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More Free Blog Promotion Tools

2007-12-06T20:14:00.000Z

The bloggosphere is buzzing with promotion and activity. It´s a great feeling to be part of it ... and not lose your shirt for various referral and linking fees. In the spirit of Monkey Fool, I will show you a few more blog promotion tools that will not cost you anything... almost.

1. LinkReferral

It´s a hugely popular linking system, which lists registered members links according to subject categories. Each member has a chance to be reviewed and visited by others by providing a few reviews (and visits) in exchange. The system is simple and effective, especially if you are on tight budget. However, it´s not completely fair. For a fee of USD 35/month, you will be placed on top of all referred links - hence, gaining substantial traffic without having to spend time referring and visiting other sites.

2. Link Back Link

It´s a simple blog which promises to provide a link to your site in exchange for a backlink. It does not cost anything, plus the link comes with a brief review of your site.

3. Blogorator

It´s a little script that you can install in your sidebar. Visitors get a chance to rate your site. With higher ratings you get more visibility on blogorator. The tool seems not to have the same popularity as technorati (#1 for blogging promotion) or even zimbio, both reviewed earlier. However, due to its addictive and easy use, I predict that Blogorator has a nice future ahead.

I might add a few more free blog promotion tools to this blog in the future. If you are fond of some other alternatives, such as Blogrolling, leave a comment so that we could discuss it.

3 Free Tools to Promote Your Blog

2007-11-13T19:58:00.000Z

Taking your blog off the ground can be a daunting task. There are hundreds of blogs around and everyone seems to be flocking to a handful. Before you delete your blogger account and move on to do some other great things in life, try the following free tools:

1. TECHNORATI

Despite its technically sounding name, technorati is a fast and easy way to add your blog. Once you have added your blog, the chances it will be noticed are much higher. Just to give you an idea of the its scale, technocrati boasts of currently tracking 112 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media.

In addition to this promotional service, technorati is literally buzzing with blogging activity. There are hundreds of bloggers keen to share and exchange their experience and ... links.

2. ZIMBIO

Zimbio is different from technorati. It has a more relaxed and less geeky feel to it. The best feature of Zimbio are wikizines - interactive magazines that anyone can create or edit - with coverage of current events, cultural reference points, and niche areas of interest. What is amazing about wikizines is the speed with which they are disseminated across the net. Google pulled-out mine in just seconds after it got published.

3. BLOGSHOWOFF

Last but not least is the blogshowoff. It´s a nice little tool that makes you smile because of its simplicity. Blogshowoff works in the following way: first, you select the category that fits your blog; second, click on a couple of links listed in that category; third, post your blog. Once you have posted, your blog will appear at the top of the page. The oldest blog will be pushed out from the page. Nice, you get a chance to sit at the top until your are pushed out as new blogs are added. By the way, you can always come back and post your blog again. Clever!

How to Write a Business Plan? (2)

2007-11-08T18:12:00.000Z

Due to popular demand, MonkeyFool.com just launched a new blog dedicated to business planning. It´s hosted on Blogger and ibusinessplan.blogspot.com. Once again, the emphasis is on free and useful resources.

How to start your own social network site (2)?

2007-11-06T18:49:00.000Z

The number of hits that this blog is receiving has visibly increased after I published a short article about social networking. This made me think that maybe some people should really give it a try. So, what does one need to start a social network site?

1. Reliable platform

Find a good solution, both software and hardware, that would support your site. There are many who offer their services. Don´t overpay. Have a look at a free solution joomla.org You might still have to pay for extra modules etc. However, keep your costs low at the beginning. Use your cash for promotion.

2. Differentiate

Make your site different. Find a niche that suits your interests and is a potentially responsive target, e.g. if your hobby is poker, make a social network for poker players.

3. Promote

Promote your new-born site among your friends and through AdWords. You will need some money for promotion.

4. Find partners

If your social network takes-off, first of all in terms of growth in members, find financial and technical partners who could help you develop your site further. Don´t forget that the competition is fierce. The life of all late-comers will be tough.

Franchise or not franchise?

2007-11-06T18:30:00.000Z

We just posted a brief and revealing article about advantages and disadvantages of becoming a franchisee. Some of the lessons/ ideas discussed in the article can be easily applied to the online world. Here is the link (ad-free):

Becoming a franchisee

How to Write a Business Plan?

2007-10-29T17:42:00.001Z

So you have a great business idea? Good. What´s next? Writing a business plan would not hurt. First, it gives you a chance to structure your thoughts by weighting the cons and pros of the idea. Second, the exercise of planning would help to assess the financial potential of the proposal. Once the business plan is in place, test it with an independent reader, a close associate or a business partner. The next step is to approach potential investors etc. Hopefully by now, you will have found your perfect selling pitch.

You can find a clear (and free!!!) step-by-step guide on writing a business plan on Business Tomato .com by following the link below.

How to Write a Business Plan - a Free Guide

BusinessTomato.com - a new initiative from our team!

2007-09-23T15:59:00.000Z

A little commercial from this blog... We just launched a new non-commercial :) website BusinessTomato.com! The main goals of the new website are listed below:

1. Facilitate the exchange of business ideas.
2. Provide relevant content for start-ups and high-growth businesses.
3. Have fun!

Check it out yourself. Contributions are welcome!

How to start your own social network site?

2007-09-02T20:52:00.000Z

Social networking is growing by day. Friends, ex-friends, colleagues at work et al, all seem to be connected in a new virtual world of social networks managed by the likes of MySpace and Facebook, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6288120.stm.

A number of software publishers claim that one could create a social network site that would rival the established players. Before you jump and buy expensive social networking software, MonkeyFool.com offers a few reflections:

1. It´s not your game
When you pay for any money-making software you will end up making money for someone else. Instead of starting a new site, start your-own discussion group or network on an existing social networking site. See how it goes. If you manage to attract thousands of members, let us know what you did next.

2. ... but it might work
If you live in a country where social networking still does not exist, you might stand a chance. Ask the following questions: (i) is the internet penetration substantial in your country, (ii) can you deliver a solution in the required language, (iii) do you have the means (not only financial) to promote your site? If the answer is "yes" to all questions, START YOUR SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE NOW.

Selecting Your Web Host: Part 3

2007-04-09T16:54:00.000Z

Once you have reassured yourself about the reliability and the price of your webhost, check out the FEATURES offered:

1. WEBSPACE

As a minimum, a starting package should have at least 100 MB. This would be sufficient for most websites, except if you plan to have lots of images.

2. BANDWIDTH

Unless you expect to receive millions of visitors each month, 10 GB will be sufficient. What is more important is to be able to upgrade whenever you need to. Avoid companies that will automatically shut down your website if you exceed the allocated bandwidth. If you are not sure about your bandwidth needs, choose a package with 100 GB allocation.

3. CONTROL PANEL

Make sure that you will receive your own control panel. If there is no demo, ask for one at the help desk. The most popular panels are cPanel and Plesk. Some hosting providers offer custom-made panels, which should be avoided in most cases.

4. HELP DESK

I have already mentioned it, but make sure that there is a help desk. Test it by opening help tickets with simple queries. Note a response time.

5. E-MAIL

If you decide to use your hosting service also for email, make sure that you will have both POP and SMTP access. You will need both POP and SMTP to access your mailbox with your email client, e.g. Thunderbird or Outlook. Make sure that the allocated disk space is reasonable, e.g. as a minimum of 100 MB per mailbox.

6. WEBMAIL

A decent webmail service should be included.

7. FTP ACCESS

Usually it is included as a standard. You will need it for uploading your website.

8. DATABASE TOOLS

If you plan to install PHP-based scripts, make sure that your hosting provider will be able to support them.

9. SITE STATISTICS

This is also usually included in all packages. Avoid additional payments for advanced reporting features. Normally, everything should be included in your monthly fee.

Selecting Your Web Host: Part 2

2007-04-05T07:38:00.000Z

... and now another important tip: KEEP YOUR COSTS DOWN...

It´s very easy to overpay for your hosting. The surest way to overpay is by:

1. Choosing a wrong company

There are hundreds and more likely of thousands of hosting companies that go out of business every year. A bad choice means frequent switching, which in turn implies high costs every time you have to move your site.

2. Ignoring free options

There are some good free services available from large internet companies that are likely to stay in business for many years to come. This blog is hosted at blogger.com - a good company with a great service. Absolutely free.

3. Not using free picture galleries

Pictures tend to eat up your disk space very fast. That´s ahy you should consider using such free services as Kodak EasyShare Gallery and Flikr, a Yahoo company. At any time you can upgrade. The downside is that usually you cannot use your custom domain name with such services.

4. Signing-up for long-term contracts

The best hosting contract is a one month contract, unless you are 100% certain about the reliability of your hosting service provider. Signing-up for anything beyond one year would reduce your flexibility to switch.

5. Following "expert" advice

Biased "experts", as discussed in my earlier post, can mislead you by failing to disclose their referral arrangements with hosting companies. Do your own research and double check the claims made by such experts.

Selecting Your Web Host: Part 1

2007-04-04T06:38:00.000Z

A few tips for selecting a good hosting company...

PART 1: AVAILABILITY

What is the most important criteria for selecting your hosting service? Is it the price, the disk space, or is it the bandwidth? Probably neither. What matters in hosting is the availability of a website throughout the day.

A popular measure of availability is the uptime guarantee, such as a "three nines", i.e. 99.9% uptime guarantee. How good is it? "Three nines" translates into about 10 minutes of downtime per week or about 43 minutes of dowtime per month. Obviously it´s not good enough for many professional websites.

What is the next best? Well, it´s "four nines", i.e. 99.99%, which translates into 1 minute of downtime per week or just over 4 minutes per month. Even better to is to have a "five nines" guarantee, i.e. 99.999% of uptime. This would translate into a virtually uninterupted service with only 6 seconds of dowtime per week or less than half a minute of downtime per month.

When reviewing an uptime guarantee, check whether maintenance is included. Most often it´s excluded from a guarantee, which means that all planned downtime would not count as an outage.

In most cases, you might have to learn about the reliability of your hosting provider the hard way - i.e. by experiencing the downtime. Are there any tools to help you monitor the situation? Yes. I recommend MONTASTIC. It´s a free tool and very easy to use. Whenever your site is down, it will send you a message. After a short while, you will have a good idea about the actual availability of your website.

I am pasting below the Green Page from Montastic. It provides a large degree of psychological comfort for those monitoring a few websites at a time.

Another tip is to avoid long-term contracts with hosting providers. The ideal option is to have a monthly (or a quarterly) billing cycle. If you decide to switch, at least your financial costs will be limited.

Hosting experts will rip you off!

2007-02-21T18:47:00.000Z

When searching for a hosting advice, you will be hit by competing offers of help. A typical hosting review site will project an image of independence and objectivity. Most likely you will be served a ranking of top 10 sites, which looks something like this:

RANK	WEB HOST	PRICE	DISK SPACE	BANDWITH	SCORE	REVIEW
1	AAAHOST	$4.00	200 GB	2000 GB	95%	Read Review
2	BBBHOST	$5.00	200 GB	2000 GB	93%	Read Review
3	CCCHOST	$5.50	200 GB	2000 GB	90%	Read Review
4	DDDHOST	$6.00	100 GB	2000 GB	88%	Read Review
5	EEEHOST	$6.50	100 GB	1000 GB	86%	Read Review

What´s the problem with this review? Is there anything wrong? Well, YES!

FIRST, the website fails to disclose a major conflict of ineterests - the reviewer is an affiliate of all hosting companies listed in the table! Whenever you follow a lead and sign up with a "recommended" hosting provider, the reviewer will pocket some nice commissions.

SECOND, since all reviews are driven by commissions, don't expect any reasonable objectivity or independence. All that you will get is a very limited offering from those hosts that pay generous referral fees, sometimes as high as US $100 per sale (and even more).

THIRD, once you have signed up, you are likely to find out that the quality of services is low and tends to decline over time. Keep in mind that most generous referral fees are likely to be paid by young companies that try to capure a larger market share ... and have a propensity to swiftly go out of business (with your website) once things fails to work out as planned.

About MONKEY FOOL

2007-02-13T22:33:00.000Z

No need to cry or panic. I will demostrate that your expert is no better than a MONKEY when it comes to giving a common-sense advice. Consider MONKEY FOOL as my guide on selected issues, mostly relate to internet. Since I am not a geek myself, this will truly be down to earth. If you share my views or have some other ideas, please let me know! Have fun as this space expands.

Yours Sincerely :)

MONKEY FOOL