Just Traffic 2

Choose the right website copywriter

2007-07-09T15:40:00.000-07:00

Running a website is not an easy job; it takes some effort to make money online. There must be hundreds of millions of webpages out there struggling to be noticed by search engines and by their target audiences. If you are a website publisher who's eager to get your brand or service in front of the right readers, it would take more than just a good logo or business concept to get them flocking to and trusting your site. To grab people's attention and increase website traffic, you must provide something extra, something unique, something they may not find elsewhere. But the problem is, you may have so much on your plate as it is that you can't possibly provide grade-A content 100% of the time. Even great webmasters and website publishers need a little help sometimes.

If you think about it, no amount of black hat SEO or link wizardry will get you the long-term results you are really shooting for. High-quality content is what your target customers want. Skillful linkbuilding may build a lot of short- to mid-term traffic but classic content lasts a long long time. To make serious money online, you have to give your clients this content. Many website owners invest their time and money in web design and online promotions without even considering the importance of original content. Do you really want to look just like your direct competitor -- providing a mirror-image of their services to your readers and potential clients? High-quality content, as opposed to knock-off imitations and readily available templates, is crucial to a website's success. What you need are highly capable content producers who will drive qualified traffic to your website and give it some distinction. This is what competent and effective website copywriters are all about -- producing quality content for your website and help you make money online.

But before you hire, you must ask yourself what exactly you are looking for in a website copywriter. The following guidelines will certainly help you pick the best website copywriter to help you increase your online profits:

1. Can they produce quantity as well as quality?

This is extremely important; high quality content is imperative, and so is quantity. A constant and steady amount of high-quality material is an essential ingredient for a successful online business. A website copywriter has to be able to deliver both quantity and quality to make you money. With this in mind, you must ask them for a guaranteed daily quota. You would want a lot of work done in a short span of time, but you can't possibly expect high quality with that mindset. When you ask for too high a quota you will probably be sacrificing quality. Somewhere around 2000 words a day is average.

2. Will they be able to produce original content?

There are a lot of ways to ensure that your content is purely original. Ask the website copywriter for a guarantee that all written materials will be checked explicitly for duplicate content. To avoid plagiarism and other copyright issues, they must run their work through originality checkers such as webmasterlabor.com/tools/checker and copyscape.com, or other reliable duplicate content checkers available to them. Your content plays a very important role in search engine optimization. Passing off content that you can easily find in thousands of other sites won't help your PageRank or traffic at all. Original high-quality content is indeed the best way to optimize search engine results -- and a website copywriter producing original material makes it all happen.

3. Does the website copywriter have a back-up?

When you retain the services of a ghost writer for a long period of time (to produce blocks of content, for example), you must make sure that there are contingencies in place -- just in case they become unavailable all of a sudden. Having a back-up will ensure your deliverables. Moreover, you have to ask if the back-up is just as, if not more, capable than the original writer. You wouldn't want your content quality to nosedive whenever your leased writer is temporarily unavailable. Using a copywriting company, as opposed to a single freelancer, is your best choice if delivery and quality consistency are important to you.

4. Does the website copywriter have an editor?

Some website copywriters for hire could very well be their own editors. But wouldn't it be better if they had someone to help them with errors they could overlook themselves? Editors play a key role in this process because they make sure that the writer's work is delivered on time, every time. They check for grammatical errors, inconsistencies in flow, compliance with your instructions, and overall quality of the writer's work. Also, they function as project managers; they inform the writer of the topical and stylistic guidelines that the client requires.

5. Do they follow a quality-assurance process?

How can you be sure that you are getting materials that live up to your own standards? Would it cost you extra to send some back to the writer for revisions? Website copywriters should follow protocol as far as quality-assurance is concerned. First, they must submit a block sample of their work to the client. Second, they make necessary revisions after receiving client feedback. This process continues until the client gets what they want. Meanwhile, the website copywriter shoulders all costs incurred during these revisions. Quality-assurance like this will only guarantee the best results in output and client satisfaction.

6. Will the writer surrender full rights of the materials produced to the client?

All materials produced by a website copywriter must be on a purely work-for-hire basis. Ideally, the client assumes all rights to the materials obtained from the writers during the length of their employment or contract. Under the work-for-hire system, copyright ownership falls on the client and not the writer.

7. Can you, as the client, set the tone or style for the articles?

You can, as the hiring party, ask the website copywriter to follow certain parameters -- specifying demographics, for instance. As the client, you must also welcome the writer's preferences in tone and style for the job. To be able to work efficiently, you must allow them to make any suggestion that they think would cater to your audience better.

8. Will they accommodate your format requirements?

Ask for an OS platform-neutral delivery format so your text can be published correctly. These are usually in the form of .txt or .html files.

Website copywriters who offer these services and more will promote a business relationship that is result-oriented, stable, and consistent. With the best copywriter working for you, you can sit back, relax, and leave the arduous content work to them for a change.

High quality adult site reviews by Rabbit's Reviews

2007-06-17T04:05:00.000-07:00

JustTraffic is pleased to feature an interview with the guy behind one of the largest adult site review sites on the Web--Rabbit from Rabbit's Reviews. Enjoy!

1) What other nicknames or handles do you go by?
Mantas or Rabbit

2) How long have you been a webmaster (or a rep, sponsor, or broker)? How long have you been online?
Adult webmaster since 2002. Playing with HTML since about 1995

2a) Where are you located?
Montreal, Canada

3) List the sites you run and tell us a little bit about each one.

Rabbits Reviews: One of the largest porn review sites.

Fetish Fish: a review site focusing on fetish erotica.

Sponsors List: an adult sponsor directory, with a search function that lets webmasters specify over 30 sponsor criteria.

4) How did you start in this business? What where you doing before?
While still in school, I was surfing the password boards for free porn logins when I saw ‘make money’ webmaster link. Signed up and never looked back. My gf at the time was saying I’ll never see the first check (I was spent 80 hours a week). Now I’m laughing at her!

5) Who or what was the greatest influence in your career as a webmaster (sponsor, rep, etc etc)? What are your personal standards when it comes to business?

I look up to several people in this industry: David Dacus (VideoBox), Rick Muenyong (TheBestPorn), Trixxxia (TrafficDude)

I’ve always treated others with respect, honesty and fairness. I’ve always stayed out of other people’s dramas and avoided creating my own. Contrary to some, I’m not looking for that type of attention.

6) Name your greatest achievement in online business. What did it take to achieve this?

RabbitsReviews.com. It took 80 hour work weeks for the first 2 years, and continual re-investment of everything I make back into the company.

7)Name your worst setback in online business. What lessons did you learn from that situation?

I’ve made many mistakes, but not big enough to suffer any major setbacks. I’ve learned to always have a backup plan in case any business process goes wrong, to always plan ahead for technology needs (ex. Server performance), not to depend on any 1 employee, but train others to be able to handle the same tasks.

7a) If you can turn back time and do things over again, what would you change (if any) and why?

I would have hired more employees earlier on. I got too involved in the administrative aspect of the business.

8)Please tell us about some recent developments or projects regarding your sites.

We are currently shooting video interviews for SponsorsList.com of various people in the industry.

9) What value would other webmasters or website visitors get from your site? No hype please. Just straight talk :)

We get a lot of feedback from both sponsors and webmasters. Sponsors use our site for competitive intelligence- previewing member areas, comparing scores, etc. Webmasters use our site to find good sites to promote.

10) What recent traffic trends do you see online and how is your website or program addressing these? Is your site Web2.0-friendly?

User generated content is not new, although it’s been rebranded as 2.0 From the very start our reviews had user comment option. Our MyStuff feature is as old as the site itself- it’s a personal review bookmarking feature.

11)What future projects would you like to explore or what future trends do you see for online business?

The content and traffic convergence is becoming more and more important. You can’t convert traffic with the same old crappy products. At the same time, ‘build it and they will come’ is less and less true, it’s becoming harder to make money without an internal traffic generation strategy.

12) What advice can you give to site visitors or webmasters? For webmasters: Know your numbers. Test, test, test. Be all things to all people.

Edgy adult humor with Zenofeller.com

2007-06-14T21:19:00.000-07:00

JustTraffic periodically features interviews with interesting mainstream, adult, and gaming webmasters. Our featured interviewee fror today is Zenofeller of Zenofeller.com -- an edgy humor/satire/adult blog.

1) What other nicknames or handles do you go by?

Just zenofeller.

2) How long have you been a webmaster (or a rep, sponsor, or broker)? How long have you been online?

About 2 years.

2a) Where are you located?

Costa Rica

3) List the sites you run and tell us a little bit about each one. (Limit 6 -- feel free to use anchor text. Just make sure you have description for each title) Please keep the descriptions brief but concise.

Zenofeller.com - The World's Leading Anal Satire Site. By visiting, you become better, even if not necessarily in a socially desirable way.

4) How did you start in this business? What where you doing before?

Boredom, mostly. Other than that I travel and write books.

5) Who or what was the greatest influence in your career as a webmaster (sponsor, rep, etc etc)? What are your personal standards when it comes to business?

Greatest influence? Johhny KISS and Imra Therlazy. I hate big corporations.

6) Name your greatest achievement in online business. What did it take to achieve this?

Gaming the technorati ranking system, I'd say. Or maybe the
blogger hole thing. Didn't take all that much, surprisingly. People still put shit code out on the Internet. I'm most proud of my one-of-a-kind porn ads, you can see those on the main page.

7) Name your worst setback in online business. What lessons did you learn from that situation?

The one time my host went to shit overnight. Absolute shit. Used to be reliable, efficient, responsive. The next day, suddenly incompetent, English as a second language we're running this service off a Pentium I under a bridge. Very shocking. It's taught me everybody can go nuts for no reason at any time, and there's no cure. Always keep a back-up host. It's worth the money.

7a) If you can turn back time and do things over again, what would you change (if any) and why?

Wouldn't change a thing, really.

8) Please tell us about some recent developments or projects regarding your sites.

I'm trying to be Warhol and make porn ads look better than the Times obituary section.

9) What value would other webmasters or website visitors get from your site? No hype please. Just straight talk :)

They'd probably get a good laugh and spray soda all over the keyboards. That's value. Maybe learn some php/insider tips. I doubt it though.

10) What recent traffic trends do you see online and how is your website or program addressing these? Is your site Web2.0-friendly?

My website can't stand CSS and isn't Web2.0 friendly, nor does it have RSS feeds, nor does it like them. Johnny K above says fuck em, who needs em. I say the same. The main traffic trend that I see is people leaving cookie cutter, spit&shiny "professionally" designed websites for stuff they actually like.

11) What future projects would you like to explore or what future trends do you see for online business?

I'm mostly looking into affiliate programs and adult websites at the moment. I'm pretty nobody of the top 25% in adult now will be there by 2010, I'll enjoy kicking the pieces.

12) What advice can you give to site vistors or webmasters?

If it blinks, close the page.

Two free ways to increase blog traffic

2007-06-12T16:37:00.000-07:00

There's two types of blog traffic: casual traffic and 'influence' traffic.

Influence traffic are site visitors that can pull other people onto your site because they wield influence. These normally are webmasters and people who love to comment/review or recommend sites. Casual traffic are people who are interested in your content but visit your site infrequently.

I suggest you target influence traffic sources to increase your traffic exponentially. How? There's two free ways I'd like to focus on in this post: taking off the "NO FOLLOW" tags on your comments section and emailing people that commented on your blog.

DO FOLLOW instead of NO FOLLOW

Incentivize other webmasters to come to your site and make comments by giving them something back. In addition to the awesome content you provide, give them link love back by disabling the NO FOLLOW default setting in your Wordpress blog. Try the Do Follow Wordpress plugin so you can do this automatically.

EMAIL PEOPLE THAT COMMENT ON YOUR BLOG

Take the time to thank people that have commented on your blog. Encourage them to sign up for your RSS feed or come back to your blog. Also, you can ask them to link back to your or do a link swap following the ABC linking method.

Building a mainstream Blog Empire

2007-06-11T21:12:00.000-07:00

A friend recently asked me... "How do I build a mainstream blog Empire"? My answer is very simple. Focus on NICHE and content quality. That's all. Everything else flows from these two.

Let's break it down:

1) Focus on a niche you are passionate about. This might seem cliched and trite but it's true. If you don't care enough about your topic to research it and convey your excitement to your reader, then your blog will be flat. Good blogs thrive on PASSION.

Passion to research. Passion to write catchy content worthy of linking to. Passion to find relevant not so well known information and trends about your niche.

2) Niche research. Make sure that the niche you are passionate about makes enough money for your project to be self-sustaining. Find your keywords' rough PPC value on Adsense or YPN. List out your keywords and use keyword tracker to find out how competitive they are. Weed out the most common keywords and focus on "long tail" keywords. The longer and more specific the better.

3) Write for BOTH the search engines and your readers. Learn how to integrate search strategy into QUALITY content. Make sure you don't sacrifice one for the other but balance both.

4) Write entries with an eye towards getting voluntary links from other website owners. A little drama and provocative writing that tweaks human interests is a great way to get link backs. Another approach would be to write AUTHORITY sites.

5) Comment on other blogs and establish relationships with your peers.

6) SUBMIT SUBMIT SUBMIT. Submit your blog to blog directories, ping your stuff regularly, submit your site to Web2.0 community sites.

7) Read your stats regularly and CLOSELY. There might be a site that is sending the BULK of your traffic. Contact the owner and get a deal going. Remember, it doesn't have mean buying ads. It could mean swapping content for traffic or swapping links.

Top BLACK HAT SEO Techniques

2007-06-09T06:12:00.000-07:00

http://www.pushon.co.uk/articles/top5-black-hat-white-hat-seo.htm

Great article.

The black hat SEO items listed missed one crucial blackhat tactic: MASSIVE links. Using automated tools, BH players basically "tag" the Internet with their links. This disregard for context and indiscriminate and massive approach spoils it for the rest of webmasters.

Bottomline: Paying attention to the basics like having GREAT and USEFUL content along with strategic headlines pays off over the long haul. If you need help with producing REAL CONTENT and QUALITY BACKLINKS, give this website copywriter a try.

Get custom website content for 2 cents a word

2007-06-02T18:07:00.001-07:00

Get custom professional website content for 2 cents a word or less. Email info AT webmasterlabor.com and include in your subject line: JUST TRAFFIC 2 CENT PROMO

Webmasterlabor.com produces ORIGINAL material that is custom-researched, outlined, and written for your specific needs and keywords. We don't merely rewrite material. All materials pass through copyscape and our own article checker for originality testing.

Cool tool for social bookmark linkbuilding

2007-05-14T15:31:00.001-07:00

One way to build links slowly but steadily over time, is to prompt your visitors to social-bookmark the pages they like. This creates both viral traffic and the kind of natural link-building patterns that the search engines love. One of the better tools to do this is TheBookmarketer Social Bookmarking Script, which is a tiny snippet of code to add to the bottom or the top of your pages. It offers visitors one easy click to post a link pointing to your page from dozens of the top social-bookmarking websites, with pre-filled forms. You don't have to manage anything to keep up to date, because changes are made in the source JavaScript file for you. This is ideal for any informational pages, such as articles, directory pages, blog posts, forum pages, news releases, ecommerce pages, photo or video galleries, etc.

Please note that this is not a get-traffic-quick scheme, and certainly should not be the centerpiece of your traffic plan. The goal of TheBookmarketer is to leverage your current traffic to build more traffic. To make it work for you, you need traffic from other sources plus content that is good enough that people will want to bookmark it and/or share it. (Of course, you can use this tool to social bookmark your own pages, too!). Over time, this set-it-and-forget-it tool will increase your traffic levels above what they would be without it.

There is also a Spanish-language version called El Marcadorado, for your Spanish pages.

Keep the Internet Free

2007-04-26T16:01:00.000-07:00

Everytime a new communication technology appears, common people like you and me create tons of diverse content that we share freely. This helps in creating a lot of content that is not necessarily aimed at making money but aimed at sharing ideas, passions, and interests. This trend happened with the newspaper and radio. Unfortunately, as certain companies began to commercialize these technologies, their next step is to control content. So you get a monopolization of content and creativity loses. Don't let this happene to the Internet. Click here for more information.

Make money with funny video sites

2007-04-21T22:32:00.000-07:00

Funny or shocking video sites like consumptionjunction, ebaumsworld, m80.org, etc etc have been all the rage since the late 90s. Now's your chance to get in on the action. These types of sites generate a TON of traffic. Unfortunately, it used to be very expensive to run since bandwidth costs were very high. Not anymore. Now that the scripts for these types of sites are commonplace now and the hosting costs are way low, make money by running Adbrite or Adsense ads on your pages. Dailymotion and youtube are the category killers in this niche but there's still a ton of cash to be made to the heavy popularity of this type of site.

Here's more details on how to make money with free video sites.

My suggestion: offer a free video hosting service with a built in community.

Fix and flip problem sites for big money

2007-04-21T18:16:00.000-07:00

Here's a free tutorial on how to identify, fix, and resell 'problem' or 'broke' websites.

Be careful though. There are many sites for sale that were designed (unconcsciously, I'm sure) NOT to make money. Learn how to spot and avoid those.

Asian-American culture and the Virginia tech tragedy

2007-04-18T00:54:00.000-07:00

I'm Asian-American and I want to address a point that may have been overlooked in the media. There are SOME aspects of Asian-American culture that helps explain why Cho did what he did. These are cultural aspects that I believe the Asian-American community must SERIOUSLY address in order to prevent its members from being locked into a downward psychological spiral which sometimes (not all the times) lead to lashing out.

Issue #1: The HEAVY stigma of mental illness in the Asian-American community. I am a Filipino-American and I can't count the times when relatives or Pinoy friends say a common friend or acquaintance is "crazy" or "may topak" upon learning that the person is seeking professional help. The common belief is that if someone seeks help then they are "nuts". Who will be encouraged to seek help under such circumstances? So you see many kids (and definitely a lot of the older generation) carrying heavy psychic and emotional burdens and not having anywhere to turn for fear of being stigmatized by friends, neighbors, and relatives. All that anger and hurt is internalized. The #1 victim of this is themselves. But sometimes they lash out.

Issue #2: The Asian Model Minority Myth. There is a prevailing stereotype in American society that Asians are 'smart', 'efficient', 'hard-working' etc etc. While this may seem positive and desirable, it is an unfair load to place on a very diverse population pool. What happens to those Asians whose passions lie elsewhere? Are they less desirable or worthy of respect if they don't fit this stereotype? What's the impact on self-esteem?

My beef with this issue is NOT the fact that "Mainstream America" believes it. They can believe what they want. My problem is if members of the Asian-American community INTERNALIZES this myth and tries to live up to it. That's where the problem and disconnect with reality lies.

Issue #3: Asian-American competitive culture.

Many Asian-American groups LOVE to pit their children against the children of other families and sibling against sibling. From my personal example, my parents would impose corporal punishment if I came home with lousy grades. While this instilled discipline and a hard work ethic, this type of "encouragement" is not accepted well by all children. Indeed, I rebelled later against their extreme demands and standards of academic quality. Children are always goaded to be "better" than their cousins, siblings, and neighbors. Even if the 'encouragement' does not take the form of PHYSICAL 'disincentives' against slacking off, the effect is the same. A common tactic would be to pester kids regarding other relatives or kids in the neighborhood that 'got accepted to Harvard' or 'are going to medical school,' etc etc. This adds up to a heavy INTERNAL burden that definitely deflates many kids' self-esteem and crushes their self-worth.

Sibling rivalry is very intense in many Asian-American households... "If you older brother can get into Yale, so can you..." etc etc.

If you take all the pressures above and you combine it with Issue #4--a deep culturally engrained sense of PERSONAL SHAME, you end up with a complex of boiling emotions that find no ready outlet. My hope is that if there is anything positive that will come out of this tragedy is that it allows Asian-Americans to reexamine the way they put pressure on themselves and their children and to come up with better alternatives.

Our children's future is at stake.

Get quality one way backlinks using blog themes

2007-04-15T15:36:00.000-07:00

For program owners or multiniche site affiliate webmasters

Step 1: Identify the niches your sites cover. Run a % analysis. Is you site MOSTLY "a" or is it MOSTLY "b"?

Step 2: Find the keyword clusters that pertain to your sites. This might help. This might help, tool. For old skool players, this goes without saying.

Step 3: Now that you have your keyword clusters for your niches, get blog themes designed for these niches. Offer a lot of diversity that range from 2 to 3 column themes. Also, use images/graphics that appeal to the niche of that theme.

Step 4: At the bottom of the templates make sure you put, template theme by (NAME OF YOUR PROGRAM) specializing in (NICHE KEYWORD) sites

Offer a menu of differing templates for webmasters to download and use. They get a nice free template (they can even stock it with your feed if your program offers one) and you get a linkback from a same category (very important) site to your niche site. Win win situation, baby.

How NOT to get pimped: Let's face it, not everyone plays fair. Some might strip off your link and they get a nice free template. So I'll let you use your imagination in ways to keep track of your theme/track compliance.

If you need mainstream blog entries, email me at info@webmasterlabor.com

Quickly check your site's popularity

2007-04-11T14:31:00.000-07:00

There are many sites online that provide a decent gauge of how popular or linkworthy your site is. Some of these are:

Google PR -- PR, just in of itself, is just one factor re SERP rankings. But in connection with your overall linkbuilding strategies, it does carry some weight.

Alexa Ranking -- Alexa, for the purpose of determining site traffic, is of dubious value. I wouldn't pay too much attention to this. In fact, there's services that (using proxies and bots) artificially boost Alexa rankings.

Here's the rest of the indicators:
Compete Rank
Quantcast Rank
Google BackLinks
Yahoo BackLinks
Live Search BackLinks
Technorati Links
del.icio.us Bookmarks
Bloglines subscribers

You can view all these popularity indicators on one page using this cool little popularity checker tool.

Larry Ellison might have been right all along

2007-04-10T22:25:00.000-07:00

Back in the late 1990's, Oracle's Larry Ellison and others were championing the idea that the future of computing will revolve around remote networks, network computers, and the Internet. In essence, there won't be a need for local software, local Operating systems... basically, they were preaching the digital version of Ragnarok. Ellison et al were laughed off as chumps pushing for the return of the "dumb terminal."

I guess Larry and crew will soon have the last laugh as Free Open Source software fully takes off and renders local OS obsolete. Technology is quite ironic sometimes. How yesterday's bad idea can become today's trend and back again. This dramatic arc connecting the "dumb terminal" days of IBM, 'Wintel's' ascendancy, and the rise of OS-neutral open source applications bear a similarity to AT&T's life, death, and resurrection. Click here to get just a foretaste of tommorow's digital buffet of application choices.

One possible twist, thanks to increasing flash memory sizes, completely portable USB devices with portable apps.

Google cheatsheet -- not just for n00bs

2007-04-10T02:17:00.000-07:00

Check out this cool cheatsheet for Google. All the Google features and key urls in two easy to read pages. The cheatsheet features

The two pages of Google Cheat Sheets cover:-

* A list of all Google domains
* Company information
o Founded Date
o Key People
o Revenue
o Employees
o Contact Address
o Contact Phone & Fax
* PageRank
o Googlebot 2.1 Addresses
o List of sites with PageRank 10
o PageRank formula
* Google Form Elements
* Google Services
* Query structure to access directory listings of:-
o Music files
o Movie files
* List of basic Google Calculator operators
* List of advanced Google Search operators
* List of Google Investments
* List of fun Google services and tools
* List of 15 official Google Blogs
* Google Calculator examples
* Search by number examples

Download it here

Mimicking Googlebot to optimize your website

2007-04-08T12:38:00.000-07:00

Here's a nifty SEO tool that lets you see what YOUR website shows to GoogleBot or YahooBot when these bots spider your site. A lot of times there's a disparity between the title that you see with your regular browser and what the bots see. This is intentional :) Another interesting disparity--load different kinds of sites using CSS to see a wide array of display results.

Finding domains got even easier

2007-04-02T20:49:00.000-07:00

Using overture search reports to find keywords to turn into domains is an old practice among "domainers". It's also quite labor intensive. Thanks to Jonathan Leger, a lot of grunt work involved in domain hunting is now automated. Try out his free domain selection tool.

How does it work?

Enter a keyword and the script will access Overture's keyword selector tool for search volume info for that keyword and related keywords. This is an important aspect of domain hunting since one of the types of domains you would want are domains that people actually search for. The script will then make domains out the keywords and run a domain availability check.

What it doesn't do:

Pretty much everything else when it comes to "trend tracking" domain analysis. It doesn't look for hot trends and upcoming terms or terms of art/jargon in certain selected lucrative fields. It doesn't do industry communication indexing to find hot terms. These types of services, you have to outsource and pay for :)

Getting Free Traffic from AddanImage.Com

2007-03-19T03:12:00.000-07:00

AddAnImage.Com is a free fast rising image bank and online gallery where users and webmasters can post their images. Each image has a thumbnail and denotes a SOURCE. The source can be a linkback to your website.

How to get traffic from AddAnImage.Com? Here's a step by step tutorial:

Step 1: Go to AddAnImage.Com

Step 2: Click on a Category on the left hand navigation bar. For this tutorial, we clicked on "Female Celebrities". You should see a link on the top of the page that says "Add Your Own Image To: Celebrities - Women". Click on the link.

Step 3: In the Add an Image page, enter your image's link and the following information:

Comment, email address, and validation code. See form below.

Step 4: Click Submit and you will see an image link test. If your image can be hotlinked, your pic will appear. If it doesn't, no image appears and you have to use another image. Once you have placed an image url that actually appears, click submit link and you get a confirmation message.

Your LINK and your picture is now in the database and, as a bonus, appears on the top page for extra traffic.

Here's a quick Pro and Con of AddAnImage for traffic generation:

PROs

a) The owner, Nigel, actively seeks to drive traffic by buying PAID traffic to push his site. You can piggyback on the site's nascent popularity by posting your images there. You provide content for his site. He provides traffic. Nice win win situation, right?

b) The image pages are well viralized. There's the not so unfamiliar "hot or not" type rating system for each image. There's also that very familiar "send to a friend" feature. All in an easy and friendly layout. When it comes to viralizing a page, every little bit counts.

c) Each image has a linkback to your site. You can even add custom comment to add some extra edge to your link.

d) The main page is PR3 and rising.

e) Easy to brand domain makes the site retain users better.

f) Adult section for all the adult webmasters out there.

Cons

Once again, no site is perfect when it comes to traffic source generation. AddAnImage has some room for improvement when it comes to generating traffic/SEO benefits for its webmasters/content donors.

a) No hyperlinking of keyword for each image. This would be KEY for optimization.

b) Limited space for keyword rich comments. If the comments were opened up to a "fuller" description, this would be awesome.

c) No Spam guard. There's gotta be a way where webmasters can check each other to prevent some rogue webmasters (more on these dudes in a future post) won't use automated means to flood the site with crap.

d) Use a more Search Engine friendly URL system like VBSeo does (for forum posts) so there's no SE unfriendly urls like this: http://www.addanimage.com/image_details.php?linknum=7876 Maybe have it show up as the keyword or better yet some words from the description/comment. According to the website's owner (Nigel), this feature will be improved soon.

e) 400 pixel across limit.

Overall Comments

AddAnImage is a great multimedia dump and a great free way to generate some linkbacks. Due to the owner's commitment to buying PAID traffic, it may prove a great way to get DIRECT traffic as well. Use it wisely--follow the TOS. Shoot for lower level keywords that don't get as much searches but when aggregated produce a FAT affiliate check. And as always, have a great time marketing online.

If you'd like to OUTSOURCE this task or would like YOUR SITE reviewed for traffic generation purposes, email me at info AT webmasterlabor DOT com.

Till Next Time,

Gene

Get traffic from Blogwoods social network

2007-03-01T23:34:00.000-08:00

Blogwoods works on the same principle as MySpace--the benchmark (although definitely not the pioneer) of the social networking space: easily viewed profile pics that link to a profile page and complemented by communication tools for the community. Social Network sites are a PROVEN source of online traffic that's why I'm reviewing Blogwoods not in terms of its ability to achieve its purported mission (social networking and social communication) but based on its ability to yield quality traffic. Keep in mind that we're advocating RESPONSIBLE social network marketing as opposed to sheer traffic parasitism. What's the difference? Make sure you market in accordance to the site's Terms of Service. More on this later...

Blogwoods Traffic Review

PROs

Allows HTML in the profiles. HTML is important when marketing in Social Networking sites since you can drop links and pictures in your profile.
Allows communication via profiles. The toggle is for private and public communication.
Easy to view Interest Clusters or Communities. Blogwoods' profiles are organized by interests. This is awesome since it allows you to communicate with people that are interested in your niche/product or service category. This self-selection goes a long way in determining whether the marketing CONTENT you share is deemed as spam or not.
Top 30 members in the main page. Good way to get attention quickly. Also (get this) you can vote for yourself--the more votes you get the higher you get in the TOP members page.
Allows HTML in the messages to other members. You can choose public or private. Public maximizes the impact of your HTML message.
Allows Users to recommend categories. This is great. Not all possible blog categories exist and you'll probably need niche categories to cover your particular topic (and zero in on your particular audience).

CONs

No site is perfect. Blogwoods does have some blemishes that get in the way of using it as an effective traffic platform/source. Here are just some of the weaknesses I saw...

Annoying default avatar icon. Profile-driven community sites thrive on attractive profile icons to help members drive traffic to their pages. Although Blogwoods does allow you to customize your avatar, this may require too much effort from new members. This might get in the way of new members coming back. The utility of any social network site (in terms of traffic generation) largely revolves around its ability to attract and maintain a large number of members. This icon issue impacts the site's appeal and might result in lower recruitment.
No interlinking of profiles. Unlike Myspace and other very busy social network sites, blogwoods' profiles are in "isolation". You are not automatically made a "friend of Tom" or whoever the local central profile is. So you have to hunt around for an audience.
Very short profile names. Large social network sites gain much of their power and traffic from allowing members to express themselves. Having short names impacts this negatively.
Profiles are not very SEO friendly. The best types of networking site profiles allows users to use the profiles as inbound links to their sites. Blogwoods doesn't make this easy.
Not enough profile linking tools. Many other profile sites allow profiles to be linked with each other through a variety of online tools.

SOME GENERAL TIPS FOR SOCIAL MARKETING

If all else fails--READ the TERMS OF SERVICE. Make sure your online marketing activites conform with the site's TOS.
Don't target everyone. The old Zen saying of "Less is More" applies crucially to online marketing. Target only people that would be interested in the stuff you are promoting. Don't do shotgun blast marketing since pissed off consumers will be gunning for you (in addition to site admins, mods, and other interested parties).
Share CONTENT not spam. I love how the Hawaiian Japanese turned Spam into a regional dish for Hawaii. They take the spam (called Portuguese Sausage in Hawaii) and wrap it in a blanket of rice, wrap a scrambled egg around it, and finish it off with a nori jacket. From spam to nice and edible morsel. You should do the same when marketing in online communities. Don't drop spam. They'll think you're defecating in their site. Drop content. Drop a question. Ask to review their site. Offer VALUE for VALUE. That's how it works.
Don't BLAST content all over the place. Introduce yourself first. Be helpful. Imagine an online site as a coffee shop. Although you've got a band to promote, you'd look like a punk ass tool if you just started slapping everyone with a flier. Take it easy and sit down and talk to people. Call some attention to yourself and spew CONTENT. Stuff that people want to hear. What is content? It doesn't have to be cool articles or heavy stuff, it can be a question or an offer to help or news items that doesn't concern your site.
GET NOTICED. Marketing on social networking sites requires good first impressions. Make sure your profile pic looks good. Of course, don't steal copyrighted images or else Paris Hilton or Sunny Leone might hunt you down like a feral dog. LOLz. Anyway, have fun!

How to find domain names

2007-03-01T22:02:00.000-08:00

I won't go into further details regarding HOW to make money from domain names. I believe that's been covered very thoroughly by John Chow. Here is John's nice blog entry on domain speculation and domain parking. If you needed further proof of just how lucrative "domaining"can be, here's some recent domain name sales figures. For a more "formal" article on this topic, check out the Wall Street Journal's examination of this (long-standing) trend in online income generation.

This blog post is about How to find lucrative domain names. The articles above discuss how to make money off them, I'll show you how to FIND them. I perfected these techniques on a trial and error basis. You'll probably need an outsourced employee to help you filter them (along with using a script) but here are the sources you can use.

1) Scrape P2P search results -- these are great for finding up and coming bands, performers, or movie types. Extrapolate from these results the kind of generic terms that would make great domain names.

2) Use Google's top search results -- extrapolate and analyze upcoming search topic trends and list out the names associated with them. Another good (free) tool is Overture's keyword suggestion tool.

3) Scrape Scriptlance.com / Sourceforge.com and other software/app/project sites for common trends in applications. Extrapolating the right terms for these to come up with domains that encapsulate the "next big thing"yields big $$$.

4) Filter through TONS of RSS feeds for the following verticals: Medical/Pharmaceutical, Stocks/Capital Markets/Finance, etc. Find REAL EXPENSIVE (High PPC) vertical topics and hire a pool of outsourced researchers to extrapolate rising trends and suggest domain buys.

Stupid Ideas that made someone RICH

2007-02-25T18:43:00.000-08:00

10 Totally Stupid Online ideas that made someone RICH

This reminds me of an episode on the Simpsons (?) where people were buying a simple STICK (!) for a lot of money just because it is advertised on Home Shopping Network.

Marketing... that's what makes all the difference in the world.

How to unblock myspace access

2007-02-21T23:55:00.000-08:00

Are you blocked from myspace due to your work's content filter server? Is your school or firewall blocking you? Check out these tools allowing you access to American's biggest social networking site.

Myspace Unblocker

Here's a more spammy (Adsense peppered) version: How to unblock Myspace

Yet another one

You get the point.

How to get quality one way links to your site

2007-02-20T23:41:00.000-08:00

In order to receive, you must first give. This is one of the least understood tenets of webmaster work. Many webmasters often think of linkbuilding either as a strictly one way affair ("what is in it for me?" "How do *I* benefit?" "What can *you* do for *me*? etc.) or a very measured (almost grudging) quid pro quo (You link to me, I link to you). One way links out of your site to related but noncompeting site is a good way for you to get noticed by others and linked to. Moreover, if the links are paired with interesting and memorable articles, this serves as a good content base which readers can pass along to friends.

I know it's very hard to resist but if you want to build a QUALITY site, you must focus first and foremost on establish a good CONTENT base. Posting quality one way links out is part of this strategy.

Be careful though: just because a site is in your related niche/category does not NECESSARILY mean you should link to them. Investigate the site first. Make sure it's a QUALITY site. Make sure it doesn't employe tricks or code that search engines hate. Finally, make sure it's a place you'd want to be associated with and would personally visit or use.

Strategies for building one way links from your site.

I. Write reviews. Find the most influential blogs and sites that are RELATED to your site's niche/category. List them out. Find as many as you can. Sort them based on a) page rank b) activity c) number of appearances on a Google search.
Once you have sorted the sites, write a 400 to 500 word review of the site. Get screencaps if you can. Write an honest review. Be very comprehensive regarding site features and attractions. Pose questions and engage your reader. Involve your reader in wanting to visit the site and share feedback with you.

II. Comment on news events that another site has collected. Link to a news site or blog and comment on the news they have collected. If they are huge, this will put you on the radar. They still own the content and you are only posting blurbs and a linkback to their site. The most important factor here (which would prevent you from being slapped with a copyright suit) is that you are offering ORIGINAL commentary on their link.

III. Write guest articles on another site. Email busy niche/category-specific websites and ask if you can do guest articles or guest blog entries on their sites. Always link to prior articles you've done--preferably a portfolio of quality articles or blog entries. In exchange for the content, ask for a link back.

IV. Post quality articles on forums in your niche/category. This is self-explanatory. In order to get 'forum-specific' article ideas, surf through the forums you want to post the article on and look for frequently asked questions or any controversial questions or issues. Write out your materials and post to the forum. Provide a linkback to your site in one of two ways--if the forum is cool, put your linkback at the bottom of the article or near the top (example: "From: Webmasterlabor.Com"). If they aren't cool with blatant self-promotion, you can try sneaking a linkback among many linked items or examples in the body of the article.

I have other tricks but I reserve these for website content development or outsourced online promotions clients. But the tips above should be enough for you to get the ball rolling.

Some useful tools you can use to optimize the tips discussed here
Find out who links back to you and what link text they are using
Useful Wikipedia article to guide you on WHO NOT to link to

Yet another great Web 2.0 traffic source

2007-02-20T00:21:00.000-08:00

I used to work for a Venture Capital fund/Incubator firm back in the late 90's and I remember being in a development meeting oohing and ahhing over ETOUR. Etour allowed users to select preferences/categories of sites they wanted to surf. They would then click a tour link and they would visit all these interesting sites. As it turns out, many of the sites pay etour to put them in their tour rotation. This new advertising vehicle seemed really hot then until it fizzled out.

The (main) problem with eTour was that there was only so many sites per category and it is one-directional--it pushed site ideas from the 'publisher' to the end user. Moreover, whatever sites paying publishers put up may not necessarily gibe with what end users want to surf. After the dust of the great DOT BUST of 2001 has settled and the rise of new Web 2.0 user-driven community sites, comes STUMBLEUPON. It incorporates many of the trends and standards that emerged after Web 1.0--namely, using a plugin/browser model extension and employing interactive and community-building features. Users select their category preferences (not just once but many times through periodic preference sampling from Stumbleupon) and click the "Stumble!" icon and they're off to seeing many interesting sites.

The key difference between eTour and Stumbleupon is that the sites in the Stumble! network are "democratically" voted on by stumble members. While many webmasters would put MFA (made for Adsense) garbage sites into the system, these are usually filtered by the thousands of Stumble users that merely need to click that THUMBS DOWN icon to suppress rotation of the offending site. Stumbleupon mirrors some of the dynamic "digital democracy" that made Digg.com the juggernaut of social news. So users submit and monitor and filter the system in a democratic manner. There is no one-way static publishing model but a highly interactive and democratic distributed body of 'editors.' Stumble also has some MySpace type features since there's a personal page for website reviews and blog for members. All in an easy and profile driven package.

How do I get traffic from StumbleUpon?
Easy. Submit QUALITY informative or amusing sites. Don't submit sites that are chockablock full of PPC ads, those will get filtered by the community quickly. Submit sites that YOU'D want to read, go back to, pass on to friends, bookmark, and treat as a reference or homepage. Create profiles that are amusing and lead to sites that are worth visiting.

While no Web 2.0 site is immune from gaming, they do RAISE THE BAR for those who wish to parasitize traffic from the community to RETURN CONTENT and QUALITY in exchange for traffic. It doesn't kill the leeches but forces those who wish to get traffic to produce something in exchange. And that puts us on the road to a win win situation.