Probably one of the most infamous (or famous, depends on your perspective) uses of the Googlebomb was linking “miserable failure” to the Whitehouse.gov page about George Bush. Guess what? Google has removed the ability to Googlebomb.

I’ve had a lot of fun reading up on what people think of this one. Lots of people loved Googlebombs, others loathed them.

The think to remember is that this is not intended to damage appropriate link building efforts. This is to impact linking campaigns that are designed to make a site come up for unwelcome results. Theoretically, this should not harm your regular SEO efforts.

If you want to read some good analyses of this, I would suggest taking a look at The Googlebomb Conspiracy: The Truth is Out There and Google Kills Bush’s Miserable Failure Search & Other Google Bombs. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re a website designer who works a lot with osCommerce sites, you might appreciate a template resource. I’ve always found templates very useful as something to adapt, even if the final result has major changes in appearance from the original template.

I’ve used osCommerce on one of my sites. I remember how it was figuring out the templates in there, since like any other content management system or storefront program it has it’s own little tricks you need to understand. Having a selection of osCommerce templates might have helped.

The site offering these templates is a membership site - currently $89 for a 3 months’ membership, no doubt less than it would cost a designer to start from scratch. Even if you only use these templates as a starting point, adding your own logos, colors and backgrounds, I can see where they could be useful. Read the rest of this entry »

Just have to be amused by the different terminologies, such as Web 2.0. Who decides when this stuff gets named anyhow?

Just as with the original web bubble, many Web 2.0 companies are starting to realize that they need to bring in some real money if they want to grow, according to a report in BusinessWeek.

No, really??

I guess some people didn’t learn the first time around. There are sites out there offering services of all sorts, but just don’t have the funding to grow as they’d like. Many of them really need to be of a much larger scale to turn a decent profit, but can’t grow fast enough because they don’t have the money.

As a home business, I sympathize. I know if I had the money to hire people to help, I could get through all the ideas I have for my sites. Without that I have to rely on my ability to work on a broad range of topics, promoting my sites and working hard, while taking care of my home and family. It’s tough. Read the rest of this entry »

When you need to deal with people a lot in your home business, it is very important to be able to manage your leads well. There are many ways to do this, from creating your own list using one program or another on your computer to keeping your leads on paper to finding the right software solution that is designed to help you manage your leads.

Lead management done right can help you to be more organized, and therefore be more productive in your home business. If you find you’re always losing track of potential customers or downline signups, it’s probably time to take a look at how you’re keeping track of them.

A software solution is not for every home business owner. If you’re keeping up perfectly with your leads already, there is little need to change. But for others it can be a huge help.

What does that mean anyhow? Sounds like nonsense, wouldn’t you say?

Actually, I’m talking about a post over on Shoemoney’s blog about whether or not blogging can be considered a passive income. I must say I agree with him… it’s scarcely passive. Blogging’s a lot of work.

I will admit I enjoy blogging. It’s a lot of work though, especially maintaining multiple blogs and figuring out how to market them. I’ve been surprised by how some have had an unexpected appeal while others struggle for any attention at all.

I’ve also been surprised by which ones have really caught my attention as a blogger. Some that I didn’t intend to take that seriously it seems like I’m always finding something to post on them. Others are a struggle even though the idea itself sounded simple. Read the rest of this entry »

I just spotted a news article on YouTube starting revenue sharing. That should really interest some of their users, although I don’t know that all of them will understand the idea. By the same token, there will be plenty to jump on the idea.

Since they’ve been acquired by Google, the idea doesn’t surprise me.

It should be interesting to see how this one develops. How the revenue share will be managed. How this will impact the quality of videos. How long it takes for the first ebooks on making money from revenue sharing on YouTube to come out.

Technorati Tags: YouTube, revenue share

No, I’m not podcasting yet. I’m talking about a podcast hosting service.

If you’ve looked much at podcasting, you may have noticed that it is rather bandwidth intensive. Sound quite simply means big files. If you aren’t up to paying for the hosting and bandwidth yourself, using a service may be preferable.

Today I found out about a service that offers free podcast hosting. They offer software that helps you to record your podcast, even marking where advertisements could be placed in the future.

I’m going to take a guess and say that’s where the site earns its money - from making podcasts available to advertisers. But since you, the podcaster, can earn money from this too, it may not be a bad deal at all.

A popular podcast can really help to build your reputation. It’s not a waste of time if you offer something people want to hear. It’s a great chance to show that you’re knowledgeable in your field. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been updating one of my sites. It’s been a while, so one of the things I needed to do was check to make sure that all Clickbank links still worked.

Wow.

I ended up dropping about half of them. About 4-5 sites had gone out of business, and at least 3-4 had switched from Clickbank to Paypal, so I wasn’t getting paid on anything I sent them.

No wonder I was earning so little from some of those products! I hadn’t thought much of it because they were on a relatively obscure part of my site, but still!

Yes, I am updating and trying to expand my use of Clickbank products on that site. It’s tricky, but I want to be recommending products whenever possible that are relevant to the articles. There’s more out there even for primarily informational sites than just AdSense, after all.

I want to do similarly for each of my sites. It’s very time consuming but I think it will be worth it in the long run.

Technorati Tags: clickbank, paypal, dropping affiliate programs, updating websites