Actually, some online marketers don't even have a site of their own and instead they promote other affiliate sites and products with their marketing. While I don't personally recommend this route, many successful marketers have taken it and are quite happy with not having to bother with the whole business of running an online site of their own.
But you should have at least one main site, your flagship, your address on the web where people can find you. This also gives you an online identity. It tells everyone this is the area or subject matter you're promoting...
For years I had one main site which kept me extremely busy andearned me a modest online income. I still have this site and yesit still keeps me busy and it is still profitable.
So why build more sites?
Mainly because as you proceed with your online marketing, you will find niches that require their own sites. You have to expandand branch out from your main site. The new sites are connected and supported with your old one. It is a very effective way of building more quality traffic and business.
But the main reason to build new sites is to prepare yourselffor the future. You must stake your claim in all those"keyword domains" that still can be had at the moment.
This is an excerpt from an article by Titus Hoskins
To know more visit http://www.bizwaremagic.com/
Monday, June 1, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
Twitter | Jim Trageser
If you wonder about Twitter as I do sometimes, check this interesting article.
“Is Twitter the Next ICQ?” by Jim Trageser
If you're tech-savvy enough to be reading ComputorEdge, (www.computoredge.com) then you've most likely heard of Twitter.com—the current hot topic in tech media. In early April, CNN and actor Ashton Kutcher held a contest to see who could get to 1 million Twitter followers first.
The actor won. It seems that everyone is on Twitter—you can twit or send tweets. Little applets let you put your Twitter updates in your MySpace or Facebook or blog pages.All of which is very impressive, as is the growth in the number of people with Twitter accounts.
But what does it mean? Not much if some compelling reason to use Twitter doesn't emerge.
What It IsTwitter is simply a broadcast of your "status"—like what MySpace and Facebook already offer on your profile, but untethered to a specific site.You type in what you're doing, or whatever else you want to share with your subscribers—a news headline, a new YouTube video—and then they are notified based on their own preferences (e-mail or text to their cell, or simply an update the next time they log in to Twitter.com). It's sort of a centralized version of texting on your cell phone or instant messaging on your PC. But I still have to ask: So what?
Where's the Beef?
Look at the example of instant messaging. Five years ago, IM was hot hot hot. It seemed like everyone was jumping on the IM bandwagon—AOL had AIM, Yahoo had its own, so did Netscape and Microsoft—and the big buzz was whether Google was really going to issue its own IM client. And a small company named ICQ was among the IM leaders simply by virtue of being among the first to have an IM client and protocol.
The fact that none of the above clients were compatible with one another even had members of Congress threatening to pass laws compelling interoperability—the fear being that if we weren't all able to chat with one another on our PCs that, well, I'm not really sure what the fear was.Whatever it was, it didn't come to pass, because instant messaging is utterly passé. Sure, there are still people IMing each other. Heck, for that matter, some people still write letters to each other. In longhand. And mail them, with stamps and everything.
Whatever.
The reality is that the proliferation of cell phones and the drop in price for text messaging on those phones doomed instant messaging as a ubiquitous (and thus, perhaps, massively profitable) means of communication. Nobody IMs anymore because instant messaging isn't nearly as universal as texting. Let's face it: No matter how sleek your laptop, it's a heck of a lot more cumbersome than a cell phone.
The MySpace Model?
And now Twitter is all the rage—we even had a seminar on using Twitter at my place of employment recently. The woman who led it covered all the bases and gave a very nice, comprehensive presentation on how to use Twitter to strengthen our business—but at the conclusion, I was left wondering if we weren't putting the cart before the horse. By a couple miles.
More recently even than IM, MySpace.com was the hot tech app. Designed to make it easy for bands to share their music and tour schedules (and thus build up fan bases independently of the record labels), MySpace exploded in popularity. Until just a couple years ago, it was the most popular destination Web site (trailing only Google and Yahoo in total visitors). Everybody had a MySpace page.
And you know what? MySpace is still a hugely popular site—but it no longer has the all-valuable cachet of the Next Big Thing. Facebook took that away, and—until Twitter sprung on the scene—was the media darling of the Internet.Long-Term Success. So the point of all this meandering is to say that I wouldn't wager too heavily on Twitter's long-term financial potential.
Success is fleeting, and never more so than in the tech world.Particularly when the value of your brand isn't immediately evident. MySpace's basic design remains geared toward helping bands build a following. My Space may not be the dominating one-size-fits-all social network it once was, but it remains a robust online community due to its strength at connecting musicians to fans.
Facebook may be the more dominant generic social network now, due to the fact that it is designed to help friends and family connect and stay in touch. But it's not quite as good at helping bands promote themselves—so MySpace still has that niche. But with its online games, polls and other entertainment, Facebook is probably the more fun way to spend an evening. So both sites could end up being here to stay indefinitely.
But what does Twitter offer?
A way to let your friends know what you're doing? To share a link to another Web site? You can do all those things with your friends on MySpace and Facebook already. There just doesn't seem anything particularly unique or compelling about Twitter. It's interesting (sort of); it's got the media buzz going. But will it last?As we've seen with IM, and with Linux before that (remember when Linux was going to replace Windows as the operating system of choice on PCs?) and MySpace after (and tons of other examples, from WinAmp to BeOS), the media is a fickle mistress.With a particularly short attention span.
Jim Trageser can be reached via his Web site. Jim is the Publisher/Editor of Turbula.net, an odd little online publication to which truly talented people seem strangely compelled to send interesting works for others to enjoy. Visit www.turbula.net.
“Is Twitter the Next ICQ?” by Jim Trageser
If you're tech-savvy enough to be reading ComputorEdge, (www.computoredge.com) then you've most likely heard of Twitter.com—the current hot topic in tech media. In early April, CNN and actor Ashton Kutcher held a contest to see who could get to 1 million Twitter followers first.
The actor won. It seems that everyone is on Twitter—you can twit or send tweets. Little applets let you put your Twitter updates in your MySpace or Facebook or blog pages.All of which is very impressive, as is the growth in the number of people with Twitter accounts.
But what does it mean? Not much if some compelling reason to use Twitter doesn't emerge.
What It IsTwitter is simply a broadcast of your "status"—like what MySpace and Facebook already offer on your profile, but untethered to a specific site.You type in what you're doing, or whatever else you want to share with your subscribers—a news headline, a new YouTube video—and then they are notified based on their own preferences (e-mail or text to their cell, or simply an update the next time they log in to Twitter.com). It's sort of a centralized version of texting on your cell phone or instant messaging on your PC. But I still have to ask: So what?
Where's the Beef?
Look at the example of instant messaging. Five years ago, IM was hot hot hot. It seemed like everyone was jumping on the IM bandwagon—AOL had AIM, Yahoo had its own, so did Netscape and Microsoft—and the big buzz was whether Google was really going to issue its own IM client. And a small company named ICQ was among the IM leaders simply by virtue of being among the first to have an IM client and protocol.
The fact that none of the above clients were compatible with one another even had members of Congress threatening to pass laws compelling interoperability—the fear being that if we weren't all able to chat with one another on our PCs that, well, I'm not really sure what the fear was.Whatever it was, it didn't come to pass, because instant messaging is utterly passé. Sure, there are still people IMing each other. Heck, for that matter, some people still write letters to each other. In longhand. And mail them, with stamps and everything.
Whatever.
The reality is that the proliferation of cell phones and the drop in price for text messaging on those phones doomed instant messaging as a ubiquitous (and thus, perhaps, massively profitable) means of communication. Nobody IMs anymore because instant messaging isn't nearly as universal as texting. Let's face it: No matter how sleek your laptop, it's a heck of a lot more cumbersome than a cell phone.
The MySpace Model?
And now Twitter is all the rage—we even had a seminar on using Twitter at my place of employment recently. The woman who led it covered all the bases and gave a very nice, comprehensive presentation on how to use Twitter to strengthen our business—but at the conclusion, I was left wondering if we weren't putting the cart before the horse. By a couple miles.
More recently even than IM, MySpace.com was the hot tech app. Designed to make it easy for bands to share their music and tour schedules (and thus build up fan bases independently of the record labels), MySpace exploded in popularity. Until just a couple years ago, it was the most popular destination Web site (trailing only Google and Yahoo in total visitors). Everybody had a MySpace page.
And you know what? MySpace is still a hugely popular site—but it no longer has the all-valuable cachet of the Next Big Thing. Facebook took that away, and—until Twitter sprung on the scene—was the media darling of the Internet.Long-Term Success. So the point of all this meandering is to say that I wouldn't wager too heavily on Twitter's long-term financial potential.
Success is fleeting, and never more so than in the tech world.Particularly when the value of your brand isn't immediately evident. MySpace's basic design remains geared toward helping bands build a following. My Space may not be the dominating one-size-fits-all social network it once was, but it remains a robust online community due to its strength at connecting musicians to fans.
Facebook may be the more dominant generic social network now, due to the fact that it is designed to help friends and family connect and stay in touch. But it's not quite as good at helping bands promote themselves—so MySpace still has that niche. But with its online games, polls and other entertainment, Facebook is probably the more fun way to spend an evening. So both sites could end up being here to stay indefinitely.
But what does Twitter offer?
A way to let your friends know what you're doing? To share a link to another Web site? You can do all those things with your friends on MySpace and Facebook already. There just doesn't seem anything particularly unique or compelling about Twitter. It's interesting (sort of); it's got the media buzz going. But will it last?As we've seen with IM, and with Linux before that (remember when Linux was going to replace Windows as the operating system of choice on PCs?) and MySpace after (and tons of other examples, from WinAmp to BeOS), the media is a fickle mistress.With a particularly short attention span.
Jim Trageser can be reached via his Web site. Jim is the Publisher/Editor of Turbula.net, an odd little online publication to which truly talented people seem strangely compelled to send interesting works for others to enjoy. Visit www.turbula.net.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Simple Marketing Systems That Work | Titus Hoskins
This is a great article by Titus Hoskins.
Creating Simple Online Marketing Systems That Work!
When I started with my first website around 10 years ago, I foolishly thought all I had to do was create some great content and people would flock to my site. Sometimes that does happen but most times it does not.
10 years later I now know the difference. I know I really have to work the Internet if I want my sites to be successful. These are marketing systems that I put into place to promote my sites and gather quality traffic in order to produce the sales.
My marketing systems take into account countless strategies that produce the quality traffic. It's not just one method of getting traffic but many. I use many marketing tactics to build up a complex, yet very simple marketing system that works.
It all comes down to promotion.
You have to promote your site in numerous ways. Some of my favorites are:
article marketing - writing simplehow-to articles on the topic of your site and distributing them all over the web. Over the years this simple technique has brought in the most quality traffic to my sites.
I use keyword marketing to get my chosen keyword phrases to the top of the search engines. I concentrate most of my efforts on Google because it brings in the most traffic. chieving top rankings will give you interested visitors and buyers.
I use blogs and RSS feeds to connect my sites to all the media sites and online bookmarking communities. Don't underestimate the important of these media sites in your marketing. I just read in WebProNews that Facebook can drive more traffic than Google to many sites.
I use link bait like free ebooks, free reports, free ecourses... if you give out valuable content that people want - they will link to your site, bringing in morevisitors and customers.
I also use the PPC programs such as Google Adwords which can produce quality traffic to your sites.
I use follow-up emails to produce repeat traffic to mysites. This is one essential marketing tactic every onlinemarketer must use if they want to fully benefit from their traffic. The concept here is not to directly sell to potential customers but give them valuable information that they need and want.
Weekly newsletters and/or ezines are another good way of building relationships with your site's visitors. It is also an excellent way of getting repeat traffic to your sites.
Another marketing tactic is to establish your site or yourself as an expert on the topic of your site. People will look and come to you for information on your topic. Building online credibility is often overlooked by many marketers but it is essential to your online success. If people respect your opinion,they will seek you out.
Participating in online communities and forums is one obvious way to establish your expertise in a given area. These forums are also an excellent source of quality traffic to your sites.
As you can see from above, creating a successfulweb site or business takes a lot of promotion and work. Don't just sit back and wait for things to happen - instead become pro-active and make things happen.
Write articles and distribute them. Write viral ebooks and special reports. Do PPC advertising. Start building your contact lists. Do a regular ezine or newsletter. Participate in forums...
Create a simple, yet complex system, of connections all over the web. These links/connections will drawin quality traffic that will make your site successful. Build up a whole combination of traffic sources foryour site and you will create a marketing system thatworks.
Just get out there and do it!
For more ideas on marketing and marketing tools go to this online blog:
http://www.bizwaremagic.com/weblog/
Creating Simple Online Marketing Systems That Work!
When I started with my first website around 10 years ago, I foolishly thought all I had to do was create some great content and people would flock to my site. Sometimes that does happen but most times it does not.
10 years later I now know the difference. I know I really have to work the Internet if I want my sites to be successful. These are marketing systems that I put into place to promote my sites and gather quality traffic in order to produce the sales.
My marketing systems take into account countless strategies that produce the quality traffic. It's not just one method of getting traffic but many. I use many marketing tactics to build up a complex, yet very simple marketing system that works.
It all comes down to promotion.
You have to promote your site in numerous ways. Some of my favorites are:
article marketing - writing simplehow-to articles on the topic of your site and distributing them all over the web. Over the years this simple technique has brought in the most quality traffic to my sites.
I use keyword marketing to get my chosen keyword phrases to the top of the search engines. I concentrate most of my efforts on Google because it brings in the most traffic. chieving top rankings will give you interested visitors and buyers.
I use blogs and RSS feeds to connect my sites to all the media sites and online bookmarking communities. Don't underestimate the important of these media sites in your marketing. I just read in WebProNews that Facebook can drive more traffic than Google to many sites.
I use link bait like free ebooks, free reports, free ecourses... if you give out valuable content that people want - they will link to your site, bringing in morevisitors and customers.
I also use the PPC programs such as Google Adwords which can produce quality traffic to your sites.
I use follow-up emails to produce repeat traffic to mysites. This is one essential marketing tactic every onlinemarketer must use if they want to fully benefit from their traffic. The concept here is not to directly sell to potential customers but give them valuable information that they need and want.
Weekly newsletters and/or ezines are another good way of building relationships with your site's visitors. It is also an excellent way of getting repeat traffic to your sites.
Another marketing tactic is to establish your site or yourself as an expert on the topic of your site. People will look and come to you for information on your topic. Building online credibility is often overlooked by many marketers but it is essential to your online success. If people respect your opinion,they will seek you out.
Participating in online communities and forums is one obvious way to establish your expertise in a given area. These forums are also an excellent source of quality traffic to your sites.
As you can see from above, creating a successfulweb site or business takes a lot of promotion and work. Don't just sit back and wait for things to happen - instead become pro-active and make things happen.
Write articles and distribute them. Write viral ebooks and special reports. Do PPC advertising. Start building your contact lists. Do a regular ezine or newsletter. Participate in forums...
Create a simple, yet complex system, of connections all over the web. These links/connections will drawin quality traffic that will make your site successful. Build up a whole combination of traffic sources foryour site and you will create a marketing system thatworks.
Just get out there and do it!
For more ideas on marketing and marketing tools go to this online blog:
http://www.bizwaremagic.com/weblog/
Monday, April 6, 2009
Increase RSS feeds subscribers | Derek-Ang
I found this article by http://www.derek-ang.com/ informative. Please check!
7 ways to increase your RSS feeds subscribers
1.Produce Quality Content
This is something you will probably be tired of hearing or reading, but it is true. Great content is the only thing that can actually make your visitors come back, the only thing that can attract new readers and help expand your readers’ base. If you don’t provide something interesting and useful, readers have no reason to subscribe to your blog.
2.Post frequently
Updating your posts and content often is something that can prove really helpful and useful. You need to publish new content on a regular basis, so as to convince people that your blog deserves their attention. If you make your readers miss you when you are not writing, it means you are on the right track.
3. Use a Full RSS feed
Most of the RSS subscribers will not bother if you use a partial feed. People tend to have more than one blog in their feed, because they do not have the time to read everything that is posted, thus, they scan the RSS only for the posts that they want to read and seem interesting.
4. Allow Email subscriptions
Email subscriptions are not the latest technological invention and blog writers cannot imagine a world without RSS, but, if you offer the chance to people to subscribe in both, or choose what works best for them you will get more subscribers in no time.
5.Make the RSS subscription easy
Try to make the subscription easy, by reducing the number of steps that people need to do in order to subscribe. Feed Burner RSS subscription is a great service you can use.
6.Make the RSS button visible
If you want to persuade your readers to subscribe to your blog you need to make the RSS option visible for them. People tend to notice buttons and items that are above the fold, so try to place the button there. ]
7.Explain what the RSS feed is
Contrary to what you might believe, not everyone knows what an RSS feed is. Write a small informative article explaining what the RSS is and how visitors can use it.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
7 ways to increase your RSS feeds subscribers
1.Produce Quality Content
This is something you will probably be tired of hearing or reading, but it is true. Great content is the only thing that can actually make your visitors come back, the only thing that can attract new readers and help expand your readers’ base. If you don’t provide something interesting and useful, readers have no reason to subscribe to your blog.
2.Post frequently
Updating your posts and content often is something that can prove really helpful and useful. You need to publish new content on a regular basis, so as to convince people that your blog deserves their attention. If you make your readers miss you when you are not writing, it means you are on the right track.
3. Use a Full RSS feed
Most of the RSS subscribers will not bother if you use a partial feed. People tend to have more than one blog in their feed, because they do not have the time to read everything that is posted, thus, they scan the RSS only for the posts that they want to read and seem interesting.
4. Allow Email subscriptions
Email subscriptions are not the latest technological invention and blog writers cannot imagine a world without RSS, but, if you offer the chance to people to subscribe in both, or choose what works best for them you will get more subscribers in no time.
5.Make the RSS subscription easy
Try to make the subscription easy, by reducing the number of steps that people need to do in order to subscribe. Feed Burner RSS subscription is a great service you can use.
6.Make the RSS button visible
If you want to persuade your readers to subscribe to your blog you need to make the RSS option visible for them. People tend to notice buttons and items that are above the fold, so try to place the button there. ]
7.Explain what the RSS feed is
Contrary to what you might believe, not everyone knows what an RSS feed is. Write a small informative article explaining what the RSS is and how visitors can use it.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Unemployment is Time | Today's Economy | Douglas E. Welch
I am a fan of Douglas, and I found this article to be just right for our times.
As you might tell from recent columns, I am doing everything I can to keep our career conversation on an optimistic level. You can’t ignore the problems in today’s economy and workplace, but you can focus your attention where it does the most good. That said, it can be hard to be optimistic from day to day as you face the realities around you. If you aren’t out of work yourself, chances are you know someone who is. The media keep hammering us left and right with this statistic and that report. Instead of focusing on these external issues, though, I find that focusing on the internals — who we are and what we do — seems to generate the biggest results. We can effect our daily lives and our individual selves, even if we can’t fix the bigger problems.
Family
One of the first areas you should focus on is your family. Everyone is probably nervous and out of sorts. Expenditures are being delayed and life is a bit on hold until you get your work situation settled. You may not notice it, but this type of stress gnaws at everyone invisibly until some large blow up occurs. Everyone is trying to put on a brave face and “be strong” but cracks can start to appear. Now, more than ever, you need to do something fun with your family or everyone is likely to break under the strain.
After you spend hours every day looking for a new or better job, turn off the lights, shut the door to your office and do some living. Make meals together. Eat together with your family. Spend time curled up on the couch together watching some fun movie. These types of activities cost you little, but help to remind you that life is not all doom and gloom. You still have a family that supports you and you can still support them in these important ways.
The odd part is that although many of us have more time than ever before to spend with our families, we don’t do it. We find a hundred different activities, job search related and not, to hide among. These are often the same people who professed a desire to spend more time with their families when they were working. Take this one big advantage in being out of work — time — and spend it in the most important way possible. Be productive in your job search, yes, but take solace in your family and your home life. Do something you have been meaning to do for months or years. Make the most of the time that is given you. You will be back in the daily grind before you know it. This time will disappear and you will regret it.
Skills
Another important use of your time is gaining new skills. Once again, you have the time to engage in these pursuits and you need to take advantage of it. Start you own self-study course in a new programming language, project management training, engineering or architecture, whatever you think will be useful, but also interesting to you. Take some college courses, if you can, to expand your skills and knowledge. This isn’t a time to be standing still. If you are not learning new skills, you are falling behind. Where your work was often the challenge that drove you to learn new skills, now you must be self-directed. You must seek out new challenges and new opportunities to learn. Each new skill you acquire is one more positive item you can note on resumes, highlight in interviews and take pride in for yourself.
Thinking
Finally, spend more time thinking…about everything…work, life, hopes, goals, dreams. Day-to-day work often drives out any time to think about such things. Don’t dwell on the bad things, though. Think about what you want, what you need, what you want to accomplish and perhaps even new directions you can pursue. Too many of us are so intent on watching the road ahead of us that we can sometimes forget to ask if that is where we really want to go. Use this time as an opportunity to re-evaluate your work and your life. You many find that you were on the right track all along, but you could also find that you need to take a hard turn at the next crossroads and go a different direction.
Unemployment gives us a great gift — time. Don’t squander it. It will be gone far too quickly. Take the time to enjoy the small joys in life that can get ignored when we are on the career fast track. Use this time to build the career you deserve.
The gift of unemployment is time
By Douglas E Welch
As you might tell from recent columns, I am doing everything I can to keep our career conversation on an optimistic level. You can’t ignore the problems in today’s economy and workplace, but you can focus your attention where it does the most good. That said, it can be hard to be optimistic from day to day as you face the realities around you. If you aren’t out of work yourself, chances are you know someone who is. The media keep hammering us left and right with this statistic and that report. Instead of focusing on these external issues, though, I find that focusing on the internals — who we are and what we do — seems to generate the biggest results. We can effect our daily lives and our individual selves, even if we can’t fix the bigger problems.
Family
One of the first areas you should focus on is your family. Everyone is probably nervous and out of sorts. Expenditures are being delayed and life is a bit on hold until you get your work situation settled. You may not notice it, but this type of stress gnaws at everyone invisibly until some large blow up occurs. Everyone is trying to put on a brave face and “be strong” but cracks can start to appear. Now, more than ever, you need to do something fun with your family or everyone is likely to break under the strain.
After you spend hours every day looking for a new or better job, turn off the lights, shut the door to your office and do some living. Make meals together. Eat together with your family. Spend time curled up on the couch together watching some fun movie. These types of activities cost you little, but help to remind you that life is not all doom and gloom. You still have a family that supports you and you can still support them in these important ways.
The odd part is that although many of us have more time than ever before to spend with our families, we don’t do it. We find a hundred different activities, job search related and not, to hide among. These are often the same people who professed a desire to spend more time with their families when they were working. Take this one big advantage in being out of work — time — and spend it in the most important way possible. Be productive in your job search, yes, but take solace in your family and your home life. Do something you have been meaning to do for months or years. Make the most of the time that is given you. You will be back in the daily grind before you know it. This time will disappear and you will regret it.
Skills
Another important use of your time is gaining new skills. Once again, you have the time to engage in these pursuits and you need to take advantage of it. Start you own self-study course in a new programming language, project management training, engineering or architecture, whatever you think will be useful, but also interesting to you. Take some college courses, if you can, to expand your skills and knowledge. This isn’t a time to be standing still. If you are not learning new skills, you are falling behind. Where your work was often the challenge that drove you to learn new skills, now you must be self-directed. You must seek out new challenges and new opportunities to learn. Each new skill you acquire is one more positive item you can note on resumes, highlight in interviews and take pride in for yourself.
Thinking
Finally, spend more time thinking…about everything…work, life, hopes, goals, dreams. Day-to-day work often drives out any time to think about such things. Don’t dwell on the bad things, though. Think about what you want, what you need, what you want to accomplish and perhaps even new directions you can pursue. Too many of us are so intent on watching the road ahead of us that we can sometimes forget to ask if that is where we really want to go. Use this time as an opportunity to re-evaluate your work and your life. You many find that you were on the right track all along, but you could also find that you need to take a hard turn at the next crossroads and go a different direction.
Unemployment gives us a great gift — time. Don’t squander it. It will be gone far too quickly. Take the time to enjoy the small joys in life that can get ignored when we are on the career fast track. Use this time to build the career you deserve.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Internet Scams | Online Fraud | Wally Wang
Keep your eyes open!
“Con artists have expanded their reach.”
by Wally Wang from www.computoredge.com
Cartoon by Jim Whiting
If you're an experienced Internet user, you've probably heard of the Nigerian 419 scam. This is where you get an unsolicited e-mail from a stranger overseas, claiming that they need your help in releasing millions of dollars. In exchange for your help, this benevolent stranger is willing to pay you part of the money, which you can claim by paying an initial fee, ostensibly to bribe an official or pay bank fees.
If you send this unknown person money, they'll keep dangling the promise of millions of dollars awaiting you, but only if you continue sending additional cash to overcome an inevitable barrage of problems. Each time you send money, you'll be more inclined to send more to avoid losing the "investment" you've already made in this incredible offer. The con artists will happily keep up this pretense as long as you keep sending money.
Fool Me Twice
If victims ever wake up to the fact that they've been conned, they'll have to face the shame of being duped for several months along with whatever amount of money they sent out while getting nothing in return. And now the con artists often circle back a second time around.
Suddenly, you may find another unsolicited e-mail, stating that a special antifraud division has tracked down the con artists who have scammed you. If you want this government agency to recover your lost money, you'll need to fill out some official-looking documents along with paying a processing fee.
Needless to say, many victims are so angry at the con artists and lusting for revenge that they'll eagerly fill out this bogus document and send in the processing fee—only to have the vicious cycle repeat all over again.
Supposedly, this antifraud government agency needs to bribe more officials or pay additional fees to keep the con artists in jail so they can be brought to court. Once again, you'll need to keep sending money to these con artists, who are very likely the same con artists who bilked you initially. (After all, how else would they know that you were conned in the first place?)
The original Nigerian 419 scam has ripped off people for thousands of dollars and continues duping people to this day. This added twist of ripping off the same people a second time, by masquerading as a government antifraud agency, is another development designed to catch victims off guard and steal their money before they realize what's happening.
Spear Phishing on Facebook
As more people wise up to unsolicited e-mail scams, con artists are resorting to something called spear phishing. Where phishing involves sending out mass e-mails with the same scam letter, knowing that a small percentage of people will always take the bait, spear phishing involves targeting specific people. One of the most popular ways to spear phish is through social networking sites such as Facebook.
Like other social-networking sites, Facebook lets you reveal details about yourself, which any stranger can read. Plus, you can link to your friends and read personal details about these people, which a stranger can also read.
Now con artists will target a specific individual, using personal information found on that person's Facebook page and any of their friends' Facebook pages. If you suddenly receive an e-mail containing information that only you and your friends know about, suddenly that unsolicited e-mail sounds far more credible. Of course, the con artist is simply using your own information against you.
Even more insidious is that con artists will often contact you through Facebook and provide a link, which leads to an error message and an official-looking Facebook login page. When you retype your password and account into this bogus page, the con artist now has the information needed to hijack your Facebook account and masquerade as you.
Using your Facebook account, the con artist can now contact all of your friends with a frightening story of how you traveled overseas and lost your wallet and passport or some other sob story. Since your friends are receiving these messages directly from your Facebook account, they have no reason not to believe it isn't you. More than likely, they'll wire the necessary money to the overseas account that the con artist provides, and never see their money again.
Trust No One
The simplest way to protect yourself from online scams is to trust no one online, not even your own friends and relatives. If a con artist hijacks an e-mail or Facebook account, receiving a message from a trusted source is still no guarantee that you aren't being scammed.
If you do receive a message from a friend, asking for money, contact that person through another method, such as by phone. Try asking your "friend" a question that only your real friend could possibly know.
Besides not trusting anyone on the Internet, a second golden rule is to never send money to an unfamiliar recipient. Even if you recognize the bank's name, don't follow the instructions given to you in an e-mail message, but contact the bank by phone or in person. Circumventing the con artist's communication channel can identify a scam by asking a bank official to verify the information you received.
Con artists are never going to go away. With the Internet, con artists have just expanded their reach.
For further protection, keep yourself educated about the variety of online scams out there by visiting OnGuard Online.
To really protect yourself, never give money to anyone. That will protect you from con artists along with isolating you from most of your relatives, who can often be the biggest scam artists of them all.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the early days, before Wally became an Internationally renowned comedian, computer book writer, and generally cool guy, Wally Wang used to hang around The Byte Buyer dangling participles with Jack Dunning (http://www.computoredge.com/) and go to the gym to pump iron with Dan Gookin.
Wally is responsible for Microsoft Office 2007 for Dummies, Breaking Into Acting for Dummies, Beginning Programming All-in-One Reference for Dummies, and Mac All-in-One Reference for Dummies from www.dummies.com, as well as, Steal This Computer Book 4.0, Visual Basic Express 2005: Now Playing, and My New Mac from www.nostarch.com. He is also the co-author of Strategic Entrepreneurism from www.selectbooks.com.
Every Saturday morning from 9:00 am - 10:00 am in San Diego, you can hear Wally with fellow co-hosts Dane Henderson and Candace Lee, on the radio show CyberSports Today, which covers the video gaming industry on ESPN Radio 800 AM. Wally covers the military history side of the video game industry.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
RSS Feeds | Michael J. Ross
I am still learning about RSS Feeds. This excerpt from Mr. Ross' article is very informative. For the complete original article please visit: http://www.computoredge.com/
RSS on Your Web Site
“Share your site's updates quickly and painlessly.” by Michael J. Ross
Some people use the Internet simply for checking their e-mail messages or visiting one or two favorite Web sites. But for the majority of "Netizens" out there, visiting dozens of sites every day is the norm. Admittedly, some of these sites are visited not because they offer fresh content updated daily, but rather because they offer a frequently used service, such as online banking. But these utility sites are certainly outnumbered by "discretionary" sites that serve up the latest news from the worlds of finance, politics, sports and more.
For all of us who hop from one well-worn site to another, it can easily become tedious and time-consuming to have to visit each one of these sites, determine what content we have not seen before, and filter out content on topics that are of no interest to us. Most if not all of these news junkies must sometimes wonder, "If only my computer could do this for me." Well, it can, if those favorite sites of yours are packaging up their content in RSS format and not just as Web pages. More of them are doing so all the time, and in this article we will discuss some ways that you can do the same for your own site.
But first, for the benefit of those readers who may be unfamiliar with RSS, let's consider what it is and how it can be spotted in the wild. When it first emerged on the scene in 1999, and during the following few years, RSS was an acronym for a couple of different names. But nowadays, just about everyone has agreed that it stands for "Really Simple Syndication." In basic terms, it is a standard and highly structured format for publishing online content, designed to be read by computer programs.
Just as a newswire service will distribute its journalists' contributions as "syndication," any Web site can syndicate its own news. This stream of content is known as an RSS feed. As a result of using a standardized form of organizing the content, each RSS feed is thereby made easily readable by Web-based and desktop applications, known as RSS readers or aggregators. Google Reader and BlogBridge are examples of each category, respectively. All newsreaders, including these two, allow you to specify all the sites whose RSS feeds you would like to subscribe to, and how you can filter and combine the content to suit your needs.
To determine if any one of your favorite sites is offered in RSS format, go to the site's home page and look for the standard RSS feed icon. It usually is located at the bottom of the home page or up in the right-hand corner, oftentimes close to the entry fields for searching the site or logging in.
All of the major Web browsers—including Firefox, Opera, and Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7—will display the RSS icon in or near their address bars.
Major news sites, probably without exception, make their content available globally to all RSS users. You may be wondering if you could do the same, and what methods would be available for doing so. It depends upon the source of the content that you want to share with the world.
Borrowing and Blending
If you would like to leverage RSS feeds that already exist, you can use an application that mashes up the news feeds provided by other Web sites, thereby creating your own feed, which you can then syndicate from your own site. This approach offers several advantages: You do not have to invest the time and energy in developing brand-new content for your feed, and you also do not have to even learn the RSS format, for it to work in the RSS aggregators used by the people who subscribe to your feed. But this approach also has some drawbacks: You are completely dependent upon other sites for your feed's content, and there is the possibility that you might violate national or international copyright law if you inadvertently fail to credit sources appropriately.
Should you choose to take this approach, there are several available applications that you can use, including CaRP, Feed Mix, Feed Combiner, and Jawfish. The prices and capabilities of these applications vary, and if none of them meet your needs, some online research should turn up alternatives.
If you wish to have an outside news feed displayed directly on your Web site, and you do not mind limiting yourself to just a single feed (instead of a combination of feeds, as discussed above), then take a look at Feed to JavaScript (Feed2JS). As the name implies, it is a JavaScript-based tool that displays the chosen feed's content anywhere on your Web pages, updates itself automatically, and allows you to customize the appearance of the feed's headlines.
Handcrafted with Care
If you would like to create your own content for your RSS feed, then you have a number of options. You can manually create the RSS file, or you can have the computer do the work for you—either using a desktop program or a Web-based service.
Assuming that you choose to build your news feed by hand, you will first want to learn the RSS format. It is based upon Extensible Markup Language (XML), which is also the basis for HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the format used by Web pages. To see an example of this format, go to the RSS feed for Slashdot—a top technical news site—and view the source within your browser (to do so, go to the View menu of your browser). At first glance, this particular news feed may appear quite complex and intimidating—especially to anyone unfamiliar with XML or HTML. Fortunately, the minimum required elements in a valid RSS feed are far less than what you will see in that Slashdot file, or in the RSS files of other major Web sites.
If you create a feed file by hand, be sure to run it through an RSS validator, just to confirm that the file does not contain any formatting errors. One such online program is Feed Validator, which can handle feeds in RSS, Atom, and KML formats.
Delegate It to a Computer
But why go to the trouble of building an RSS file by hand, when a computer can do it all for you, faster and with less risk of introducing one or more errors in the XML code? As before, you have some options. If the content that you wish to syndicate is already located in files on your local computer, and you have the programming skills and the interest in automating the process of generating your RSS file, then you can always write a computer program to do that—just as I have done, using the programming language Perl, to create the RSS feed for my own site.
Most people, however, do not have the time or interest to automate the process themselves, and so for them it would be more appropriate to use a third-party program for creating the feed file. There are many such programs available, including RSS Editor, RSSeditor/Win, and Mozilla's RSS Editor. Speaking of Mozilla, its flagship Web browser, Firefox, can be turned into an RSS editor through the use of an add-on.
No matter which approach you want to take in creating an RSS feed for your own Web site, after you have uploaded the file to whatever remote server is hosting your site, be sure to include a link to it on your home page—otherwise the online world may never discover your personal news feed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael J. Ross is a Web developer, writer, and freelance editor. He creates Web sites that help entrepreneurs turn their ideas into profitable online businesses.
RSS on Your Web Site
“Share your site's updates quickly and painlessly.” by Michael J. Ross
Some people use the Internet simply for checking their e-mail messages or visiting one or two favorite Web sites. But for the majority of "Netizens" out there, visiting dozens of sites every day is the norm. Admittedly, some of these sites are visited not because they offer fresh content updated daily, but rather because they offer a frequently used service, such as online banking. But these utility sites are certainly outnumbered by "discretionary" sites that serve up the latest news from the worlds of finance, politics, sports and more.
For all of us who hop from one well-worn site to another, it can easily become tedious and time-consuming to have to visit each one of these sites, determine what content we have not seen before, and filter out content on topics that are of no interest to us. Most if not all of these news junkies must sometimes wonder, "If only my computer could do this for me." Well, it can, if those favorite sites of yours are packaging up their content in RSS format and not just as Web pages. More of them are doing so all the time, and in this article we will discuss some ways that you can do the same for your own site.
But first, for the benefit of those readers who may be unfamiliar with RSS, let's consider what it is and how it can be spotted in the wild. When it first emerged on the scene in 1999, and during the following few years, RSS was an acronym for a couple of different names. But nowadays, just about everyone has agreed that it stands for "Really Simple Syndication." In basic terms, it is a standard and highly structured format for publishing online content, designed to be read by computer programs.
Just as a newswire service will distribute its journalists' contributions as "syndication," any Web site can syndicate its own news. This stream of content is known as an RSS feed. As a result of using a standardized form of organizing the content, each RSS feed is thereby made easily readable by Web-based and desktop applications, known as RSS readers or aggregators. Google Reader and BlogBridge are examples of each category, respectively. All newsreaders, including these two, allow you to specify all the sites whose RSS feeds you would like to subscribe to, and how you can filter and combine the content to suit your needs.
To determine if any one of your favorite sites is offered in RSS format, go to the site's home page and look for the standard RSS feed icon. It usually is located at the bottom of the home page or up in the right-hand corner, oftentimes close to the entry fields for searching the site or logging in.
All of the major Web browsers—including Firefox, Opera, and Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7—will display the RSS icon in or near their address bars.
Major news sites, probably without exception, make their content available globally to all RSS users. You may be wondering if you could do the same, and what methods would be available for doing so. It depends upon the source of the content that you want to share with the world.
Borrowing and Blending
If you would like to leverage RSS feeds that already exist, you can use an application that mashes up the news feeds provided by other Web sites, thereby creating your own feed, which you can then syndicate from your own site. This approach offers several advantages: You do not have to invest the time and energy in developing brand-new content for your feed, and you also do not have to even learn the RSS format, for it to work in the RSS aggregators used by the people who subscribe to your feed. But this approach also has some drawbacks: You are completely dependent upon other sites for your feed's content, and there is the possibility that you might violate national or international copyright law if you inadvertently fail to credit sources appropriately.
Should you choose to take this approach, there are several available applications that you can use, including CaRP, Feed Mix, Feed Combiner, and Jawfish. The prices and capabilities of these applications vary, and if none of them meet your needs, some online research should turn up alternatives.
If you wish to have an outside news feed displayed directly on your Web site, and you do not mind limiting yourself to just a single feed (instead of a combination of feeds, as discussed above), then take a look at Feed to JavaScript (Feed2JS). As the name implies, it is a JavaScript-based tool that displays the chosen feed's content anywhere on your Web pages, updates itself automatically, and allows you to customize the appearance of the feed's headlines.
Handcrafted with Care
If you would like to create your own content for your RSS feed, then you have a number of options. You can manually create the RSS file, or you can have the computer do the work for you—either using a desktop program or a Web-based service.
Assuming that you choose to build your news feed by hand, you will first want to learn the RSS format. It is based upon Extensible Markup Language (XML), which is also the basis for HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the format used by Web pages. To see an example of this format, go to the RSS feed for Slashdot—a top technical news site—and view the source within your browser (to do so, go to the View menu of your browser). At first glance, this particular news feed may appear quite complex and intimidating—especially to anyone unfamiliar with XML or HTML. Fortunately, the minimum required elements in a valid RSS feed are far less than what you will see in that Slashdot file, or in the RSS files of other major Web sites.
If you create a feed file by hand, be sure to run it through an RSS validator, just to confirm that the file does not contain any formatting errors. One such online program is Feed Validator, which can handle feeds in RSS, Atom, and KML formats.
Delegate It to a Computer
But why go to the trouble of building an RSS file by hand, when a computer can do it all for you, faster and with less risk of introducing one or more errors in the XML code? As before, you have some options. If the content that you wish to syndicate is already located in files on your local computer, and you have the programming skills and the interest in automating the process of generating your RSS file, then you can always write a computer program to do that—just as I have done, using the programming language Perl, to create the RSS feed for my own site.
Most people, however, do not have the time or interest to automate the process themselves, and so for them it would be more appropriate to use a third-party program for creating the feed file. There are many such programs available, including RSS Editor, RSSeditor/Win, and Mozilla's RSS Editor. Speaking of Mozilla, its flagship Web browser, Firefox, can be turned into an RSS editor through the use of an add-on.
No matter which approach you want to take in creating an RSS feed for your own Web site, after you have uploaded the file to whatever remote server is hosting your site, be sure to include a link to it on your home page—otherwise the online world may never discover your personal news feed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael J. Ross is a Web developer, writer, and freelance editor. He creates Web sites that help entrepreneurs turn their ideas into profitable online businesses.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
