For those of you who have no idea what social booking marking sites are and how you can use them as means to boost more incoming traffic to your website or blog, this post is definitely for you. For starters social book marking is simply a way for users to save web site addresses onto a central system as opposed to the conventional way of bookmarking locally using your browser, for example within IE you would book mark a site using favorites or within firefox using bookmark option by simply pressing “control D”, but this can be a pain. Imagine you’re at work and you don’t remember a url that you desperately need to complete your task. Having your bookmarks stored on social bookmarking system can quite beneficial for example they can enable you to share your favorite web address and search through other users bookmarks to discover new sites, import and export, add notes ,comment and rate, and you’ve got a highly truly remarkable system.

All the aforementioned advantages are pretty nifty, but the best thing is such link based systems allow for an alternative means of information distribution and promoting of blogs or websites for users thus allowing more incoming traffic to your site. The more you add your content to bookmarking systems the more likely you are to generate more incoming traffic. Sites such as del.icio.us, reddit, Digg, furl are the more popular and common social book marking sites. See below for a more elaborate list.

Once you sign up for a social book marking site such as furl or digg you have the option of adding a bookmarklet button which will resides within your browser. This button will allow you to submit the current webpage your viewing in your web browser onto the social bookmarking site. The current page your viewing could be your own blog or specific blog content this also applies to any other social book marking bookmarklet.

Popular social bookmarking sites

Del.icio.us is the site that started the whole social bookmarking trend, and remains one of the most popular. The site’s search and sharing features make it an interesting place to explore and stumble upon interesting links and the best place to submit your own content links since it has more users the chances for people linking your own content are much greater.

Furl is another popular social booking marking site. What sets its self apart from the rest is the ability to caches your bookmarked pages, allowing you to view bookmarked content even if the original page if no longer available online. Furl also allows you to export your archives cached pages and all links to a ZIP file for easy backup this can be quite handy when you need your bookmarks physical with you.
Digg is another popular social bookmarking site that has an assortment of categories such as technology, centralized more around news links.

Here are some other sites you can use to submit your content or other content you think may be relevant, or you may just simple wish to store your favorite site links online for easy access. Take note if you plan on using these bookmarking sites for self promotion of your own content. It would be wise not to over do it. For instance once you have a new blog don’t just furl or digg (save) everything there. It may seem like spamming. Do it intelligently. Try adding your old blog posts there not post just recently created posts today. The list shown below is in no way comprehensive at all please add your comments below and do let me know if it works for you.

Linkroll
Reader
Blinklist
citeulike
feedmelinks
josts
shadows

Popularity: 3% [?]

The blogging community is soaring its growing like crazy, enough of my mates have jumped on to the band wagon I just had to write a little something to get them started. Firstly to those of you new to blogging. The key to promoting your blog is simple, persistency, you just have to be continuously persistent, one of he major reason many blogs fail is due to the lack of passion and been persistent another is running out of things to blog about, course many may say time they are countless factors which could lead to that. Many of us tend to give up without really trying. In order to promote you blog without taking to much time I have come up with a few proven methods that worked for me and have generated over 400 views in less than a day for a friend of mine their blog can be found here as proof.

1. Firstly in order to keep track of who’s visiting your new found blog try adding a free hit counter to track new visitors, this will allow you to visually see and thus motivate you to do more in order to gain a larger readership. Free web counters can be found here all over the web by just goolging free web counter. Once you have added a counter to keep track move on to blog Submissions and rss submissions this always works like a charm. You will first want to submit your blog Googles index. Take note to make your blog promoting quest as smooth as possible write in notepad your blog name, blog tite, blog description, blog keywords used to identify your blog and email address. This will come in handy as you will have to submit your blog to multiple blog directories and rss directories. For a comprehensive list of rss submission and blog directories visit rss specifications. I recommend starting off with the first two blog directores http://www.blogcatalog.com/ and http://www.blogtoplist.com/. Blog directories will will provide you incoming links to the new blog and get it started on its way to high traffic and increases your popularity. It also pays to have good unique content.
2. Secondly Google up “advertisement forum” they are literally hundreds of forums online which will allow you to post announcements about your website or new business. Choose one and quickly create an account with it and publish your blog announcement.
3. Thirdly within your existing email account add an email signature feature. Email signatures are found at the bottom of your email. Add your site(s) URL address.
4. In your email account, email every person in your address book announcing your new found blog.

This list will be updated bookmark it if you wish.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Here is a basic list of simple steps you absolutely must take to avoid being accused of spamming.

1. Keep records of how and when people are added to your list. You need to record the date, time, referring IP address, and referring web page for each sign-up, as well as the first name, last name, and email address. Of course, keeping detailed records is always good business practice, but in the case of opt-in lists, it is critical. If you are ever accused of spamming, your battle to clear your name will be much easier if you have good records to back yourself up.

2. Track requests to opt out, and remove people who opt out of your list immediately. Again, records are a good way to keep yourself safe. And “remove” requests always need to be taken seriously. If you can’t implement “remove” requests every day, make sure you always deal with them before sending a mailing.

3. Post your privacy policy on your website, and abide by it. This is just good business sense, and it will also increase your opt-in rate, since people will feel more comfortable sharing their personal information if they are confident it won’t be abused.

4. Investigate third-party service providers before signing any contracts for email services. Remember that in the world of email promotions, you are judged by the company you keep. If you are dealing with less-than-honest service providers, you could be the one who ends up in hot water.

5. Be careful when using rental lists. Always ask to see the form that is used to collect email addresses for a rental list so you can make sure that the people on that list will actually be interested in what you have to offer them, and that they did actually give permission to the list broker to sell or rent their address.

6. Use a real return email address with enough storage space to receive your bounce backs and opt-outs. (If you’re using a free email service, make sure you have plenty of room in your account before you send a mailing). Even if instruct people to unsubscribe by clicking on a link or sending email to a specific address, you must honor any “remove” requests that are sent to your
return email address as well. And no matter how tempting it may be, do not reply to any angry messages you receive from people accusing you of sending them spam. Simply remove them promptly from your list, and be glad they’re gone.

7. Provide easy instructions on how to unsubscribe from your list. If you don’t do this, your message will be flagged as spam, plain and simple.

8. Provide a valid physical postal address of the sender. Your promotional emails must include a valid street address, not a P.O. Box or Mail Drop.

9. Use a consistent “from” address. The “from” line must be valid and accurate not misleading or false. For example, you can use the name of your business, or own name. Using your business name in this way (or your own name if it’s very identifiable with your business) is also a good way to build your brand.

10. Use an authentic, non-misleading subject line. The subject line must also be valid.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Promoting your website can be a daunting task and can be time consuming specially when your doing it without having to invest money in order to achieve it. I Just started using feedburner today and thought would blog about it.

FeedBurner definitely has a variety of nifty tools and things to help you promote and enhance both your blog and its feed.

One item that caught my eye was the headline Animator looks and works pretty sweet.

? Grab this Headline Animator

This little graphic can be easily added on to your web site and continuously updates itself to show the latest headlines from your blog’s feed. This item can go pretty much anywhere you can put HTML code and its pretty simple to added on to your blog just navigate to html mode and simple copy and paste it in.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Browsing the net can be quite boring at times. Some times you just need new content were do you start on your quest for new interesting reads?
New sites are constantly appearing and it takes a while for them to become part search engines.
Well you do not have to wait too long you can always try out Stumbleupon a cool community based web portal which finds out about new great web sites, videos, photos and more based on your interests based on collaborative surfing. This neat site learns what you like and makes better recommendations.

When you start to stumble, you will see websites that like-minded individuals have recommended. This will enable you to discover great content. If your a mozilla firefox user you can download StumbleUpon 3.04 extension here which will intergrate into your browser.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Initially I was planning on writing on PLR articles and what they are, due to unexpected circumstances moving house and all I was unable to do that, but not to worry will be posting on that shortly.

If you have great knowledge of a topic, no matter what it is, you might be able to earn quite a bit of money on it. Websites are a great way of improving your income, or even making it your living. The things you need to start up are available online for free.

1. If you have no knowledge of how to build a website there are many excellent guides and tutorials. hack you don’t even need to learn anything , they are many great online web sites which guide yoiu step by step on how to create a website such as http://members.freewebs.com/

You also need some unique content to your website, if you can afford it - hire someone to write it for you. You do not need very much text, but the text you do have is perhaps the most important factor for your page. Not only does your written content improve your visitors experience while visiting your site, it makes the search engines go wild. It is recommended that you use at least 200 words on every page designed to target keywords. Of course you can find more information regarding SEO through out the web.

Graphics

In addition to written content, you should consider adding other graphics as well. This includes banners, buttons and perhaps a few customized dividers. Carefully thought out graphics is an easy way of making your webpage look like you made an effort with it.

You need an affiliate program to send your visitors to

When you are done building your webpage, it is time to figure out how to make money from it. If you offer a product or service for sale or rent - you already have a way of making money. But for those who do not have any products or services, there are others - with sites selling products matching your visitors’ needs - which are willing to pay you for sending them customers. It works in various ways, but the principle stay the same: You are marketing their products for a profit. Some of them pay you a percentage on every sale, others a fixed amount per click. Others still, are paying you a small amount every time your visitors see their banner. The possibilities are endless; you can often combine several affiliate programs to earn multiple incomes.

The process of choosing an affiliate program can be 10 seconds or two years - all depending on the depth of research put into it. You can search for a program and look at the commissions. That way you know you have a competitive affiliate program, and you are likely to earn a quite deal of money - assuming you are driving traffic their way. But, for those of you who are thorough enough to look deeper, it is possible to extend your profits even further. This takes a bit of research and testing, but often you will end up with a very profitable website.

First you need to find out as much about your visitors as you can: Who they are, how they found your website, their age and if they came from a search engine, what search term did they type in’ When you have a better view over what kind of people your site is attracting, you can start looking for the ultimate affiliate program. A good tip is to use your most popular search term at Affiliate Ranker, to see what you can find. Often these will be top contenders for your final affiliate program. Use Affiliate Ranker to get a grip on how your keywords - and the affiliate programs associated with them - compares to other businesses. Do not be afraid to try programs not directly related to your topics, as long as you see a connection or you somehow consider it likely to appeal to your visitors.

Once done, you need more visitors. When you are satisfied with your site, it is time to look for your visitors. There are numerous ways of driving traffic to your site - some good, some not so good. Depending on your audience, there might be different ways of getting more visitors, but no matter what type of site you are promoting, one thing is for sure: You need incoming links! Pretty much ALL search engines calculate the importance of a specific site using the number and relevance of the links pointing to your page.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Let’s face the facts search engine optimization, for the most part, is hellishly boring. Doing the research, making the on-page changes, writing content and syndicating it is all tedious and time consuming. Fortunately I am not the only one, and like-minded web developers have come up with some great, and best of all, free seo tools.

Let’s have a look at some of the best tools for any optimizer:

1. 7search.com Advertiser Tools www.tinyurl.com/2wj5ac as always, keyword research is the basis of any seo project you have to get the right keywords or your work will be useless.

This is one of the best free keyword research tools out there, and although the traffic numbers aren’t accurate, their related searches suggestions are the best!

2. Back Link Analyzer ( www.tinyurl.com/86hk8 ): this free link analyzer, courtesy of Aaron Wall, is an absolute jewel! The best way to use this is to actually spy on your competition and see where they are getting all that link juice from.

Here is some of the info that Back Link Analyzer can gather from Google, Yahoo, MSN and/or AllTheWeb on the backlinks for the query: anchor text and type (one-way or reciprocal) of the incoming link, the title of the page that has the link and the url that the link points to, ip address of the domain and much more!

3. Hub Finder ( www.tinyurl.com/9kpd3 ): yet another amazing tool from Aaron Wall, and this one is even open source! Like me, you’ve probably found out by now that it’s a good idea to get links from the same places that your competition has.

Well this is the perfect tool: you input a keyword or keyphrase, which search engine to use (I recommend Yahoo) and the number of sites that each hub must have in common (between 2 and 10). Wait for the results and then try to get links from each of the sites.

4. SeoQuake ( www.tinyurl.com/2pzemv ): this plugin for Firefox is essential for any optimizer. When active it can be set to show any number of parameters including:

a) for Google: PageRank, number of links pointing to the url, number of pages in its index and cache date
b) for Yahoo same as for Google, but with links for domain and link in Yahoo Directory;
c) for MSN the same as for Google
d) number of links in DMOZ, Digg, del.icio.us and Technorati
e) Alexa rank
f) WebArchive age

5. Free Monitor for Google www.tinyurl.com/85atz although it’s only for Google, this ranking monitor does the job it is supposed to do. It works with all regional versions of Google flawlessly and it supports multiple keywords/keyphrases per url.

Bonus point: 6. The Tattler www.tinyurl.com/2ma5pg although I usually prefer Back Link Analyzer for link analysis, sometimes I need to look at all the data without the fluff.

One of the features I like that I like in Tattler is the possibility to show how many links you have from a certain domain - this is really nice to find out what sites your competitors find most valuable to them in terms of seo.

Popularity: 2% [?]