant traction with companies is because it provides a unique marketing channel. Rather than depending solely upon traffic generated from specific search queries on Google and Yahoo!, a site can be positioned to enjoy a grassroots – and often, viral – marketing momentum. But, this strategy is not without challenges. To that end, here are the four basic tenets for a savvy social media optimization (SMO) campaign.

Tenet #1: Encourage Community Links

Consumers are starved for compelling content. Blog posts, videos, white papers, and news feeds that inform or entertain (ideally both) are perfectly positioned to attract attention. Once such content is discovered, entire communities descend upon it and spread the word. As a result, a company’s exposure and link profile can expand rapidly. Community links are one of the underpinnings of an effective social media optimization campaign. As the members of a community spread the word, inbound links grow. And with it comes a growth in organic traffic.

Tenet #2: Leverage Tags And Bookmarks

When sharing content with others in their community, people will always gravitate toward the path of least resistance. In the context of social media optimization (SMO), leveraging tags and bookmarks from popular social networking sites is critical. There is no shortage of plugins and scripts that allow your audience to share your content with a single click. Whether “tweeting” to their thousands of Twitter followers or seeding your content on YouTube, Flickr, or Facebook, these tags and bookmarks can help trigger a groundswell of exposure.

Tenet #3: Identify The Best Opportunities

Not every social networking site offers the same potential for a social media optimization project. Some sites cater to a younger audience. Other sites cater to a professional audience. The key is to properly isolate the target community given a company’s product line. For example, a financial services company geared toward high net worth individuals would find limited success on MySpace. On the other hand, a social media optimization (SMO) campaign that targeted professional communities on LinkedIn might be more appropriate.

Tenet #4: Integrate Social Media Optimization

The advantages of a social media optimization project, while significant, often distract companies from leveraging SEO, SEM, and ORM. It’s important to realize that effective online promotion is a confluence of all strategies. Not only does each use a different route to increase a company’s exposure, traffic, and sales, but all blend seamlessly with one another. In effect, social media optimization (SMO) should be integrated as one of several best practices.

The basic tenets that we’ve provided above do not comprise an exhaustive list. Indeed, they merely form the foundation of a social media optimization project. When carefully crafted, SMO can be used to gain access to communities that would otherwise lie beyond the reach of traditional marketing strategies.

The internet has always been a dicey proposition for videographers looking to distribute their content. The disciplines that lend themselves to producing the best looking and most engaging content in conventional delivery channels (DVD, television, etc) do not lend themselves to the internet.

The problems are multifold. First and foremost is the issue of bandwidth – or the lack of it. High quality video generally means huge files, and consequently more time required to download the files to be played on the client’s computer. While the state of internet bandwidth is nowhere near as abysmal as it was just a few years ago – however even with current advances in bandwidth – the delivery of a file several hundred megabytes can be trying to even the most patient of potential viewers.

The second problem is the lack of an accepted video standard and assurance that your client has the proper software required to view the video in the format you’ve chosen to present it. For example – Quicktime is a wonderful technology and is embraced by most video producers due to it’s basis in Mac/Final Cut – however there’s a good percentage of Windows machines out there that don’t have Quicktime installed. Windows Media Player is dicey, and unless you install a few third party plugins cannot be viewed on the Macintosh. Flash video is a godsend for cross platform acceptance – especially with the advent of Flash 8 video and the most recent codecs – but there are sacrifices in quality.

…then you have to develop your web presence.

It’s easy to see why so many talented video producers have such bad web presences, with videos that work sporadically, or don’t work on a good percentage of client’s computers. Trying to account for all of the variables in content delivery usually falls well outside of their realm of expertise.

About a year ago, I was facing this dilemma, when I found what I believe to be the perfect solution. I found podcasting, or vidcasting (video podcasting) to be a perfect solution to the bulk of these problems. Podcasting enabled me to simplify how I delivered my content through the utilization of iTunes as a delivery vehicle, ensured that anyone viewing my content had the appropriate software, allowed me to keep the quality of my content high by utilizing the most current codecs, and also enabled me to keep my viewers notified of the newest additions to my library via subscriptions!

By simply placing a link within my website, and emails, pointing to my Podcast inside of the apple iTunes store, I could very easily utilize well established distribution channels to get my work out there. Millions of people have iTunes, and access to the music store. By default, they have everything they need to see my content. It’s just a matter of creating the content and pointing them in the right direction! It couldn’t be easier.

From this point, it was simply a matter of learning how to podcast.

The hardest part of getting the podcast up and running was understanding exactly how a podcast works, and getting everything properly prepared. I hope to help you through that learning curve, by explaining everything in simple language. The concept isn’t difficult whatsoever.

First, let’s define what a podcast is.

A podcast is a text file located on the internet that points to a group of media files. This text file is called a newsfeed (or an RSS feed), and acts like a roadmap to media files that are also located on the internet. When someone views a podcast, what they are actually doing is reading this text file, and being pointed to the appropriate media files.

The program that reads the text file (newsfeed) is called an aggregator. The aggregator reads the text file, and grabs the media files that it is being pointed to. All of this is done in the background, giving you the illusion of “single” show that has multiple episodes. In reality, however, it’s just a bunch of files located on the internet tied together via this text file.

This text file must follow a certain format, in order to assure compatibility across the range of aggregators out there (e.g., iTunes). The structure of the text file defines the details of the show (the show’s title, description, etc), and where to find the show’s episodes. It’s done in a pretty straightforward manner.

For an example of how a newsfeed looks, check out Apple’s technical document on podcast structure.

http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/podcaststechspecs.html#_Toc526931673

“Channel” defines the shows, and “item” defines the episodes. Once you have the file created, to add more episodes, you simply add another “item” pointing to a new file.

That’s how a podcast is structured.

Next, we’re going to tell you what you need to get your podcast up and running. There are two options. The first is what you will need if you want to do it all yourself. The second (and our preference) is the simpler route, which is to get a podcast host. These instructions presume that you already have your video converted into M4V format and ready to go.

To set up a podcast by yourself, you will need to do the following:

1: Find web space available for you to upload your media files to.

There are plenty of web hosts available for you to choose from. From Google, do a search for “Web Hosting”. I recommend getting a Linux/PHP based host – because they are simpler to configure than Microsoft based hosting. As a general rule, try to find the most web space available, with the greatest amount of traffic allotted for your site. As your podcast grows in popularity – you don’t want to get sacked with extra traffic fees.

Before settling for a host, it also is in your best interests to do a little research to make sure they have a decent reputation. Lots of hosts over-sell their plans in order to get more business. There are lots of horror stories I’ve read of people that found their websites censured for excessive traffic when they were nowhere near the limits their plan advertised. A little research can help you avoid falling victim to an unscrupulous host.

2: Upload your media files (mp3 files, pictures and video files) to your new host.

You will most likely transfer your media files to your host through what’s called FTP. FTP is “File Transfer Protocol”. On Windows, I like “Wise FTP” by AceBit the best. On Macintosh, my favorite is Cyberduck. You can find both on Google.

One thing to keep in mind is whether or not your media files are supported by your web hosting company. If you’re simply podcasting your audio sermons, MP3 is pretty much universally supported. If you’re podcasting video files (M4V or MP4), you might need to configure your server to recognize those files. This is done via what’s called a “mime type” and is set up in a file called .htaccess on your web server.

To find out more information, if you need it, google “.htaccess mime types” for a detailed explanation.

3: Once you have uploaded the files, and thereby know where the files are located, it’s time to create the newsfeed.

Make sure that your newsfeed mimics the format we showed you earlier. If you follow that format, you should be good to go. Create your channel, and add all of your items.

Once you have created your newsfeed file, upload it to your server as well. Test it out by going to feedvalidator.org. If your feed comes back invalid, it will give suggestions as to how to fix your feed. If it comes back saying the feed is valid, then you’re good to go! Start submitting it to channels like yahoo, and the iTunes music store.

Those are all of the steps required to get a podcast up and running, if you wish to do it all yourself!

The other alternative is to get what is called a podcast host.

Podcast hosts take care of all of the hosting, newsfeed creation and testing for you. When you contract a podcast host, you don’t need to worry about file types, ensuring that your feed is valid, or finding web space. They take care of all of that for you. With a podcast host, you simply upload the media file, give it a name and a description, and you’re done. This is the easiest way to make a podcast.

After a few months of maintaining our podcast and constantly updating the feed to reflect new additions to our podcast, this is the direction we chose to go. It really simplified the production process, and actually ended up costing us less per month than what we were paying before. This is an excellent option to consider for someone who doesn’t want to bother with the tech side of podcasting.

There are a lot of podcast hosts out there offering different packages. When determining which one to contract – look at the following things:

1. How much do they charge vs. how much space do you get for your podcasts?

2. Do they limit your bandwidth? (This is particularly important. One host we went with charged for bandwidth beyond a certain point, and it cost us a pretty penny.) It’s best to get a podcast host with “unmetered bandwidth”. This means they don’t charge you extra if your podcast becomes popular.

3. Do they support transferring of the podcasts to another domain? This is also very important. If you, for whatever reason, become dis-satisfied with the service or want to transfer it to another location, will they facilitate this for you? We had to recreate two of our podcasts from scratch because one host wouldn’t give us the ability to redirect our existing podcast to our new host.

4. Do they have good technical support for questions you may have?

My favorite podcast host is AvMyPodcast.com. They have unmetered bandwidth and great plans available for very reasonable charges. AvMyPodcast is especially great for it’s technical support, and includes automatic iTunes and Yahoo submissions. They even offer instructional pages to teach you how to podcast.

Whether you decide to go it yourself, or contract a podcast host, it’s definitely worth getting into vidcasting. It has been a godsend for streamlining the distribution of my videos to clients.

Good luck, and happy podcasting!

Getting your blog indexed in the search engines can seem impossible sometimes. It can often be so random! One blog gets indexed in a matter of minutes, while another one takes weeks. While the search engines don’t reveal their exact formula for indexing, there are some methods that have been proven to work for many bloggers out there.

Of course, many people decide that the first thing they should do to get their blog indexed is to submit it to the search engines by hand. There is actually a lot of disagreement on this point! Some people think the search engines look upon this favorably, and other people think that hand submission can hurt you.

The bottom line here is that it really doesn’t seem to hurt your rankings, but it’s best to keep in mind that the search engines “know it’s you” who is submitting the site. What they want are votes of confidence from other established sites out there. That’s why it’s better to concentrate on those.

If you already have a network of sites then you have a huge advantage. All it takes is a relevant contextual link on one of those sites and you’ll often get indexed very quickly. This is especially true If you have access to a site that gets indexed often.

Not everyone has established sites, however! The good thing is that there are sites out there that allow you to put your content on their site. Article directories are one example. If you write an article for a site like EzineArticles.com with a link back to your site in the author’s resource box, the chances are good that you will get indexed fairly quickly. You can also add your content and links to sites like HubPages.com, Squidoo.com, and others.

Another thing you can do is make sure you submit your RSS feed to directories. There are RSS directories out there that alert people (and spiders) that your content has been updated. This can increase your chances of getting indexed. Some examples of sites you can submit to include Feedagg.com and Feedage.com.

Yet another piece of the puzzle is writing great content and updating often. There is no exact formula for this, but we do know that Google likes content! If you can write a few posts right off the bat to show that you’re going to be a great, relevant site, there is a larger chance that your site will get indexed.

If you still haven’t made it into the search engines it is going to take a bit more effort. Usually a combination of a few of these will work well. Also, a little bit of patience goes a long way. It’s not unusual to wait a week or more for the magic to happen! Still, by following the suggestions above you’ll find that you get indexed fairly quickly and often.