Archive for category Internet
Contact Forms or Emails?
Last time I checked there was an estimate of 30 billion web pages on the Internet. It sounds quite impressive and the number is growing. The number of websites and blogs that are getting spammed is also growing, so webmasters are finding ways to combat spam. It has been stated that one of the reasons that webmasters are receiving spam is because they place their email address on their website. The problem is that spammers are crawling webpages in order to obtain any email address they can find, so that later they can send spam to that email. Often email addresses are also being sold to other spammers. One of the ways to protect yourself from your email being harvested like that is to implement a contact form on your website. This way people will still be able to contact you, but it will drastically reduce the amount of spam you are receiving. Generally, it is a good rule not to give away your email address in any public place. Sooner or later, spammers are going to find such email address and it is easier to prevent spam, then to fight with it. That is why using contact forms on websites is an excellent idea.
Get Rich Scams
Many Internet users try to make some money online. While there are many ways to make money online, it is important to learn to avoid so-called “get rich” scams. There are a lot of places over the Internet where you can find promises of making $200 per hour doing very easy tasks: filling out surveys, data entry, participating in multi-level marketing etc. My advice is, do not believe such claims. If they were true, everyone would quit their jobs and start earning money like that. Rather focus your efforts on programs will offer a steady way to earn money. ‘Get rich’ scams prey on our greed so watch out for them and have realistic expectations. In the beginning it might be difficult for you to discern which making money online techniques are genuine or not. However, with the time passing by and with your growing experience, you will have more expertise to be able to say which money making offers are a scam. There are opportunities on the Internet that will allow you to make fast and easy money, but they might not last very long. As a result, they not bring you a lot of money at all. Also be careful not to give your credit card details to anybody on the Internet. Even if for some reason you will not get paid for the job you did, it will only result in wasted time, but not money.
How To Recognize a Scam
Ever since I started looking on the Internet for money making opportunities, I knew that I had to be very careful when it comes to various programs because in reality they could be scams. However, there are websites like scam.com that could be helpful. I am sure that there are a lot more sites of this type that deal with the topic of scams, and if you are looking for money making opportunities, you might benefit from such sites.
The first impression when one visits this site is generally very positive. There are a lot of categories that you can browse through. Some of them might not be that interesting to bloggers, but many will be useful, for example, Internet Scams or Work at Home Scams. This webpage is very easy to navigate. The most efficient way to look for things is to use their search option in the top right corner of the screen. You may wish, for example, to search for opinions about programs like MyLot. This will result in many posts on the topic. Since the website contains a lot of unbiased opinions posted by real people, you can generally trust the messages you will be reading. When it comes to MyLot, the program according to the majority of people writing on the subject is not a scam, although it cannot also be treated as a reliable way to make money. The idea behind MyLot is that a person is paid for posting on a forum, and gets paid approximately one cent for a post.
What I like about websites that deal with scams is that you are going to find opinions based on true experience. Such websites are as real as the people who post on it, and this is why such websites are useful.
Maintaining your Blog
This time I want to give some practical advice about updating your blog regularly. It is easy to start a blog; however, it is a lot harder to update it on a regular basis. One of the main challenges is to find time to write a blog entry a few times per week. That is because it requires you to have a regular lifestyle. However, many bloggers agree that there is an easy way to solve this challenge. The solution is to write a few blog entries in advance. You can write them in Word or any other text editor, and later copy/paste them to your blog without any problems. If you write your blog entries like that, you have to watch out that your blog entry will not be outdated when you post it. If your blog offers general type of advice, it will not be a problem, as entries will probably not get outdated very fast. On the other hand, this idea is quite useless when you think about news blogs, which need fresh content. So as I said, it is important to know whether the post you are going to write is going to get outdated soon. Anyway, if you want your blog to be popular, but you do not have time to write a few blog entries per week or per month, then you should probably re-evaluate whether you want to be blogging at all. Of course, you can still be blogging from time to time if the visitors of your blog are just your closest friends.
Bounce Rate
Bloggers strive for more visitors, but they should also keep in mind how long visitors stay on the site, how many pages they visit etc. One of the ways to measure such performance is to determine the bounce rate. Bounce rate is in a sense a measure how interesting other pages of your site are to your visitors. A bounce is when a visitor lands on one page of your site, but does not visit other pages on your site. If you want to find out your bounce rate, you might want to use Google Analytics, as it displays your bounce rate, along with an average time spent on your website. But how important is bounce rate? Well first of all, it provides certain information that you can take advantage of and maybe make some appropriate changes to your website. On the other hand, I would not worry too much about it, because blogs often tend to have a quite high bounce rate due to the fact that at least a few newest posts are displayed on the main page. On the other hand, if you are happy as a blogger, and if you are happy with what you do, you will not worry if many people are reading your posts. If you write for a few people only, like your family members or friends, your bounce rate will not be as important to you. At least, it should not be as important as for people who try to have the most popular blog out there.
Plagiarism
A lot of bloggers are worried about others stealing their posts, and posting them on some other blogs without permission or any kind of acknowledgment who is the real author of the post. One of the reasons that some people keep doing such things is that it is a lot easier to have rich content on your blog just by copy/pasting, rather than writing posts yourself. Many people think that nobody will notice that the content was taken from another website, and they feel pretty safe doing so on a regular basis.
Unfortunately for them, there are tools to look for plagiaristic content and one of such tools is copyscape.com. It is a website that basically searches the Internet for copies of your website/blog entries and lists the results for you to analyze. It is a free service and a lot of websites like, for example, getafreelancer.com take advantage out of it to check if submitted articles are original. Keep in mind that if somebody copies your blog entry to a website that is not indexed by Google, copyscape.com might not detect it. On the other hand, people will not be able to find such a website easily anyway. If you are seriously interested in protecting your website, you might want to put a “Page Protected by Copyscape Do Not Copy” widget on your blog. Other bloggers did so, and while it will not prevent anyone from copying content from your blog, it will let them know that you know how to check for duplicate content.
Multiple Streams Of Income
Many people are looking for ways to make some extra money. In such a case it is definitely a good idea to have multiple streams of income. That is why I thought that I should give you some ideas how to achieve that goal. Here is a list of common ways webmasters earn money:
• Selling ad space. This is a good idea for larger websites with many visitors. You will probably not earn a lot if you have very few visitors. That is why this may only be an option for more popular websites.
• Product sales. This depends how good you are at selling and marketing. You will need to convince your visitors that the products you sell are worth buying. If you put some work into SEO, then those Internet users who search for some products using search engines might stumble on your website.
• Pay-Per-Click Ads. If you integrate your ads in a clever way, this will maximize your income. It is probably the most popular way to get extra cash. Of course, you may need to blend in the ads properly and have a lot of traffic to earn a lot of money.
• Affiliate programs. Many people are making a lot of money with affiliate programs. Of course, how much you earn will depend on your marketing skills.
The order I listed different ways to earn money is random, and what will be the main source of your income depends on your abilities, interests, and probably the niche of your blog.
Top Commentators Plug-in
There are many interesting plug-ins that blogs have installed these days. I like visiting blogs that implement the top commentators plug-in on their site, as this way I have the opportunity to be listed on a blogs homepage by commenting a lot on it. This is a feature that can encourage readers to engage into an active discussion on a blog, and reward them by giving them SEO benefits and possibly traffic. I have to admit that as a regular commentator myself when I am deciding which blog to visit and comment on, I am much more prone to choose a blog that will allow me to appear as a top commentator. One of the reasons that is the case is that this way I can feel like a contributor. Commenting on blogs is definitely something that a lot of bloggers might be interested in doing, not only for fun, but also to acquire some backlinks. A lot of people probably do not care whether they appear as top commentators, but it has its benefits. Many people prefer not to leave any comments; however, leaving comments on a blog that you have just visited can give you something that you need: popularity, backlinks, and even friends. I encourage each one of you to leave a comment on various blogs from time to time. This is also an excellent way to get in touch with other bloggers, and get involved in various events in the blogosphere.
Learn from Magazines
There are some bloggers who believe that reading and actively analyzing a magazine might be of great help to improve the overall quality of a blog. It is an interesting idea so I wanted to share my thoughts about it. The idea basically comes from the fact that a blog in many ways resembles a magazine. You can get a lot of ideas by reviewing a magazine:
• Ideas for marketing. How is the magazine advertising?
• Ideas for blog design. Magazines also have to decide how each page is going to look like.
• Ideas for a post. Posts are similar to articles in a magazine. What kind of articles does the magazine have?
• Writing style tips. You can simply learn by reading.
• Learn about your niche. Read magazines which are on the same topic as your blog.
As you see, there are many ideas you can get by reading a magazine. Of course, you might want to apply the same principle to other successful blogs, and learn from them as well. Many of us do it without even realizing it. Anyway, reading high quality magazines, especially those that are in the same niche as your website, can greatly enhance the quality of your blog.
Internet Scams
The issue of Internet scams is very complex, and if you want to protect yourself from them, then you also need to be well informed. Even though the type of scams I want to write about are not directly related to blogging, every Internet user is going to encounter at least some of them during his life. I also think that any person who wants to be a webmaster should really be well informed about such issues – it will save you a lot of money and time. This time I would like to discuss a so called “Second Chance Offer” scam that people fall for every year.
Let us assume that you are visiting a popular online auctions website like eBay, and you bid on an expensive item that you really want to have. Then you notice that the item was not sold because it did not meet the reserve price. Later, you are contacted about a “second chance offer” from the seller, who agrees to sell you the item for the price you were willing to pay. The catch is that he asks for a payment/deposit before he sends the item, and guess what? He never sends the item. There are 2 explanations for this:
- Since you bought the item outside of eBay or any other auction site, you are not protected by the auction site at all. The seller will not receive a negative feedback, and there is probably little you can do.
- Since you bought the item outside of the auction site, there is a big probability that the person who received the money is not even the real seller! He might have used a similar email address as the real seller or some other means to fool you.
Some people look for really attractive offers on eBay, and later plan to resell them for a higher price. If you are considering earning some additional money this way, beware of all of the scammers. On the other hand, if you buy an item from a reputable seller you are being protected pretty well, so don’t start panicking.