Social bookmarking sites have really taken off as a way to drive traffic to your website. A hot topic on Digg, for example, can crash many an unprepared server. Who needs that?

Apparently many webmasters do, since many try hard to get traffic from Digg and similar sites. It scarcely matters that their server may not cope. They want those eyeballs.

The Trouble With Social Marketing Traffic

All that traffic can mean a lot to your business. Downtime. Slow access for serious customers. Negative comments from people who aren’t interested in your site but want to say something anyhow. A popular story can be a painful experience.

Perhaps worst of all is that social bookmarking website rarely deliver traffic that is likely to buy or click on ads. You may get a ton of traffic, but get just about nothing for the trouble it caused.

So Why Do People Want It So Much?

While social media sites have some serious negatives, there are some good things about them. A popular article can gain a lot of links as bloggers talk about it. This can result in good, relevant traffic from the search engines.

You may also gain subscribers to your RSS feed or email list. The conversion rate to this will probably be small, but present. If you can get subscribers who might possibly turn into buyers or otherwise valuable visitors, does it really matter how low the conversion rate is so long as your effort was minimal? Read the rest of this entry »

Search engine optimization is a part of any website’s success. You can get traffic from a range of sources, but search engines provide some of the best. But many of the best phrases are highly competitive and nearly impossible to rank well for.

This is where the long tail keywords come in. These are the longer phrases that aren’t typed in as often but are easier to rank for. Fewer sites compete for these because they are less valuable. Or are they?

What Are Long Tail Keywords?

The precise definition of long tail keyword can vary. Some say they are phrases 3 words or longer. I disagree with that because there are many phrases that take 3 words just to do a basic search on the topic. “Work at home” for example.

I would argue that the definition depends upon to topic. Sometimes the most common searches are just a word or two. When thinking about long tail, you are thinking about things that are rarely typed in, and make the search more specific. Read the rest of this entry »

This one’s for the bakers out there. A new site, Cake America is focused on allowing bakers to advertise their cakes, pastries and so forth.

The idea is pretty simple you sign up (free if you just set up one store, multiple stores available with a fee), upload pictures of the cakes you have to offer along with descriptions, and post your store information.

The site is searchable by cake style or by city. Obviously you are going to get most of your customers on a local basis, but the more ways you can gain exposure to your business, the better, especially if you’re just at the free level.

The advantage to this kind of site as opposed to a regular online directory listing is that you can showcase your work. It can supplement your website if you have one, or give you a chance to get at some of that online traffic you’ve been missing without one.

There are a variety of cakes already listed on the site. I would expect one of the key factors to succeeding in advertising on a site like this would be to describe your cake in as much detail as possible. You want to catch every detail that people might be searching for in looking for that particular case. You also want the description to be appealing, of course.

Advertising on forums is often suggested as a way to get traffic to your website. You’re told to use it to build your reputation, get your name and your business out there in front of other people.

So does it work?

That depends on you. Can you make the right decisions to help it work?

Advertise Right

Too many people think advertising on forums means blasting their ad all over the forum. They are some of the most detested users on forums, and are banned frequently, their posts deleted.

That kind of forum advertising doesn’t work well at all, even if the ads aren’t quickly deleted by alert moderators. People don’t come to forums to read ads. They come for information.

Even if the forum has a section for advertising, as is common for many home business forums, the ads are likely to be of only minimal effectiveness. The one positive thing to be said for them is that your ads probably won’t be deleted, and those who read them are looking for something to buy or join.

The best way to advertise on a forum is to be a solid member of that forum. If the forum allows signature links, take advantage of that. Build up a reputation as someone who gives solid answers. If you are a person that people go to for help on the forum, they are more likely to think of you positively when they want to buy the kind of product or service you offer.

Read the rest of this entry »

Especially when you need to share it with someone else?

The trouble with sharing your work with other people is that it has the potential to be used in ways other than what you meant them to do. The ability to restrict what the person who gets your data can do with it can be quite important.

File security matters a lot in business. Pinion offers software to help you keep control of how your data is used, even when you send it out. While it will be more than the typical home business needs, there will be some people out there who do need this kind of software. The software works both at the operating system level and the application level, to maximize the protection of your data.

The feature I like best is that you can set an expiration date, so that the file cannot be used later. I can see that coming in very handy.

Blogging is a tough business. You wouldn’t necessarily think so, to see some of the success people have had, but there are far more unsuccessful bloggers than successful.

In part this depends on how you define success. Some blog more or less for the love of it. They may or may not monetize their blog. They blog, comment on other blogs at it pleases them, and enjoy whatever readers they may get. They don’t worry about consistency in terms of how often they post.

A lot of bloggers are far more serious about their work. They think out their posts carefully, try to post often enough to keep their readers interested and want to earn a living from their blogs.

And many, many bloggers in between.

In all of these groups, some are successful, some are not. How do you increase your odds of blogging success?

Choose a good topic

A topic you can blog well on is important. There will be competition. If there’s no competition, there’s probably little to no audience for your topic. If you can write well about the topic, in an engaging manner and a perspective unique to your blog, you improve your chances of succeeding as a blogger.

Your exact niche is a part of your success. You can take a topic such as electronics, and narrow it down, focusing on a type of electronics and the group of people who would use them, for example. The more specific you are, the more likely you are to appeal to that particular group.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s tough when people criticize your business. You work hard, but you can’t please everyone. And you won’t always feel that the criticism is warranted or even reasonably phrased.

I had a case like that recently on my Home with the Kids website. The newsletter had an article by me about starting a home business on a budget. It covered some of the possiblities for home businesses that could be started without spending a lot of money.

One reader took me to task for not discussing the details of how to start a website, blogging and HTML. And it’s quite true that the article didn’t go into those areas. That’s too much for an article. I did appreciate however, that he suggested it would be a good topic for an ecourse.

After all, it would be. And it’s an idea that has long been on my to-do list.

Sadly, this is not an announcement of such an ecourse. When I do that, it will be pretty carefully researched and written, not one of those reports that are typed out in an hour or so. Gimme time. I have a lot on my plate and if there’s one thing I hate to outsource, it’s my writing. I love writing.

I’ll be the first to admit that even light criticism can sting when people take aim at something you’ve worked hard on. But what you need to do is not let it ruin your day. Take a good look at why you were criticized and see if there’s something to be learned from it or something you can do about it.

Of course, sometimes you can’t do anything about it. You can occasionally hear from people who are mean simply to be mean. In those cases the best you can do is to not let it bother you.

And laugh if an attack that was meant to be mean actually gives you a helpful new perspective. It can happen.

Technorati Tags: problems, opportunities, criticism, coping with criticism

I’m not a programmer. I understand the basics and can generally figure out the logic to a very short segment of code, but that’s it. So much for taking BASIC, FORTRAN and Pascal back in high school, and FORTRAN again in college.

I do code many of my own sites though. I’m pretty good with HTML, can cope with CSS, and can use PHP includes. I’d love to do more, although I’m certainly not intending on learning C++. I’ll leave that to others.

One thing I have learned is that you can struggle with any of these at times. That’s where forums to talk to other people who understand code is really helpful. I’ve learned that it can be a real bear at times to convince CSS to display properly across a sufficient range of browsers. That some HTML code is really ugly, and you can do it more simply other ways.

Understanding HTML and some CSS is something I would recommend as a minimum for anyone serious about running a website, and even more so for multiple websites. They aren’t that hard, and it’s nice to not have to pay a webmaster for every little change to your site. There are times that it’s worth it, but not so much for little stuff.