When I first heard the term pay-per-play I thought it had to do with online videos or games. It doesn’t. It has everything to do with making money from your website.
If you are like me you are not making enough money off those Google ads you have all over your website are you? People just don’t seem to be clicking through on those any more, do they? What would you do if I told you that you could get paid for every visitor to your site and not just the few who actually click through and leave your site? Most people wouldn’t believe it. I didn’t until I checked out Net Audio Ads.
What’s that? Well, it is pretty much what it says it is audio ads on your website and you get paid every time one of them plays for one of your visitors. The ads are short, only five seconds long and each visitor only gets one ad so they don’t hate you while they are on your site. Five seconds is hardly enough time to annoy anyone. You see or should I say hear them all over the place these days so why shouldn’t you benefit from them too? Like those Google ads everyone is ignoring these days the pay-per-play ads are related to the content on your website by spidering your site. I see this as a great opportunity for publishers and advertisers a like.
When I think of Spock my mind Immediate goes to Star Trek’s most famous of Vulcans, Mr. Spock played by the venerable actor Leonard Nimoy. From there my mind wonders to the Star Trek themed pop bank called S.P.O.C.K. (their music is pretty good by the way). I don’t think I would ever think search engine, but that’s exactly what Spock.com is, a search engine. It is a people and information search engine. You can search for your friends, co-workers, models, singers, or even your favorite Star Trek actors like Mr. Nimoy.
Spock says they are not a social networking site yet it certainly acts like one. You can use the site to make your searches without signing up, but if you join you get to contribute to the site and hopefully help improve those search results. You do that by inviting friends to “trust” you and then vote on your tags, any one can add tags to any profile so there is the potential of misguided results due to abuse by the users. I can only hope that people that do sign up and claim their profiles have control over the content people add to their profiles. I would hate to come up in the top results for some thing I am not like republican. The site is still in beta so hopefully all the concerns people have will be addressed. Until then enjoy the new search engine and behave yourself.
The hope is that Spock could become the Google of people searches. But do you think you will be hearing the term “have you Spocked yourself” in place of the now familiar “did you Google yourself” any time soon? I don’t think so. Personally, I have not Googled myself in a long time, but felt the need to see if the Spock results were similar to theirs. And they are pretty darned close especially since the web result portion of Spock.com is pulled directly from Google. So head on over to the site and run a search or two on Spock.com to see where you and your friends stand.
Google is trying to take over the wikipedia market with their new Google KNOL [unit of knowledge] site. The new site seems to be a cross between wikipedia and about.com’s formats. It will contain numerous articles on topics written by experts on that topic. Unlike wikipedia the public at large will not be able to edit the information in the article only comment on it. This good news for us as it makes the information on the site more reliable than wiki’s. The author is now held responsible for what they write as they should be. Share your knowledge with the world but beware everyone else is too.
Which brings me to the big problem. Google will of course be ranking all these pages in their search engine so everyone and their brother will be writing half-assed articles to eat up the keywords. So while this might take something away from wiki I don’t think it will hurt About.com as the test their writers and actually hire them to do the writing with only one writer on one topic they control the potential onslaught that Google will be facing. As Rachel Luxemburg has said this is going to get ugly.
There are lots of sites out there to help you with site submissions. Most will cost you but a lot of them are free. Do a simple google search to weed them out.
I just stumbled on StartRanking.com which is a slightly different model. It asks for a text link instead of payment. Believe you me the best way to get a good google rank is to get a lot of text links back to your site or blog. I am willing to link to those who link to me so send me your requests or write a good comment on one of my topics and I will approve it and your site link too.
So what do you get that business guy that seems to have everything? And no room for anything?
Well, guys love gadgets and a lot of gals do too. If they are on the road a lot or travel tugging along their laptop computer an accessory along those lines is always a good bet.
A good suggestion is the ScanShell 2000N. The scanshell 2000N allows them to scan and save all kinds of business documents at the touch of a button. It is small and lightweight, only 14 ounces. It is very easy to stow in that laptop bag and it does not take up a lot of desk space either. It uses the USB port for power so you aren’t dragging along AC adapters.
Quality is pretty good too for such a small sheet scanner. It scans at 600 dpi and saves your documents to all the standard formats like JPG, PNG, TIF, and others. It also scans directly into your software already on your system like Paint, Arobat and more. ScanShell also comes with Scan2Contacts for scanning business cards directly into MS Outlook.
The best part is that it is Vista compliant. So if you were forced into upgrading or got a new system with the Vista operating system on it this little portable scanner will work for you.
I know by now you have heard of Web 2.0 but have you heard of Business Cards 2.0? No?
Business cards are not just for businessmen any more. With Business cards 2.0 you get a great way to advertise your website or blog offline.
Ooprint.com offers bloggers 100 free business cards to help them let other know about their blogs offline. What a nifty idea and a great offer. Get your free blogger cards today.
I know the title of this post sounds pushy but you really won’t regret it. [Unless you by a super cheap one with with only one megapixel resolution that is.]
I was a diehard SLR user who refused to go digital. I never thought I would be happy with the quality of a digital camera. So when I first started coming around and looking for a digital camera I wanted one that have as many features as my SLR film cameras did.
Not an easy task back in 2000. My first thought was to get a digital body to go with all the Minolta lenses I already had. This proved impossible due to the high cost of digital SLR camera bodies at the time. So I started looking at point and shoot digital cameras, but I still kept hitting that same ole wall. I wanted more control the camera than these would provide.
Then I found the Olympus E-10. It was a more reasonably price SLR with the ability to manually focus and both aperture and shutter control as well as fully automatic functions. I bit the bullet and bought it. And I am so glad I did. The images are great. I have taken more photos than I could ever have with film. It has more than paid for itself in all the savings from no longer buying film.
Probably the most satisfying thing about the digital camera is being able to review the images and immediately reshooting if there is a problem or being able to shoot many shots without fear of running out of film.
I have since purchased another small pocket sized Kodak EasyShare V550, which easily fits in a pocket and goes anywhere. I use it almost every day for both personal and professional. Since I purchased my first digital camera I have been taking digital images for several online stores. It was that ease of editing, uploading and share of the photographs that finally convinced me to use one for family and friends pictures too.
The quality of digital cameras have been getting so much better over the years that I see another camera sometime in the near future too. So don’t put it off any longer. Dip into the pool of digital photography.
I received an email with one of those talking avatars – Site Pals. They are made using a service from oddcast.com. They are a pretty cool idea an animated figure [person, animal or alien] welcomes visitors to your site in your voice or someone else’s.
But the lowest cost is $10/month. That is pretty steep for a little flash animation you could host on your own site. I wish they would do a one-time fee with where you host it and there is no more cost to you. I would probably make a few of them, but not at $10/month or more no way.
I first stumbled on PayPerPost about six months ago. At the time I had a new blog without a lot of posts. But I felt payperpost was a great opportunity not just to make money but also to help my blog grow so I worked really hard to get accepted into their program.
It wasn’t easy at first to get their approval, but it was worth all that effort I had to put into my blog to get their approval. All the hoops I jumped through just let me know they were in fact the real deal that I would get quality topics and not have to worry about getting paid for my posts either.
What really drew me to PayPerPost was the fact that you, the writer, get to choose your own writing opportunities unlike some of their competition that tell you what to write. Plus they really want you to succeed. They have a blog of their own that helps you with updates and tips on how PayPerPost works.
I have not checked it out, but they also have a message board with a very helpful community, which I hope to join very soon. As my blog grows I know my opportunities with PPP will grow as well. I can’t say that the money does appeal to me as well, because it certainly does. I hope to make enough to pay for the upkeep of my website after that who knows.
If you like to write and want to make a little money from your writing check out PayPerPost.com you won’t be disappointed. I wasn’t.
Okay, so you’ve gotten the domain name you wanted from GoDaddy.com and you are ready to jump right in and get a site set up. Your next step then is finding a good hosting service. I recommend PowWeb.com. GoDaddy.com offers several different levels of hosting as well, but your best bet to get the most bang for your buck would be PowWeb.com.
PowWeb has a single plan which is loaded with all the services you would need by without having to upgrade your service plan to get them. Some of the finer points of hosting with PowWeb.com are:
Unlimited Mailboxes [you can give all your friends and family email addresses which they can check online or via POP]
24/7 Tech Support
Web based file manager [great if you don’t want to use FTP]
Unix Platform
PHP and MySQL [with 75 databases!]
SSL Secure Site for e-commerce [shared certificate] – Start your online store with your choice of free shopping carts installed with the click of a mouse.
Loads of free, easy to install programs like forums, content management for complete sites, galleries, shopping carts and lots more.
And you cannot beat their price for all these great services. Only $7.77 a month and if you check their site regularly they run specials all the time get your first year for as low as $5.77/month.
