Reliable Search Engines

Good and reliable search engine is essential to every Internet surfer because without it almost nothing can be done on the Web. Can you even imagine how your life would look like if you did not have access to search engines? You want to find something like the combination of 2 words of your choice and you cannot? There are a few is a relatively new, experimental search engines which aim at delivering the best quality service to its users. Searching with various search engines is easy and convenient. I recommend that you check out various search engines for yourself and tell me what you are think. Enter your own keywords and see the results to test the performance of search engines.

April 8th, 2010 - Posted in About Internet | | 2 Comments

Promoting Your Blog

Blogging is for many people not only a hobby, but also a passion. They spend a lot of time working on their blog, polishing some details, networking and so on. No wonder then, that there are many bloggers who are nearly obsessed with rankings. Personally I love rankings, because it is a nice feeling to see in some cases my blog ranked high, but not only for this reason because I also enjoy to observed which are the top blogs in the blogospheare. If you are one of such people that is interested in traffic rankings, then you should be promoting your blog in various ways.
Do you want to promote your blog? If that is the case, then you might want to check out various blog bookmarking and rating sites. You can start marketing your blog by submitting your sites and blog posts to such websites. By submitting your links and blog posts to various websites you have a chance to improve your brand awareness and a chance to acquire more visitors. Of course, before you start advertising a lot you should make sure that your website has a lot of valuable content. This way there will be a bigger probability that those who visit your website for the first time will become loyal readers. Remember, marketing is one of the key aspects of blogging, so it is important not to neglect it.

March 27th, 2010 - Posted in About Blogging, About Internet | | 1 Comments

Has Your Content Been Stolen?

Has your content been stolen? This can happen to any honest blogger who is always writing posts by himself. Someone might simply take advantage out of it and steal whatever posts he likes. There are at least a few different ways you can react in such situation:

1. Remain silent and do not do anything while telling yourself that you do not care about it. Sometimes if is not worth to do anything about it.
2. Contact the scraper by email and ask him to remove the stolen content from his blog. The problem is that he might not listen to you. Sometimes it might be even hard to find a way to contact him.
3. Use a Wordpress plug-in (such as RSS footer from joostdevalk.nl/wordpress/rss-footer/) that will automatically link back to your site from the website of a scraper where he published your post. This plug-in might be very useful if you want to stay informed about any attempts of stealing your content. Of course, simply knowing about your content being published somewhere will not remove it.

Overall, there are not many things you can do if your content is being stolen by some unknown website. On the other hand, webmasters of popular websites may be afraid that you might spread the news of what they did.

March 1st, 2010 - Posted in About Blogging, About Internet, Technology, Websites | | 7 Comments

Blogging

Blogging can be very rewarding if you blog about the things you love and that are interesting. When you set up a blog you decide on which topic you are going to write about to your readers. From my experience I can say that the more attractive the subject for you, the more likely you will want to write posts on your blog and the longer you will remain a blogger. However, blogging is not only about writing. It gives us opportunities to make new friends, participate in social events and maybe even make some money. There are various websites dedicated to bloggers that are doing a great job by giving us what is the best in the blogosphere. If you enjoy writing like I do and if writing gives you a lot of fun, then writing articles and sharing them with others will not be a problem for you and you will find pleasure in it. The world of the blogosphere has never been so vibrant and alive and it is thanks to various websites that connect bloggers. Almost everybody can become a blogger, so if you have something to write about and would like to get the word spread about it, then simply start your own blog. It is also good to have conversations with other bloggers, because what can be better than spreading the word through other bloggers and writers?

February 11th, 2010 - Posted in About Blogging, About Internet | | 27 Comments

Blog Directories

Recently, I have been involved in submitting my blog to different directories in order boost the popularity of my blog. Here is the list of directories that you might consider submitting your blog to:

-Blog Flux is weblog directory plus a button maker, Google PageRank checker, and a pinging service.
-BlogStreet features blog profiles, RSS ecosystem, blog “tops”, search and directory.
-Globe of Blogs is an index of weblogs as submitted by their authors.
-LS Blogs is a directory of blogging-related sites: forums, directories and search engines, software and hosts, and blogs.
-Technorati is perhaps the most popular directory. You can submit your photo as well.
-Findory aggregates blogs and recommends content based on users interest. It means that if a user is reading a blog with similar content he may be presented with your blog.
-Blogarama is another popular directory.
-2rss.com is where you can submit your RSS feed.
-Blogdigger is an RSS search engine. Submit your feed here.
-Bloghop allows users to tagsurf blogs that match their interest.

Keep in mind that in most cases editors of those directories will want to review your website before accepting it. Make sure your blog is at least a few weeks/months old and has some original content.

February 11th, 2010 - Posted in About Internet, Websites | | 50 Comments

Blogoholics

Do you ever wonder how many people are blogoholics? Quite often I notice bloggers who are blogging a lot. That is probably due to the fact that they want to increase various rankings like Page Rank and Alexa. Many of them are doing some marketing and focusing on attracting visitors. I think that very few things can be as addictive as blogging. By blogging I not only mean writing and publishing posts, but also staying in touch with other writers and contributing to their blogs. If you give out your personal details to a lot of people on the Internet, then you may be interested in the new LifeLock Command Center.
It might be a good idea to set hours at which you should work on your blog so that you will not be tempted to work throughout the whole day. I wonder how many bloggers would be able to admit that they are blogoholics, and how many blogoholics there actually are out there.

January 11th, 2010 - Posted in About Internet, Websites | | 78 Comments

Hosting a Blog on Your Own Domain

This time I would like to write about advantages and disadvantages of blogs hosted on your own domain name:

-You will have to pay for the domain name and for hosting your domain. This can amount to approximately $150 per year, but it varies depending on which hosting plan you will choose.
-If your blog is hosted on Blogspot you can incorporate AdSense, but Google will take part of the profit. However, you will not need to share your profit with Google if you decide to have your own domain.
-Other bloggers might show more respect towards bloggers who have their blog hosted on their own domain. That is because they might assume that such a blogger is more serious about blogging.
-If you have your own domain, you have a lot higher possibility to fully customize your blog. However, it might require some html and php knowledge. Make sure you learn some basic html before you decide to host your own blog.

I will leave you to make your own conclusions about hosting, because it really depends on circumstances. Overall, if you are really serious about blogging you may eventually decide to host your blog on your own domain.

January 7th, 2010 - Posted in About Blogging, About Internet, Websites | | 18 Comments

Accept Payments

If you own an Internet business, you will want to have multiple ways of accepting payments. On the other hand, if you want to earn some money by participating in various online programs, you will also need to make sure that you have an account to which you will get paid. There are various payment processors, buy PayPal is probably the most popular one.

PayPal is an online website allowing its customers to accept payments made through the Internet. It is a very convenient way to accept money, as if you plan on making money through the Internet, it will not take long to realize that some companies only pay through PayPal. Additionally, PayPal in owned by eBay so if you want to do some online shopping on the biggest online auction house in the world, you will benefit from it as well. So whether you are making money online or not, you might find PayPal services quite useful, as you will be able to make payments as well.
Of course Paypal is not the only payment processor, and Moneybookers is one of its competitors. Moneybookers allows citizens from more countries to participate so it is definitely a good choice for those who cannot have a PayPal account. While Moneybookers may not be a bank, generally users agree that it can be trusted.

December 2nd, 2009 - Posted in About Internet, Business Topics | | 3 Comments

New Search Engines

Choosing a search engine is a very important choice. Many Internet users use search engines on a daily basis. While most Internet users are probably using Google as their default search engine, it does not mean that there is no competition. I am not even talking about Yahoo or Microsoft’s search engines, but about relatively new ones that might become popular in the upcoming years. One of them is Cuil (pronounced Cool) and so far it looks very promising. Naturally, being cool is not its only attribute, and Cuil boasts over 120 billion indexed webpages. Some even claim that this is more than Google has indexed, however, it is hard to say whether it is true or not. In any case, the more competition there is, the better it is for users, as more competition usually means higher quality. This is especially true when it comes to the technology market, as often we do not see a lot of competition. Why is that, one might ask? I believe that is because the resources required to compete with other companies in technology market are huge. It is relatively easy to open a grocery store; however, creating a search engine from scratch which is suppose to compete with giants like Google is not easy. I hope this will change when technology will become even more widespread. Personally, I would like to see at least a few high quality search engines being created within the next few years.

November 22nd, 2009 - Posted in About Internet, Websites | | 2 Comments

AdSense in Embedded Players

It seems that for some time now YouTube is allowing to embed YouTube clips that contain an AdSense unit above the clip. YouTube has various pages that discuss this feature. YouTube claims that this service allows enhancing of a site with high quality, relevant video content from YouTube partners. Of course, it also allows you to earn extra revenue along the way. It is supposed to attract and retain users with highly relevant, frequently refreshed video from popular content providers. You will need to sign up for an AdSense account to participate. This would be yet another way to make money - by embedding YouTube clips on your site.

November 19th, 2009 - Posted in About Internet, Business Topics | | 30 Comments