YouSayToo: get started guide for newbies

This introductory guide is meant to introduce new users to the online earning program called YouSayToo.com. Please pardon my short descriptions: I'm trying to keep my entries concise and to the point. Should anything sound too difficult to understand, place a comment on this entry and I will explain things better in another entry.



What is YouSayToo?

• Blogging for Money

YouSayToo is a program that allows its users earn money by writing articles, through Revenue Sharing and affiliate signups. Thus, to earn money is important to have a Google Adsense account and possibly an Amazon affiliate one as well.

• How to Make Money Blogging

Owning a blog is not required, since you can easily write on your YouSayToo account and get paid for it. Once you write an article - making sure it is good enough to attire readers - add your Google Adsense and/or Amazon Affiliate ID and you will start earning money for every visitor who reads the article and clicks on the ads. You get 50% of the revenue sharing earnings, and you will get paid regularly by Google/Amazon for it.

• Promote Blog

Make sure you promote your blog or YouSayToo articles over the blogosphere, and on forums. That will increase your chances to earn more money, by attiring readers and ad clickers to your articles. Keep your content up to date and interesting, picking topics of common interest and paying attention at writing 'how-to's' and tutorials, which are the kind of articles people look for more on the web.

Writing and advertising: a starter guide to gentle introductions

I'm one who writes everyday, and I believe you noticed that about me, by now. :) I'm quite proud of my skill, and I would like to put it at service of everyone who'd like me to try out and review something, either a service, a product, or a website.

Only honest reviews tough! I don't believe in spamming. I think spam is nowadays' plague, and not just on the Web; just look at our TV channels, the non-paid ones: how much untrue and annoying ad spots do we see each and every day?

There must be a measure, a timing, and a certain neutrality when we introduce something new to the public. It's important to highlight the idea, the purpose and the advantages, but they are NOT to be exaggerated, nor we should push people to try it out dishonestly. The choice of what to buy and read and what not is always up to people, it's part of their freedom as human beings, and the best thing we can do when presenting a service/product is a gentle and honest introduction that would help them get to know what we sponsor better, but without feeling pressured. If they choose to try it out, and remain satisfied, then we've won. If they criticize it, we should do a step back and try to fix everything before we present the product/service again.

This concept applies to blog advertising as well. People buy blog links because they want a webpage to be known by as many people as possible, but keep in mind that no one shall visit a website willingly if they "smell" ugly advertisement odour. Should our writing reflect some kind of advertising? YES. Should we push people? NO.

Believe it or not, that's the secret to a win-win situation for both parts.

You can experience this first hand through LinkFromBlog.com. Good luck. :)

Hosting Spotlight: Web Hosting Geeks

I'm proud to announce my first Hosting Spotlight entry! :D Every month, I will introduce you to a web hosting provider or directory that has meet the most users' interest and needs all over the web.

Today, we start with Web Hosting Geeks, a web hosting directory that's become famous all over the blogosphere.



Founded on 2004, Web Hosting Geeks has striven guarantee web users with honest and detailed reviews of the most used hosting providers present on the hosting marketplace. To achieve that goal, this hosting directory owners don't write reviews themselves, but let users do that! In fact, who better than normal users could provide a detailed experience with a specific web host? First hand, genuine information is what people look for when they're going to buy hosting for their own websites.

Reason for Spotlight: being an avid new reader of Bloggertricks.com, I got to read about this hosting directory by browsing its archive, and I realized how essential a tool it would be for a webmaster who's desperately looking for a host that would meet his/her needs, instead of blind registering at whatever provider. That was enough of a reason to push me to start my monthly spotlight with Web Hosting Geeks. :)

My Top 2 favourite listings:
- Free Domain Name Hosting: a list of hosting providers that give out free domain names with their plans;
- Multiple Domains Hosting: great features at excellent providers who allow the hosting of multiple domains on one account.

Check back on January for the second Hosting Spotlight! ;)

Web Hosting: the hard choice

Hosting here. Hosting there. There are so many hosting providers on the web nowadays - and that includes resellers - that choosing has become an almost impossible mission. Hosting websites come up like mushrooms every week, but what really counts when we get to choose the one who will be running our website is a few - but fundamental - things:

- webspace
- bandwidth
- uptime

These three things make it up for everything. In fact, we can get email addresses for free too, and usually databases, subdomains and addons come with EVERY plan, by any provider. But these 3 things can make the substantial difference.

That's a reason enough to make a good use of a web hosting directory. These directories are usually updated weekly or daily, and they offer big amounts of detailed hosting reviews listed by categories (type of hosting, OS supported, etc.). Pay attention to every detail listed in the review, but be picky when it comes to the "great 3" features I mentioned above. They should be on the top list of your choices.

Now, a couple of tips from personal experience:

- if you own several domains, you'd feel more comfortable buying a reseller hosting, as it will allow you to host them all on different admin panels, making it easier and less expensive to manage;

- if you're a Wordpress blogger, you may opt for a specific Wordpress hosting that will give you all Wordpress features you need to run your blog optimally.

Online presence for our Business

Been a while since I managed to write some updates on this blog. I'm sure you know what a month December is when it comes to school semesters, so I won't add more to it. :) Here I come with a new entry anyway. Hope you find it useful.

Today's topic is "Why should we get our Business online".

If we got our own business, either online or offline, it's important to establish an online presence that would let new and returning customers to locate us easily and quickly. This presence should get a certain breadth all over the web, especially on business related directories, and yellow pages, which are the places customers would look at firstly when they will search about us.
Sometimes though, our SEO strategies are too scarce, or we have too little time on our hands, to get our business address and/or website listed on all major business/web directories, yellow pages and search engines. In that case, it's important to act quickly to find a SEO consultant or a listing program that would do the work for us in restricted times.

For instance, UniversalBusinessListing can help webmasters and businesses out with their program. It is all very simple: once we signup for an account, we can create a Directory listing for our business in all its details, and the program will think of distributing it to all web directories, search engines, yellow pages and business directories. Wish just one form, we can get our business listed and known everywhere. There's no hassle for us webmasters whatsoever; the site will make it all.

So you see, sometimes it's useful to spend a little time on programs like this to get a bunch of benefits that we alone wouldn't be able to achieve. The time you spend searching for programs that would help you, and/or SEO advicers, is NEVER a wasted time.

How to increase traffic in 7 steps

Generating good traffic is essential to ensure your site or blog is kept alive: what's the purpose of a website if nobody wants to visit it? But even more, traffic is important if you wish to turn your site into a money making machine, that will ensure your company and products a large audience, and a larger amount of customers who will be more likely to buy your services or products; or - if your site is a blog - visitors will be more likely to become part of your very own social 'community' on the web.

Now, there are several ways to increase traffic, but for brevity sake, I'll only list the 7 most important ones, which I hope will help you get started with your business or blog.

1) Get advertised on websites and search engines. The first option is available to blogs, the second one is most recommended for online businesses. For instance, you could opt for Yahoo ads, or try out Google Adwords; if you have a blog, you can get free and paid advertising on other blogs and relevant websites; that way, visitors of the advertising site will more likely click on your link and visit your site / blog, and use your services in most cases. Relevance is the key: if your site / blog is about fashion clothes, make sure to advertise on fashion blogs and websites, and/or in the fashion related keywords on search engines.

2) Write and submit articles on article directories. Not just people who like your articles will willingly visit your website, but even when your articles get republished your link will be available for visitors of that site to reach yours. Definitely, article writing is a sure way to get quality visitors.

3) Make blog friends. For bloggers. It's the 'social link exchanging' (see point 1 too), which will benefit both your blog and the other, as visitors of one will be likely to visit the other site/blog as well. Relevant partners links are useful to business' site visitors as well.

4) Join forums and online communities. And put your site link in your signature. Everyone who takes part in your discussions is a potential visitor to your website.

5) If you have the time, setup a newsletter. Everyone who subscribes becomes a loyal daily or weekly visitors, and there's the possibility that each of your subscribers will invite friends to join too, thus your traffic rank would increase considerably.

6) Offer online services. Services attire visitors and backlinks, and they could make most of your traffic benefit. They might require some work, but results are almost guaranteed.

7) Setup a 'Tell A Friend' snippet. If your visitors like your articles, they'll be more likely to use this script and invite their friends to read.

Computer troubles

Looks like I have been a sort of lazy blogger again. Never mind. :) I still have something to share you readers, so let's get started.
I'm sure all of you Windows OS users at some point have experienced problems with your laptop or desktop computer: error messages popping up from nowhere, programs not working, software not installing and your computer that freezes while you're working... :( And these ones are just examples! To say the truth, all of this crap happened to me too a few months ago, and I had to fix the whole Windows registry to make my computer work again. Quite a hassle, isn't it? My computer registry classes were severely corrupted, and the keys and settings messed up. I used Regwork to fix it all, and looks like it worked. That is a free registry cleaner that scans a computer to find problems and fixes them automatically; it's a xp registry cleaner, but I think it works with Vista as well. Really, when the BIG troubles come up and we risk having to format the whole computer, better clean registry and get rid of the hassle. It's not fun. :(

Next SEO entry is coming tomorrow. ^^ Stay tuned!