Monday, November 04, 2013
I've done this several times.
This isn't a scam. Just 3 writers getting together to share their knowledge.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Write What You Know
I've been working with writers for 10 years. I've told authors to write what they know. Everyone has heard this. Unfortunately, very few writers do it. I have one friend who did. She took a trip to Britain. She spent the whole time staying at old hotels, castles, and visiting museums.
I do have one friend who listened to this advice. Less than 10 years later she has 9 books in print and is the Senior Editor at one of North America's larger Book Publishers.
I am a firm believer that authors should travel. Everyone should travel. There is nothing more empowering than seeing the world beyond your neighborhood. I think every author should stand on a mountain in China, walk the coast of Africa, stand on a castle in Scotland, and ride a schooner in Australia. Only then will they be prepared to explore the 'human condition.'
Here are some tips for using a good Online Hotel Booking site.
1. Make sure the website is owned by a recognized travel group. When you find the name of the company, Google it. Can you find the head office on a map? Is there a phone number? If so then you have a ‘real’ website and not one of the affiliate websites.
2. Do the same test with the Hotel before booking. One friend of mine asks the hotel for a good local restaurant. Then, she searches the restaurant. She phones them and asks if they can refer a few local hotels. If the restaurant refers the hotel then you can be fairly certain that the hotel did not misrepresent their quality.
3. Book online. Travel agencies can book hotels that are not on the Hotel booking websites then, Buyer Beware. I find that I can get a discount when booking online.
4. Contact the local health department. Make sure that you have all the shots needed. Also, make sure that you have a good idea of the local diet. My parents went on a dream vacation to the Bahamas. They didn’t consider their diet and ended up feeling ill most of the trip.
If you have food sensitivities then stay in the tourist areas. Do not venture into the local restaurants and markets. Also, beware of the water.
5. Make sure that you have a good idea of the Hotel’s clientele before booking. There is nothing more disheartening than expecting to sleep late and bask on a sun soaked beach, only to arrive to find you booked the ‘hottest’ party spot on the beach.
6. Book Hotels Online but make sure the site is SLL secure. Verify the website with your credit card company. This will verify that the company is legit.
One last note. The travel industry is not regulated. Anyone can start their own travel agency without any experience or knowledge. Use the same guidelines to book an online hotel for local travel agencies. The travel world is full of horror stories about local travel agencies. They are not more legit than an online site.
I do have one friend who listened to this advice. Less than 10 years later she has 9 books in print and is the Senior Editor at one of North America's larger Book Publishers.
I am a firm believer that authors should travel. Everyone should travel. There is nothing more empowering than seeing the world beyond your neighborhood. I think every author should stand on a mountain in China, walk the coast of Africa, stand on a castle in Scotland, and ride a schooner in Australia. Only then will they be prepared to explore the 'human condition.'
Here are some tips for using a good Online Hotel Booking site.
1. Make sure the website is owned by a recognized travel group. When you find the name of the company, Google it. Can you find the head office on a map? Is there a phone number? If so then you have a ‘real’ website and not one of the affiliate websites.
2. Do the same test with the Hotel before booking. One friend of mine asks the hotel for a good local restaurant. Then, she searches the restaurant. She phones them and asks if they can refer a few local hotels. If the restaurant refers the hotel then you can be fairly certain that the hotel did not misrepresent their quality.
3. Book online. Travel agencies can book hotels that are not on the Hotel booking websites then, Buyer Beware. I find that I can get a discount when booking online.
4. Contact the local health department. Make sure that you have all the shots needed. Also, make sure that you have a good idea of the local diet. My parents went on a dream vacation to the Bahamas. They didn’t consider their diet and ended up feeling ill most of the trip.
If you have food sensitivities then stay in the tourist areas. Do not venture into the local restaurants and markets. Also, beware of the water.
5. Make sure that you have a good idea of the Hotel’s clientele before booking. There is nothing more disheartening than expecting to sleep late and bask on a sun soaked beach, only to arrive to find you booked the ‘hottest’ party spot on the beach.
6. Book Hotels Online but make sure the site is SLL secure. Verify the website with your credit card company. This will verify that the company is legit.
One last note. The travel industry is not regulated. Anyone can start their own travel agency without any experience or knowledge. Use the same guidelines to book an online hotel for local travel agencies. The travel world is full of horror stories about local travel agencies. They are not more legit than an online site.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Getting Started With Alexa Rank PT2
Step 4: Download the Toolbar
IE http://www.alexa.com/site/download/
FireFox http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/
The firefox version
Step 5: Join Social groups such as Digital Point, Stumble upon, and technorati. These sites send visitors to your site, and build ‘inbound’ links. Do not limit yourself when building exposure. I’ve even used yahoo answers!
Step 6: Set your website as your homepage. Alexa is set to limit the number of requests it accepts from a website, per day. However, if you have a laptop, an office computer, a home PC, then the access count up. Do not set up FireFoxes ‘reload’ feature. This may seem like a good idea, but Alex is smart enough to stop that type of black hat SEO.
Step 7: Include the widget on your site. There’s no evidence that the Widget improves traffic ranking. It only informs Alexa that your site exsists and ensuring your inclusion in the Alexa service.
Step 8: Create sub domains instead of several domains on similar topics. Alexa will combine them into one page rank.
Learn more about blogging and making money online at the wealthy-writer website. Find Resources, Reviews, and News
IE http://www.alexa.com/site/download/
FireFox http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/
The firefox version
Step 5: Join Social groups such as Digital Point, Stumble upon, and technorati. These sites send visitors to your site, and build ‘inbound’ links. Do not limit yourself when building exposure. I’ve even used yahoo answers!
Step 6: Set your website as your homepage. Alexa is set to limit the number of requests it accepts from a website, per day. However, if you have a laptop, an office computer, a home PC, then the access count up. Do not set up FireFoxes ‘reload’ feature. This may seem like a good idea, but Alex is smart enough to stop that type of black hat SEO.
Step 7: Include the widget on your site. There’s no evidence that the Widget improves traffic ranking. It only informs Alexa that your site exsists and ensuring your inclusion in the Alexa service.
Step 8: Create sub domains instead of several domains on similar topics. Alexa will combine them into one page rank.
Learn more about blogging and making money online at the wealthy-writer website. Find Resources, Reviews, and News
Getting Started With Alexa Rank
Step one: You need to understand that Alexa rank is skewed towards blogs with a large techie audience. (Much the same way digg is) because the techies are the ones with the toolbars. If you want to increase your page rank, then you need to convince your blog members and RSS subscribers that the Alexa toolbar is an important download.
Is this a defect? Well, you can look at it two ways. If you can get these people reading your pages, then by default, your blog is considered to have good/original well-thought-out content.
Step 2: Get off Blogspot and wordpress.com. I’ve talked to several people who have moved blogs off the community blog platforms and watched their daily traffic trends increase from somewhere in the millions to less than 100 000 within two or three months.
This is not a guarantee. www.inspiredauthor.com has more than 350 000 hits a month, more than 10 000 pages on line, is pinged daily, has 150 members who blog, has PR4, and is not in the top 100 000 at the moment. But then, it is not a site that techies would be interested.
Step 3: Consider buying traffic to get started. This will bring visitors to your site, help you determine what the best topics to write about are, and increase your rank. If you make the perfect match (read more on how to make the most of traffic buying and revenue generating in the web promotion section of this blog)
Is this a defect? Well, you can look at it two ways. If you can get these people reading your pages, then by default, your blog is considered to have good/original well-thought-out content.
Step 2: Get off Blogspot and wordpress.com. I’ve talked to several people who have moved blogs off the community blog platforms and watched their daily traffic trends increase from somewhere in the millions to less than 100 000 within two or three months.
This is not a guarantee. www.inspiredauthor.com has more than 350 000 hits a month, more than 10 000 pages on line, is pinged daily, has 150 members who blog, has PR4, and is not in the top 100 000 at the moment. But then, it is not a site that techies would be interested.
Step 3: Consider buying traffic to get started. This will bring visitors to your site, help you determine what the best topics to write about are, and increase your rank. If you make the perfect match (read more on how to make the most of traffic buying and revenue generating in the web promotion section of this blog)
A Baby Boomer Turns 50 Every Eight Seconds
Despite the statistics, no baby boomer is interested in becoming ‘old.’ They changed the world, and built empires. Why should they succumb to the maladies of age when they can change the medical world the way they changed the stock market, cyberspace, or the concept of entrepreneur ventures.
Exercise, diet, and a good skin care regime can help keep people healthy as well as healthy looking. Plastic surgery is becoming a one day procedure. Weight loss and keeping a 20something body no longer takes hours of exercise and starvation a week.
There is no reason why we need to accept the problems of age. Today’s midlife crisis should come at 55 – 60…not 40. Women can retain their small size, even without starving themselves.
It shouldn’t be about making money or looking beautiful. It should be about feeling good, improving your self-esteem, and enjoying life to its fullest.
While taking time to improve your outer beauty, don’t forget about the inner beauty. Don’t forget about the things that were really part of being young: fun, laughter, parties, friends, give-and-take relationships, and active living.
Learn more about blogging and making money online at the wealthy-writer website. Find Resources, Reviews, and News
Exercise, diet, and a good skin care regime can help keep people healthy as well as healthy looking. Plastic surgery is becoming a one day procedure. Weight loss and keeping a 20something body no longer takes hours of exercise and starvation a week.
There is no reason why we need to accept the problems of age. Today’s midlife crisis should come at 55 – 60…not 40. Women can retain their small size, even without starving themselves.
It shouldn’t be about making money or looking beautiful. It should be about feeling good, improving your self-esteem, and enjoying life to its fullest.
While taking time to improve your outer beauty, don’t forget about the inner beauty. Don’t forget about the things that were really part of being young: fun, laughter, parties, friends, give-and-take relationships, and active living.
Learn more about blogging and making money online at the wealthy-writer website. Find Resources, Reviews, and News
Increase Alexa Rank
Most people do not realize that Amazon owns Alexa. The Alexa rank is measured based on the amount of users who visit the blog or web site – but only if they have the Alexa toolbar on their browser.
As Google becomes an unreliable tool for measuring Page Rank – face it, every time the webmasters learn how to use the algorithm, Google changes the rules restoring the elite positions of their advertisers. A blog or website that doesn’t work within their parameters is penalized, benched, and has to start all over somewhere else.
This is giving Alexa and RealRank more importance in the small business world.
Haven’t you noticed more and more of the Paid Post sites adding Alexa and IZEA’s Real Rank to their blog ranking systems? ReviewMe, Text Link Ads ,SocialSpark and Sponsored Reviews are just a few.
Question #1, will increasing Alexa Rank increase the number of people who a) have the toolbar b) visit your site from the Alexa traffic pool.
One thing that Alexa has in its favor is the fact that it calculates traffic on a three month basis. It also calculates the number of pages viewed as well as the number of visitors
Learn more about blogging and making money online at the wealthy-writer website. Find Resources, Reviews, and News
As Google becomes an unreliable tool for measuring Page Rank – face it, every time the webmasters learn how to use the algorithm, Google changes the rules restoring the elite positions of their advertisers. A blog or website that doesn’t work within their parameters is penalized, benched, and has to start all over somewhere else.
This is giving Alexa and RealRank more importance in the small business world.
Haven’t you noticed more and more of the Paid Post sites adding Alexa and IZEA’s Real Rank to their blog ranking systems? ReviewMe, Text Link Ads ,SocialSpark and Sponsored Reviews are just a few.
Question #1, will increasing Alexa Rank increase the number of people who a) have the toolbar b) visit your site from the Alexa traffic pool.
One thing that Alexa has in its favor is the fact that it calculates traffic on a three month basis. It also calculates the number of pages viewed as well as the number of visitors
Learn more about blogging and making money online at the wealthy-writer website. Find Resources, Reviews, and News
Increase the Alexa Page
Web fans (who have the alexa toolbar installed) love to read about ways to increase traffic. If you review friend’s Alexa page, write about Alexa, and build a site that attracts alexa fans – then your alexa rank will increase. You will also help spread the ‘good rank’ tool that is Alexa.
Write for webmasters. If you write content for webmasters and exchange reviews with bloggers who use sites like SocialSpark where they most likely have the Alexa toolbar ( you can insist that you only exchange posts with sites that have the Alexa widget on the blog).
Write to an international audience. I have a large audience of women from India.
Alexa toolbar is big in India, so these ordinary bloggers can increase my Alexa rank without trying.
Create an Alexa category on your blog. Even if the blog is a general ‘how to attract traffic’ or ‘how to improve your page rank’ then you can still call it Alexa News. This is a purely marketing move. Visitors from Google will not help your rank.
Google doesn’t care how many people visit your site, how many RSS subscribers you have, or whether 10 people digg your blog posts a day. In fact, even building links to please Google doesn’t guarantee that you’ll build a good page rank – so don’t cater to Google fans.
Participate in Foreign Alex sites
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500?&qterm=&p=DestTopSites
Asia uses Alexa. Getting on those sites, and reaching the top, will increase your rank even higher.
Learn more about blogging and making money online at the wealthy-writer website. Find Resources, Reviews, and News
Write for webmasters. If you write content for webmasters and exchange reviews with bloggers who use sites like SocialSpark where they most likely have the Alexa toolbar ( you can insist that you only exchange posts with sites that have the Alexa widget on the blog).
Write to an international audience. I have a large audience of women from India.
Alexa toolbar is big in India, so these ordinary bloggers can increase my Alexa rank without trying.
Create an Alexa category on your blog. Even if the blog is a general ‘how to attract traffic’ or ‘how to improve your page rank’ then you can still call it Alexa News. This is a purely marketing move. Visitors from Google will not help your rank.
Google doesn’t care how many people visit your site, how many RSS subscribers you have, or whether 10 people digg your blog posts a day. In fact, even building links to please Google doesn’t guarantee that you’ll build a good page rank – so don’t cater to Google fans.
Participate in Foreign Alex sites
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500?&qterm=&p=DestTopSites
Asia uses Alexa. Getting on those sites, and reaching the top, will increase your rank even higher.
Learn more about blogging and making money online at the wealthy-writer website. Find Resources, Reviews, and News
Increase Technorati Rank
What is Technorati authority? It is the number of blogs that link to your website in the last six months. Many new blogmasters believe they can increase their Technorati rank by linking dozens of times between different blogs. This doesn’t work.
Technorati only gives 1 to each blog linking – not the number of links.
A blogmaster needs at least 3000 different websites to link to their blog – in the last six months- to reach the top 100 on the Technorati list. Of course, the number one way is to get people to link to your blog – but this is not easy. Telling people that they may put an excerpt of your blog on their site will work – but this will not build 3000 links.
There is a good reason why you need to build your Technorati rank. First – it brings up your Alexa rank because many people who use Technorati have the Alexa toolbar.
One of the most popular methods of increasing Google rank is to build 50 – 100 blogs and create your own network. Within weeks you have 500 legal links, and PR3. This will also increase your Technorati rank and using ‘duplicate content’ will also keep the relevance. (remember to only promote one blog so it earns high PR… creating a link farm will not work)
Claim your blogs on Technorati.
You can purchase links (legally) through forums:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=58 Just be careful. The problem is that you can’t please everyone. You cannot increase your Google and Technorati ranks. You need to chose which is most important to you. As for me? I get very little of my 4m hits a year from Google, so it doesn’t bother me whether Google likes my links or not.
Learn more about blogging and making money online at the wealthy-writer website. Find Resources, Reviews, and News
Technorati only gives 1 to each blog linking – not the number of links.
A blogmaster needs at least 3000 different websites to link to their blog – in the last six months- to reach the top 100 on the Technorati list. Of course, the number one way is to get people to link to your blog – but this is not easy. Telling people that they may put an excerpt of your blog on their site will work – but this will not build 3000 links.
There is a good reason why you need to build your Technorati rank. First – it brings up your Alexa rank because many people who use Technorati have the Alexa toolbar.
One of the most popular methods of increasing Google rank is to build 50 – 100 blogs and create your own network. Within weeks you have 500 legal links, and PR3. This will also increase your Technorati rank and using ‘duplicate content’ will also keep the relevance. (remember to only promote one blog so it earns high PR… creating a link farm will not work)
Claim your blogs on Technorati.
You can purchase links (legally) through forums:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=58 Just be careful. The problem is that you can’t please everyone. You cannot increase your Google and Technorati ranks. You need to chose which is most important to you. As for me? I get very little of my 4m hits a year from Google, so it doesn’t bother me whether Google likes my links or not.
Learn more about blogging and making money online at the wealthy-writer website. Find Resources, Reviews, and News
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Rent a Laptop
Most people need a laptop, especially when going to a conference or travelling, but they never thing about a laptop rental service. Face it - taking along the old laptop when you need to send files to your home PC, or working on a hotel's Internet connection is a great way to sabotage your success.
It is fairly easy an inexpensive to lease a top of the line laptop for a week, or a few months, to complete a project or make the most of a conference. Before going to your next writer's conference, or Posticon then lease a good computer for the event.
It is fairly easy an inexpensive to lease a top of the line laptop for a week, or a few months, to complete a project or make the most of a conference. Before going to your next writer's conference, or Posticon then lease a good computer for the event.
Get Started as a Pro Blogger
There has been a major change in the blogging world. Paid Posts are becoming more accepted as bloggers learn how to improve their blogs and networks. There are several different Paid Post ads. I have written reviews and posted on most of them, at least the ones I’ve found.
The problem with pro blogging is that it is a full time job. Pro Bloggers need to stay online.
Smorty normally posts jobs around 3am Eastern. Pay Per Post varies, but if you want to make money, then be online from 10am to 9pm Eastern. Loudlaunch has its own limitations and resources.
Low PageRank blogs need to work with a wide source of Paid Blog agencies. Many blogs rely on Google for their traffic. Others are built around Social Networks. Each has its benefits.
Meeting Google’s rules is hard, mainly because they keep changing the rules. The good news is, Alexa uses some of the same link building strategies combined with traffic reports. In my word, Alexa is more important than Google – unless you are foolish enough to trust Google for all your traffic.
One good reason to focus ‘off Google’ is the fact that even the pros find themselves working for months to get good traffic – only to have Google change the rules and they are dropped to the bottom – out of business – within days. Am I anti-Google? No. I just don’t believe a pro blogger should focus all their efforts on pleasing Google’s fickle rules.
Learn more about blogging and making money online at wealthy-writer website.
The problem with pro blogging is that it is a full time job. Pro Bloggers need to stay online.
Smorty normally posts jobs around 3am Eastern. Pay Per Post varies, but if you want to make money, then be online from 10am to 9pm Eastern. Loudlaunch has its own limitations and resources.
Low PageRank blogs need to work with a wide source of Paid Blog agencies. Many blogs rely on Google for their traffic. Others are built around Social Networks. Each has its benefits.
Meeting Google’s rules is hard, mainly because they keep changing the rules. The good news is, Alexa uses some of the same link building strategies combined with traffic reports. In my word, Alexa is more important than Google – unless you are foolish enough to trust Google for all your traffic.
One good reason to focus ‘off Google’ is the fact that even the pros find themselves working for months to get good traffic – only to have Google change the rules and they are dropped to the bottom – out of business – within days. Am I anti-Google? No. I just don’t believe a pro blogger should focus all their efforts on pleasing Google’s fickle rules.
Learn more about blogging and making money online at wealthy-writer website.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)