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Yep, those boys at Listings Lab have done it again. They’ve built a drupal site with literally thousands of hotels with direct click online reservation in ALL the places you want to visit.
Listings Lab are partnering with Advernture-Addicts, a new brand in the niche adventure sport market. They’ve got legs, this lot.
What the hell is a blogroll anyway?
A blogroll is a list of links. Generally blogrolls are part of a wordpress installation. A default installation will have a Blogrolls section.
This is where WordPress site-admins can place link to sites that they want to promote. Sometimes they want to promote their friends and relatives.
And somethimes they have several thousands pages indexed by google which you would do well to link from.
Someone with enough nouse to be using WordPress in this way would probably have experimented with various ways of making money from their website.
This is a good thing. These people have blog which they know the value of.
And know. Without question. That a coupla hunnert is a damn good price for dropping a site-WIDE link to ALL your domains. Innit.
Global Economic slowdown? Good! Why do we we want everything to be so fast anyway? Everyone’s running round as mad as lorries as it is! Slowing everything down a bit can only help. Housing market crash, pension time bombs, recession, credit crunch, blah blah blah. Forget about it. It’s self-perpetuating media hyped bullshit anyway. Focus on what’s important. What are you having for breakfast this morning? Will you enjoy it?
I have seen some great developments in the credit card industry recently which I would lie to share. Firstly pre-paid credit cards. Often times you can’t use cash anymore, but not everyone can have a credit card. Especially useful for your kids as an emergency measure, these pre-paid credit cards are going to open up a whole new market.
Here are some useful links for you if you’d like to read about the subject further
credit cards - http://www.cardguide.co.uk/
compare credit cards - http://www.cardguide.co.uk/best_buys.html
Of course, the traditional credit card market is still incredibly strong. It’s an easy way to borrow. It can be expensive in terms of paying back interest, but that’s not how credit cards should really be used. The best thing to do is to use the credit and clear your balance every month.
I’m starting to feel more and more exposed on the internet. It’s not the technology that’s changing, just that there are more and more people out there who are one step ahead of us regular folks. One of the main things to worry about is broadcasting your IP address. ANYONE can send an official request for your private details straight to your Internet service provider, and your identity is wide open.
This problem can be addressed by using an IP hiding service. I had a look around for some software to help me out, and found there are many options. One of the best sites I found however, was “www.hide-my-ip-address.com”. With good advice, and sound, solid, well priced software you can surf the internet safely, and more importantly, anonymously.
Weblink: hide IP address
I love to play backgammon, and playing online is a way to find excellent playing partners quickly and easily. Backgammon is a board game that relies heavily on both skill and luck. The game is in essence a race between two players with each player aiming to bring his own pieces into the home board and then to take them off before the other player does. BackgammonMasters is the best software I’ve found for playing in a lively community.
Why is BackgammonMasters different? Because it is the only free software which offers every one of it’s games in a single download form a single site. You can download the games in 10 Languages, Including Arabic and Hebrew amongst others.
BackgammonMasters has added Blackjack to the family of games included in it’s family of community games. It offers a multiplayer table allowing up to 5 players to play at the same time. You can even sit in on an existing game and watch the action before joining in.
To celebrate the launch, the company are offering some special free tournaments, so if you’ve ever played blackjack and would like to try a multiplayer community version, get over to BackgammonMasters.com to find out more details.
Well, it IS certainly easy to get a loan, but I don’t think it’s too easy, no. The fact that there are companies out there who are ready to lend money to people allows us to develop our lives in ways that weren’t possible back in the olden days.
http://www.thriftyscot.co.uk/money/compare-loans.html - loans
http://www.thriftyscot.co.uk/money/secured.html - secured loans
Of course people often get into trouble with debt, but that’s to be expected. To get a loan you have to be a grown up, and as a grown up you have to take responsibility for your actions. I’ve been in debt with plenty of personal loans, and I’m still in it. Debt is good. It puts you on the radar and makes you a proper person. It gives you gravitas.
If you need to backup your business data, but you can’t afford the risk of others getting hold of that data, then you’re going to need an encrypted online backup service. There are a few options to choose from, but the best one we have come across is Idrive-E. The online backup performance and features of IDrive-E are unsurpassed and the recent developments of near real time backup of constantly changing data such as MS Outlook data makes the service stand out.
Best of all, up to 2GB, the service can be used for free. Unlimited storage starts at $4.95 per month. It’s easy, fast and secure.
IDrive-E (http://www.idrive.com)
Advertising is the life blood of any business, no matter how big or how small. No advertising usually means no business. Large companies have an almost unlimited source of advertising dollars. Small business owners on the other hand, are limited in the amount of money they have for advertising. So, the problem is how to make ones advertising dollar get the most bang for the buck. It’s not enough to advertise. Your advertising must be effective. So, once you have a website or an ad to advertise, check out the following ways to advertise for little or no cost.
1. Advertising coop- Many businesses, especially work at home businesses, offer advertising coops. They will send people to your business for a fee. Usually the fee is relatively smll. This is nice because you already know that these people have at least some interest in your business. Although they may not spend a penny with you, you at least get the exposure.
2. Website-The age of the internet has expanded the possibility of owning your own business to an almost unlimited number of people. It also has expanded the advertising audience to a tremendous amount of new people, world wide, who otherwise you would never have been able to reach. Although websites will cost you to get hosted, you can advertise it many ways for free. Things like link exchanges and article submissions allow you to get exposure to your website with no cost except for you time. And as we will see in a moment, your website can be advertised many other ways for free. The advantage of a website is that it centralizes all your business and products into one central location. It gives you somewhere to send people so that you don’t have to do as much selling because you let your website do the selling for you.
3. Answering Machine-Change the message on your answering machine to reflect the fact that you are now in business for yourself. You could say something like,” Hello. You have reached the home office of John Doe of My Business.com…..” That way when you call that person back, they may ask you about your business and thus the door is open to discussing your business.
4. Put a sign in your front yard or in the yard of a friend or relative with your name and website address on it. This is a good way for your neighbors to find out about your new business as well as any people that ride by your house.
5. Place a magnetic sign or bumper sticker on your car. Now, when you are riding down the road, sitting at a stop sign, or leaving your car parked at the mall or grocery store, you are getting free advertising.
6. Wear your ad-Place your website on a sweatshirt, tee-shirt, or a hat. So, when you are out in public, people will see you ad and again it will open up the door to discussing your new business.
7. Flyers-There are many places that will allow you to place a flyer about your business. Businesses like grocery stores, libraries, laundromats, hair salons and others will let you place a free ad on their public bulletin board.
8. Business cards-Don’t leave home without them. You never now when the chance to hand one out will happen. You may see an old friend, meet someone looking to get out of the 9-5 rut or who is in need of a new opportunity.
9. Free Classifieds-Use the internet and the many free classified ads on it to advertise your business. A search using “free classifieds” will give you an almost limitless number of places to submit your website and ad.
10.Ezines or electronic magazines are also a good place to advertise your business. Some charge a fee for placing your ad in the best location, some let you advertise for free. Again a web search will allow you find numerous ezines to place you ad in.
11.Place your web address in your e-mail signature.
12.Place a flyer or business card in your out going mail.
13.Word of Mouth-The least expensive form of advertising and maybe the most effective way to advertise your business is word of mouth. Simply tell those you come in contact with that you are in business for yourself. They will tell others and they will tell others and it can go on and on. Sooner or later someone will take a look at what you are doing.
There is a new advertising style from Google Adsense that is available in your Adsense panel, it is called “Google Ad Links.”
This new ad system presents a list of 4 or 5 vertical links(you can pick either 4 or 5 and Google will supply the actually links) to your site visitors, when the visitors click on one of the targeted contextual words it displays a results page from Google listing ten Adwords advertiser’s ads for this related topic.
Here is what Google says Adlinks are: “What are Ad Links by Google?
Ad Links are a new form of text advertising that we’re offering to our AdSense publishers. Using the same contextual targeting algorithm that targets Google ads to your content pages, Ad Links units display a list of topics that are relevant to your page. Each topic, when clicked, brings the user to a page of related advertisements.
The result is advertisements that are closely targeted to the interests of your users. By selecting the topics through interaction with the ad unit, users are presented with useful information in the form of related advertisements. Their direct involvement with the evolution of the ad unit guarantees an interest in the ads that are presented.”
Positive Aspects of Adlinks:
They allow you to blend this in with sections of your links which will get more visitors to click on them, inevitably increase your Adsense revenue.
The Adlinks ads display 10 ad results when clicked without cluttering you page.
Google’s rules allow you to place three Adsense code block on a website. If you are doing this near say a 500 word article it can distract the visitor from viewing the article. With Adlinks you can still display 1 block of normal Adsense code and the Adlinks block and it keeps your page relatively nice looking while still giving you revenue potential.
Negative Aspects of Adlinks:
Adlinks requires your visitors to make two clicks. One on the original Adlinks block and one when they view the Adlink results. As any marketer knows the more actions you need a visitor to take the less the response rate.
Where are the best places to display Adlinks ads?
The best place to display them are within your navigation menu. Try to make them blend in as best as possible.
Another great place to put them is at the end of an article suggesting an interested reader view these resources. When doing this the reader is very targeted since they red your whole article and if they are likely leaving your website, why not let them leave through Adlinks and make some money?
Are Adlink ads as effective as the normal ad blocks?
Well some have seen positive results while other have not. Personally I am going to test it some more to see what kind of results and make my decision then.
