Blogging is fun! Yes, blogging can be great fun. Just open you posting window and go for it without the restrictions of corporate style guides and other impediments to creativity. Got something to say? Just say it. The other fun aspect of blogging is that people can post comments about your blog posts. You posts plus reader comments all become valuable food for the search engines.

Blogging is dirt cheap. The most powerful blogging systems are free. Wordpress seems to be the blogging standard and now comes standard with many cheap web hosting packages. For less than $100 per year anyone can get their own domain with blogging included.

I wouldn’t use one of the free blogging services unless you are really desperate. You can’t be sure if they will always remain free and your posts will be building up someone else’ asset rather than your own.

It’s fast and easy. If you can use notepad you can blog. The user interface is very intuitive and allows you to add and edit, text, pictures, videos, whatever you want. Want to change the look and layout of your blog? There’s literally hundreds of themes available that take less than a minute to upload and install.

It gives you products and services personality. People like to do business with people they like. By blogging you show your target market that there is a real person behind the company you represent. By reading you blog posts thet get an idea of what you’re all about – warts and all. The personal aspect of blogging is one of it’s most powerful characteristics.

Your blog site becomes another Internet asset. Some blog sites get thousands and thousands of readers each day. This traffic can be converted to hard, cold cash through Google Adsense advertising, affiliate programs and straight advertising space sale. Once you blog increases it’s Google PageRank, you also get the benefit of linking out from your blog site to other web sites you want to promote.

Search engines love blogs. It is said in many SEO forums that Google staff are great bloggers and subsequently Google spiders and indexes blogs more frequently that normal web sites. This may just be a rumour, but I have found it to be true in my case. If you blog every day there’s a good chance Google and the other major search engines will spider your blog every day looking for that new content.

Convinced? Give blogging a try. There’s stacks of free resources listed in article directories like this one that will help you get into blogging.

In a word, Web 2.0 is the name given to the post dot-com boom and bust of Internet growth. It’s been impressive, hasn’t it? Companies like eBay, PayPal and Amazon.com have proven that business can be conducted on the Web and it can be profitable. Now the rest of us can have our turn.

Internet growth and business management in the post dot-com bust world can be described in one word: Collaboration. If you’ve been wondering how to tap into this Internet boom you’ve got to learn how relationships are built online and capitalize on it. There are no lone rangers online.

While collaboration is the key to success in the Web 2.0 world, it helps to know the tools available to you as you embark upon your new venture in cyberspace. Here’s a short list:

• Blogs

• Content Management Systems

• Wiki

• RSS

• Affiliate Programs

You can expect this list to grow. The question that is probably on your mind is, “What can I do with these tools?” That’s a good question and the answer is, Whatever your imagination unveils. Nevertheless, here are a few tips:

Blogs – If you don’t have a blog by now, you’re behind the eight ball. Blogs are the first step into Web 2.0. They allow you to start a conversation with your customers, to enter into dialogue with the marketplace. You can update your customers on your business plan, survey or poll your customers to find out what they want and receive feedback from your customers by allowing them to comment on your posts. Of course, you can always have a collaborative blog where more than one blogger makes posts to the blog as several successful and high profile blogs have already done. Example: Church of the Customer.

Content Management Systems (CMS) – A CMS is an easy way for you to manage your website’s content. It’s almost impossible not to have one in the Web 2.0 market. Unless you are planning to learn programming languages like HTML and Java, or you have the money to hire a full-time webmaster, then you’ll benefit from a CMS. There are three ways to go about this, however:

• Open Source

• Purchase a System

• Design Your Own

Which of these ways is best for you depends on your goals and circumstances. Just know that a CMS can shave off a lot of time in your marketing and business plans. You can upload content to your website in just a few minutes as opposed to a few hours. This is something you definitely want to learn about. Examples: Joomla and Drupal are two open source content management systems.

Wiki – The ways to use wiki have not been fully explored yet but what you’ll need to understand about wiki technology is that it is intrinsically collaborative, unlike HTML. Wiki allows you to build a website without spending time uploading content. This is true collaboration and gets right to the heart of what Web 2.0 is all about. One famous wiki, Wikipedia, allows users to add encyclopedic entries and edit content input by others. This is truly amazing technology.

RSS – Another Web 2.0 technology we couldn’t live without is RSS. There are several acceptable meanings to this acronym but the one I prefer is Really Simple Syndication. In essence, if you’re not syndicating your content then your content is getting found. Everyone is doing it, or should be. And anything can be syndicated – blogs, articles, Web copy, news, jokes, anything you put on your website. RSS allows your website visitors to subscribe to your content and receive updates automatically every time you change or add to your content. Yahoo! Pipes is the latest RSS tool to appear on the scene and gives users the ability to mash several RSS feeds into one.

Affiliate Programs – It is difficult to fit this one into the Web 2.0 model without a little imagination but it’s a powerful tool for building any Web business. An affiliate program allows you to build a sales force that will promote you, your products and your services for you. The great thing about affiliate programs is that you don’t have to pay your sales force until they make a sale. You can build a list of business partners, most of whom will become your customers before anyone else even hears about your new products just because they want to try it out first so that they can help promote it and make extra income. Don’t overlook this powerful method of building your Web 2.0 business. One of the foremost authorities on affiliate programs is Allan Gardyne at www.associateprograms.com.

Web 2.0 is all about building online relationships and collaborating for maximum growth. To succeed online, you must be willing to shed your lone ranger mentality and develop partnerships. My most successful ventures were a result of joining forces with someone else. I’m confident that yours will be too.

The following article will help you gain clarity on this issue.

First of all, let us consider the costs of having a website. A domain name with sufficient amount of space (that also includes a database support for interactive websites) costs under $30 per annum. This is roughly $2.5 / month.

Then comes the designing and maintenance costs. Depending on your requirement, web design can cost as little as $50-$100. There is no upper limit; it can go into several thousands depending on what exactly you want and who is doing it. Ideally, you should ask your friends and associates to refer web designers who have done a good job for them and also charged reasonably. Prepare your requirements in advance before taking quotes. Be very clear on what exactly you want for your website. This will save you a lot of pain. Be sure to cross check the quotes with sites like elance. Discuss the maintenance charges also, if you need to update your site often.

There is another option where you can save on web design costs if you don’t need a very fancy / customized design. Most hosting providers will offer you site builder options at a nominal cost. In fact, you can even use a blog platform like wordpress or a CMS platform like joomla and drupal. Most hosting providers will offer fantastico support, which enables you to install these opensource softwares with a few mouse clicks. I would advice you to first go with one of these options, preferably the wordpress / CMS option before you spend on web design.

Once you’ve worked out these costs, you now need to consider the returns. Business is all about ROI (Return On Investment) and you should seriously track all leads and / or orders you receive through your website. First of all, you need to accept the fact that you won’t start getting orders the moment your website is live. “If you build it, they will come” doesn’t work here. You need to work towards promoting your website.

There are several online and offline ways to do this. For offline promotion, you should include your website URL in every piece of communication as you can, like visiting cards, yellow page ads, invoices, quotations, etc.

For online promotion, you should first make it a point to include your URL in email signatures and forum post signatures. Next, you should consider spending a little on PPC (Pay Per Click) ads. The most important online promotion is free traffic from search engines. If you want to win the SEO game, there are only three things that you really need to concentrate on:

1. Unique content: Don’t ever copy content from other websites, create your own. If required, hire a decent copywriter, but first start on your own.

2. Updated content: Search engines love websites which have new content added regularly, so make it a point to add something new to your website at least once a week. If there are no new products or services that you add, consider adding some latest news in your industry. Or you can simply add useful tips that cater to your industry.

3. Backlinks: The more websites that link to yours, the more weight search engines give to your ranking. So try to get more websites linking to you, preferably from related content sites. You can also write articles that are beneficial to your targeted audience and submit them at article directories. Remember to add your website link in the author’s bio (you are seeing this in action right now; check out the bio following this article).

These are the three pillars that SEO stands on. If you do nothing else except follow these, you will get much more targeted traffic than your competitors. You don’t even need an SEO consultant.

If you can generate enough business from your website, it makes sense in continuing it. It then becomes an investment with good returns. You should give it a try for at least 2 years, to track proper ROI. Once you’re fairly successful, you can think of other ways to improve your website. If you’re making more than you’re spending, its time to take your website to the next level. Start by hiring / outsourcing people to write content for you. Use lead generation tactics by giving away free reports in exchange for people to signup to your mailing list.

While your website is certainly an investment worth making, you can also claim the costs as business expenses! Consult your accountant for details.

First of all, you need to decide what you really want and expect from your website. When I say want, I mean everything – A to Z. How do you want your website to look aesthetically? How do you want your navigation? Do you want a static site or a dynamic one? How frequently do you want it updated? Will you write the content yourself or will you seek the services of a copy writer? (warning: if you copy content off some other website you are doing copyright infringement and may receive a DCMA complaint and even get sued). Always plan your website content keeping the focus on your customer. What does your customer seek before arriving at your website? It is advisable to visit a few websites, especially your competitors and see how they have their websites done. This will give you pointers and help you take directions.

Once you know what you expect from your website, start inviting web design and development quotes from multiple sources, like recommendations from friends and associates, online sources like elance, yellow pages, etc. Also ask them what type of hosting plans will be required. Once you’ve taken sufficient quotes, do some research for hosting providers on Google; you will get several choices. I’ve found that AwareINDIA.net is one of the good ones who give excellent support. Their rates are also very economical (just a few cents to a few dollars a month depending on the plan you choose). You will also need to have some idea of search engine marketing (SEM) costs before you form a budget for web design. SEM is a great way to ensure free long term visitor traffic to your website. While SEM will not be required immediately, it makes sense to know if all expenses meet your budget, else you will require making some compromises. It is also advisable to let your SEM company work hand in hand with your designer, as your website also needs to be search engine optimized (SEO) so that SE robots can index your pages properly and rank them higher for your desired keywords and phrases.

It may interest you to know that there are several open source software available which can take care of your website needs. For example, OS commerce and Zen Cart are some great options if you plan to have a shopping cart system and ecommerce enable your website. If you want a discussion forum, PHPbb is one of the best used extensively. If you’re looking out for a Portal or CMS software, there are Joomla, Drupal, Mambo, Post Nuke, PHP Nuke, and many more. Some folks even use blog software to power their website which gives it an interactive edge. Popular blog software are wordpress, b2evolution and nucleus. The good news is, most of these software can be installed for free at the click of a button without requiring any technical skills, if your hosting provider supports fantastico (AwareINDIA.net does support it). In fact, you can even buy ready made templates specially designed for and compatible with these software. Some companies even make customized templates. It’s a good idea to research on these software and also discuss this with your programmer and weigh the options if it is viable or not. Building a system from scratch would be quite expensive, especially if you’re on a tight budget. In fact, just mentioning about fantastico and these open source software with your designer will immediately cause him to feel as if you’re very much aware of the market and he will certainly think twice before giving you an exorbitant quote!

Some hosting providers also provide a Do-It-Yourself website builder which is quite easy to use, eliminating the need for a web designer altogether. However, there are some limitations with such options. AwareINDIA.net does offer this option; in fact, you can even get a free trial and see if it suits your requirements. If you’re comfortable using Microsoft Word, you should be able to design your own website without much hassle.

If you do plan to use the services of a designer, make sure you have everything in black and white. Keep the terms and conditions of the contract crystal clear. This is good for both of you as it is binding. Use an escrow service if required – most online portals like elance have this option. If you wish to read more of my work, you can visit http://www.bharatbhasha.com/author.php/Nirjara%20Rustom – I’ve written several articles related to SEO, online success, marketing tips, email marketing, etc.

Campaign Costs And Features

An email campaign of 10,000 subscribers can be initiated for less than $18.

Campaign packages include tracking statistics that allow small businesses to increase sales.

Tracking features can supply critical data for reports that allow you to know who opens and reads your newsletters and the urls they click on. Monitor sent to a friend, compare monthly changes in size of subscription base.

Tools that allow for split testing ad copy to find the most effective sales content.

After you have created your email capture page and have added the email capture code. You can begin collecting names and email addresses.

Once you have built your list, you’re ready to start your first email campaign.

Email marketing providers have made it easy for even a novice to run a campaign with ready made templates and fill-in forms for auto responders and newsletter content.

Can-Spam Act

Email marketing services have made it easy for internet marketers to be Cam-Spam compliant.
According to U.S law all email marketers must comply with the  Can-Spam Act of 2003, which requires they identify who they are. Provide valid contact information and a physical address (P.O Boxes acceptable). Many email marketers these days will use a double opt-ins. when signing-up new subscribers. Opt-ins sign up from an email capture page by typically including just a name and email address. This will trigger an auto responder asking them to verify that they do wish to subscribe. Can-Spam also requires that you provide an opt-out link to remove anyone from your list who requests it.

Email Marketing Service Providers

If you are looking for a cheap email marketing services with lots of features then GetResponse may be the deal for you. Allowing you to maximize your dollars and reach more subscribers. GetResponse.com an Implix product located in Wilmington Delaware established in 1998. Get Response features include

• Sending unlimited emails Up to 10,000 subscribers for $17.95 per month and $4.50 for each additional set of 5,000 subscribers

• Excellent Email Marketing and support Forum
• Integrates with Joomla
• Co-registration
• Track software downloads

Pay As You Go Email Marketing Services

Can’t afford a monthly fee for email marketing? EliteMail (now EliteAnswers) a Pay as you go Email Marketing service.
Cost

• Sign-up costs $10 which buys 1000 emails.
• The free trial on Small Business and MySpace Editions “No Credit Card Required” allows you to test the service out and there is no time limit.
• If you sign up for the free trial and buy the $10 package that will give you a total of 2000 emails.
• You can buy additional emails as needed.

Aweber

Aweber one of the oldest email marketing services with over 10 years of experience in the email marketing services business.

Staying current with today’s technology Aweber includes features like RSS to Email allowing you to convert your Blog’s RSS feed to an email newsletter.

Features like publishing your newsletter to twitter to help broaden your customer base.

Free Email Marketing Tips

Aweber helps newbies get started in email marketing with free webinars.

Topics include how to use Aweber services, get more subscribers, develop and find content for newsletters and email campaigns.

If you have no time to attend webinars then take advantage of the video tutorials and knowledge base library.

Aweber Pricing

Basic campaigns cost $19 monthly for unlimited emails to 500 subscribers. Larger packages run $149 monthly and allow for 25,000 subscribers. There are a total of about 6 packages and pricing for these will fall in between these ranges depending on the size of subscription list.

In closing

Whether you choose to pay your email marketing service provider monthly or pay as you go, email marketing services can be very affordable. The ability to be scalable will allow cutting expenses and expanding as you see a return on your investment.

Getting traffic is not easy, otherwise, every single web master wouldn’t be searching for new traffic methods.

Although getting traffic to your website (or blog) is not a rocket science, many web masters don’t know how to drive visitors to their sites.

Here are 3 crucial tips to get targeted traffic to your website in 2007…

1. Quality content.

We are not in 2006 anymore. Keyword stuffing and other portals are not the rage, and search engines don’t like them. You will not get a decent amount of visitors to your site if you continue like this.

You must over deliver. Your visitors should be literally delighted by what they find on your site.

2. Proper onpage optimization

Do you know what is the most important tag regarding your seo (search engine optimization) efforts?

It is your title tag. Many webmasters don’t even take the time to add a title tag to their sites.

Others will add it, and it’s fine. The only problem is that they will write a big: Welcome to my site! That doesn’t make sense. You are not going to receive any traffic to your site with welcome.

You should add your main keyword: for example. If your site is about golf shoes, your title tag should be like this:

Note: As you see, you should also include a secondary keyword in your title tag.

Needless to say that you need to carry out a proper keyword research. The tool that I use is wordtracker. You should use it as well.

3. Community website

If you don’t read the latest research about surfers behaviors on the Internet, let me tell you.

Static html sites are not making it anymore. You need to build a dynamic site in php (or asp, but it a little bit more complicated).

Users need to leave comments, to give their opinion. You can’t just write and except your visitors to read!

Actually, your site visitors are not readers. Now, they are also webmasters!

How? With new CMS (Content Management Systems) like Mambo, Joomla and Drupal, they just log in and add their touch, participate to the conversation… They can even change the site’s lool in their web browsers.

Follow these three advices and wait until you see new visitors, subscribers and sales to your website.

For any SEO campaign, there should be 2 areas of focus – on-page factors, and off-page factors. Link building is essential about off-page factors. Although it’s easy to understand, it’s harder to execute, since you don’t own the sites that link to you. It makes sense to start with on-page factors because those are elements that you have full control over. Here are some tips on how to optimize your site before even going into link building.

Use a simple template.

Many websites tend to use CMS (Content Management Systems) to publish web pages online. Popular CMS include Joomla and Wordpress. When you use a CMS, you will also be using a template for your website. It’s fine to use a template. The problem is, some templates come with so much unnecessary bells and whistles (e.g. widgets) that they make the site less friendly for the search engines.

Always keep in mind that your site should be as friendly as possible when the search bots crawl your site. In other words, the bots must be able to discern what your website is about. If you add too much fluff on it, the bot finds it hard to find out the main theme of your site, and thus assign it a lower rank.

Use static URLs.

Popular CMS do come with static URL options these days. A static URL looks something like your-keyword-here.html instead of ?p=139

Obviously, a static URL is easier to remember. Your CMS should also include the keywords in the static URL. These words will appear in bold in the search engine results whenever someone uses those keywords to search for information.

Use keywords in title tags.

This is no SEO secret. Most Internet marketers already know that they must include the keywords in the title tags for their website to be search engine friendly. However, once in a while, you may still come across a site that uses the same title for every single page. For example, you see “Danny’s Website” in every page title. That is not the right thing to do.

Create a site map.

To ensure that the search engines find and index all your web pages, create a site map. The site map is a static web page containing all the links to your other web pages. Search engines love site maps because they make it easy for the search bots to find all the web pages.

Once you have optimized your site, it’s now time to build as many inbound links as you can back to your websites. Remember to use your target keyword phrases in your anchor texts. Don’t use “click here” in your links. Instead, use something like “my keywords” in your links. That will help improve your search rankings.

Many web designers are talented, skilled and reasonably priced and have the best interests of their clients at heart. But unfortunately there are too many who don’t.

Week after week small business owners call or e-mail me wondering why their expensive website is generating no traffic or leads and not showing up in the search engines.

When I look at their website I often see a site that looks pretty, but is useless. So how do you avoid falling into the same trap?

Here is what you need to know:

1) Ask the web designer to create your website in a Content Management System like Joomla or Wordpress. This will allow you to easily make frequent changes to your site yourself without having to pay $60 or more per hour for every added link or paragraph. Those days are long gone. If the designer balks at this suggestion, run.

2) Ask if they do keyword research to determine what keyword phrases people who want your type of service are searching for. If they don’t you can certainly do it yourself or out source it cheaply. Check Elance.com for a great selection of freelancers.

3) Ask if they do Search Engine Optimization. If so, what is the cost? If they don’t, run. If they are too expensive, shop around. You can do it yourself with a little effort.

4) Do the copywriting yourself or provide an outline and have a professional copywriter do it. The headlines and content need to be focused on customer benefits and they need to contain your keyword phrases. Your headline and content will determine whether visitors leave or stay. Avoid phrases like “welcome” and “we do this” and “we do that”.

5) Ask your designer to go easy on using Java script or Flash as Google can’t recognize or read either.

6) Do not create an “enter” or “intro” page. It will increase your rate of abandonment and the search engines won’t like it. Every extra click discourages visitors.

7) It’s crucial that you have an e-mail marketing program and put an opt-in box on every key page of your site. Ask visitors to sign up for your mailing list and give them something of value to encourage them to comply. This is how you convert visitors to leads. Ask your designer if they will put the opt-in boxes on your site for you.

Check references and find out how long they’ve been in business and how reliable they are. Do they have a group of designers or are they solo? You want someone who will respond when you need their help in an emergency, not someone who ignores you for days.  You will need excellent customer service since your business is at stake.

9) Do not let your web designer register your domain name or host your website  unless you have direct access to your domain and hosting accounts and they are in your name.  You don’t want to be “held hostage” should you need to change designers. You’ll need direct access anyway for a number of reasons. You shouldn’t pay more than $10 per year for a domain, and for a simple site, your hosting costs should be no more than $10 to $12 a month.

10) Shop around. Don’t just hire the first person you’re referred to since the referrer may not be aware of some of these pitfalls.

Following these 10 tips will save you hundreds of wasted dollars and will help you create a website that sells.

But I spend some time playing with first-in-Vietnam SEO Contest for Vietnamese webmaster/emarketers/SEOers to compete with other for ranking no.1 in Google.com with the keyword CuocThiSEO.

The time is going up. And the game will be over next 36 hours. Right now we can see the top 3 candidates.

CuocThiSEO dot com, the winner of February – hmm, this emarketer (I guess) is too clever to grab this domain when the rules are not strict.

CuocThiSEO dot Hostindexvn dot com – this guy (a truly SEOer I beg) has some other good sites to support. This site is linked from CuocThiSEO dot com however. If everything goes on like what I guess, this site will come first! He just changed his site to wordpress within 1 week.

CuocThiSEO hyphen SEO dot CO dot CC, the first month winner – this guy endlessly earns links from social networking sites. He’s wise enough to choose dofollow sites. This Joomla-based site, just like the candidates above, provides good tips a/b SEO (though by just rewriting or modifying some words for better keyword density and cheating Google).

Sphereteam’s Ced and his French SEO mate have their sites on top 15 too. Ced is better with top 10.

Besides, I realize other truly Vietnamese SEO guys such as the owner of Winnerofcuocthiseo dot Blogspot dot com, who possessing other good sites like Vinabet or Vn-SEO (just my guest) and the guy of CuocThiSEO dot US dot TC. These 2 guys specially like web directories.

Well, so what I LEARN from this SEO Contest?

First, Google updates their algorithms all the time.

Second, Sandbox still works and if you don’t have more control on the web server then your site goes lost somewhere elst. Thats the case of the leading site in January hosted by Dreamhosters.

Third, we can cheat Google in a certain period of time, with spamming, copyscaping but in long term, your sites will drop down in Google SERPs.

Next, the key to win any SEO Contest is…patience and cleverness!

Last, SEO Contests like this are in Google consideration (I guess) and the giant would have some policies or penalties later. Simply sites targeting the nonsense keywords bring less value to users.

And huh, what I EARN from this SEO Contest?

Well, to be honest, besides the 5 lessions above, I really earn more than 2.52 US dollars from Adsense (up to now, this may increase next days) with 10 clicks and 1416 impressions.

Actually there’re some other interesting things a/b this SEO Contest. But I like to keep it secret now…

BTW, thanks guys for supporting me with some links for this CuocThiSEO SEO Contest…

VietSEOGuy!

The first one that is on the list of top 10 web hosting features is reliability. This is very easy to understand since all website owners would not want their website to experience a long downtime period where their site will be temporarily inaccessible to anyone who wants to gain access like your customers and visitors. If your site would have many downtime periods, customers might just go to another site that offers the same products and services as yours. Secure your traffic and customers by going for a web hosting company that could offer 99% uptime guaranteed.

The second to the list of top 10 web hosting features and services is the customer service. For some, this is not very important but they are just wrong. Website owners, especially those who just possess the basic knowledge about how to run a website or those who are new to online business, are more likely to encounter some troubles and problems regarding their sites and it would be very helpful if you could get immediate help, support and assistance from your hosting company’s friendly staff. They should be able to provide quick response to their clients in a friendly manner.

The price or the cost made it to the 3rd spot of the top 10 web hosting features and services because this is one of the major things that people consider when choosing a web hosting provider. Opt for a company that could offer the best services for a price that is competitive and affordable. The disk space and the bandwidth size also made it to the top 10 web hosting features because you will want to make your website more interesting and appealing to customers and visitors so you will have to put images or videos that will catch the attention of visitors and will encourage them to explore more. You should also have enough spaces to accommodate all your files and emails.

The top 10 web hosting features would not be complete without security. Customers would usually prefer to purchase from sites that displays an image or an icon that sends out a message that transactions done through your site would be safe and secure. Another thing to consider is the control panel. The web hosting provider should be able to provide you with an easy to control panel. They should explain everything clearly to you if necessary to make sure that you will have little to no trouble running and managing your site.

The reputation of the company can also be considered as one of the top 10 web hosting features because this will give you peace of mind. You will be confident that you are getting the best services because that company has already served lots of clients that are leaving positive feedbacks or reviews about their services. You must not forget the tools and applications that these companies are willing to offer like a script or a site building tool that could really be helpful to every website owner. PHP, Joomla, Ruby on Rails are also good additions to their services. The last things that have made it to the top 10 web hosting features and services are freebies, extras, and bonuses.