There have always been pro-union people and anti-union people, and you can usually guess who’s what depending on their individual caste. In this case, though it carries with it the same arguments, it will have to be decided first if an industry has emerged from nebulous existence and into a viable, thriving industry.

Do Bloggers Need To Unionize?

The burning question: Is there a need for a blogger’s labor union?

And your first thought, like mine, is quite likely, “huh?”

Labor unions are for steel workers and teachers, underpaid, over-skilled and overworked, who need collective bargaining power just to avoid a return to the 19th Century sweat-shop economy – that, and the ability to feed their kids.

(Note: I chose steel workers and teachers as examples only because the two make up about two-thirds of my own family. So that means, in general, I am pro-union, and by default, pro-American-made automobile.)

In the past two years, blogging, as a profession, has grown from geeky obscurity into a direct challenge to the journalism industry, even with bloggers’ reputation for being unruly, unvetted, grammatically and syntactically insufficient, and above all, a disorganized mess.

But that is sort of what (okay, completely what) made the medium so appealing. They answered to no one and therefore were accountable to no one; the individualist, populist, no-truth-barred approach both what propelled it and what held it back. Abused, sometimes inaccurate, sometimes out and out wrong, but for the most part, a development for the greater good, for freedom of speech, for information exchange, for the free market of ideas.

But organized? Isn’t that a kind of bloggers’ code sacrilege? Wouldn’t this be the same disorganized collective that railed against the idea of a Blogger’s Code of Conduct?

By Deepak Dutta (c) 2007
Do you know that most visitors leave a website within 10 seconds of landing on the home page? And they may never return to the same site. To keep your website visitors stay longer, you need to engage them. Follow these 10 simple rules to build a set of core loyal visitors who will return to your site frequently.

1. If you have a brick-and-mortar business and you want an online presence, don’t just hand over your printed brochure to the web developer for your site’s content.

2. Get good text, picture, and video content related to your products or services and organize them into categories for your website publication. How do you get content? You can ask your kids to write content for you. Today’s kids are information savvy and know how to do research on right topics. They can help take pictures and videos of your products and provide narrations. If you cannot leverage your kids talents and you don’t have time to develop content, buy them from online sources, like distributors of private label rights to articles and stock photographs. You need a small content set to launch your web site.

3. Ask your developer for some sample websites he has developed in the past and review them. If you find clutter, music, unprofessional graphics, etc. in those sites, run away from the developer. Tell your web developer to use basic search engine optimization techniques for your web site. Use a developer who uses content management systems (CMS) to develop websites. You or your kids and spouse will be able to maintain and add content regularly to a CMS without much effort.

4. You must have an About US page in your website that explains the expertise of your company and your unique selling proposition. Also, you should provide a phone number and an e-mail address for contact.

5. Publish a weekly tips section in your website. If you are in a business for a long time, you have a wealth of knowledge about your business, market, and technologies related to your business. Make it a habit of jotting down one tip every day. You will have plenty of tips for your weekly publication.

6. Don’t use guest books, testimonials etc. These are so Web 1.0 concepts. Use a forum. Let your customers interact among themselves. Develop a value network. You get into the insights of your customers’ minds by reading their posts and your visitors know your products and services by talking to each other. As a result, you will be able to provide improved products and services and ask for a premium price.

7. Promptly answer all your visitors’ e-mail. This is one thing you should never delay. Use your visitors comments, e-mail, and other form of communications to generate ideas for new articles and tips.

8. Tell your web developer to include an RSS feed on your site and publish filtered news related to the market you serve and emerging technologies in that market. Don’t use a weather report. Nobody comes to your site to check the weather.

9. Publish a frequently asked questions page related to your products and services. It helps save your visitors’ time and effort when they are looking for information on a particular topic related to your website.

10. Did you know that the average person must be exposed to an offer around seven times before they will make a purchase? Make your website an advertising platform for your most popular items. Advertise them throughout your site but don’t use any ‘in-your face advertising’ techniques. You can use side bars for this type of advertising with interesting anecdotes, pictures, etc. Be creative and use your imagination.

Your website is your publishing medium. It is not your online catalog. You want repeat visitors who spend their time at your site for valuable information. The possibility of visitors turning into a paying customers improves when they stick around your site longer.

About The Author
Dr. Deepak Dutta is the creator of SemanticBay.com – an interactive social network website based on user shared text and picture contents on any topics. His other website ClassifiedsForFree.com – is one of the oldest online classifieds sites.

“Wow. Another week, Another $500 product launch.”

“Where is it going to stop? $1,000? $1,500? $2,500?”

“How come I can’t find any Products where I
can ‘Plug In’ my Affiliate IDs, send traffic
and earn revenue?”

“I’m not a rocket scientist – I don’t know the
difference between FTP and CPR.”

“How can I get in on this 7 Dollar Craze without
developing my own product?”

“If that guys system is so good, why can’t I
try it for free? Is he too scared to let me try
it because he thinks I won’t buy it?”

Well, I’ve got the solution for you.

…

Before I let the cat out of the bag on this new product,
let me ask you a couple of questions

What would you be willing to pay for your very own
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What if we loaded hundreds of quality 7 Dollar Products
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Seriously.

Don’t believe me? Check it out for yourself below:

Thanks,

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NOTE: Richard is giving away over $60.00 in valuable bonuses (not the same garbage, but products he sells every day) – free just for signing up.)
Richard has informed me that he can’t keep giving these away… You should grab it now!

Click Here

Below is an article I found at SitePro I firmly believe anyone who’s serious about SEO internet marketing strategies should read. It gave me a better understanding of the whole “linking” thing.

Improved Search Engine Rank:Google Page Rank Misconceptions
Improved search engine rank is attainable through good search engine optimization, part of which is the maximizing of your Google Page Rank through intelligent linking with other web pages. In this first part of 2 on the subject of Google Page Rank, we will look at the argument for attaining high listings through a linking strategy.

Google Page Rank is a buzz term at the moment since many believe it to be more important to your search engine listing than search engine optimization. If we ignore for the moment the fact that Page Rank is, in itself, a form of SEO, then there are arguments for and against that belief.

Before we investigate these arguments, let’s understand some fundamentals of search engine listings. First, most search engines list web pages, not domains (websites). What that means is that every web page in a domain has to be relevant to a specific search term if it is to be listed.
Secondly, a search engine customer is the person who is using that engine to seek information. It is not an advertiser or the owner of a website. It is the user seeking information. The form of words that is used by that customer is called a ’search term’. This becomes a ‘keyword’ when applied to a webmaster trying to anticipate the form of words that a user will employ to search for their information.

A search engine works by analyzing the semantic content of a web page and determining the relative importance of the vocabulary used, taking into account the title tags, the heading tags and the first text it detects. It will also check out text related contextually to what it considers to be the main ‘keywords’ and then rank that page according to how relevant it calculates it to be for the main theme of the page.

It will then examine the number of other web pages that are linked to it, and regard that as a measure of how important, or relevant to the ‘keyword’, that the page is. The value of the links is regarded as peer approval of the content. All of these factors determine how high that page is listed for search terms that are similar contextually to the content of the page.
Without doubt, there are web pages that are listed high in the search engine indices that contain very little in the way of useful content on the keywords for which they are listed, and have virtually no contextual relevance to any search term. However, a careful investigation of these sites will reveal two things.

By Sasch Mayer (c) 2007
The past few years have seen a huge increase in the number of search engine optimisers preaching about the vital importance of W3C Compliance as part of any effective web promotion effort. But is compliant code really the ‘Magic SEO Potion’ so many promoters make it out to be?

For those of you not familiar with the term; a W3C compliant web site is one which adheres to the coding standards laid down by the World Wide Web Consortium, an organisation comprising of over 400 members including all the major search engines and global corporations such as AT&T, HP and Toshiba amongst many others. Headed by Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, the inventor of the internet as we know it today, the W3C has been working to provide a set of standards designed to keep the web’s continuing evolution on a single, coherent track since the Consortium’s inception in 1994.

Whilst the W3C has been a fact of life on the web since this time, general industry awareness of the benchmarks set down by the Consortium has taken some time to filter through to all quarters. Indeed, it is only within the past 24 to 36 months that the term W3C Compliance has emerged from general obscurity to become a major buzzword in the web design and SEO industries.

Although personally, I have been a staunch supporter of the Consortium’s standards for a long time, I cannot help but feel that their importance has been somewhat overplayed by a certain faction within the SEO sector, who are praising code compliance as a ‘cure-all’ for poor search engine performance.

Is standards compliance really the universal panacea it is commonly claimed to be these days?

Everybody loves eBay…so I thought I’d give you all direct access to ebay’s top listed money-making items:

You’ve been waiting for a long time and finally its here- an affiliate program that will blow all the others out of the water!

The already popular TheSecondTier affiliate training center has undergone a complete information and visual makeover. As an affiliate you’ll get more tools and they’ll be more powerful than ever. This translates directly into cha-ching!

Here are just a few things that make this affiliate program the most effective affiliate program out there:

• Huge commissions on both first AND second tier sales!!!
• Product tools for all types of affiliates.
• Full training center with access hours of video and audio training.
• Live affiliate manager blog where you can get your affiliate questions answered.
• Weekly live training calls (every monday morning!!!)

Russell Brunson’s unique philosophy that affiliates should be provided not only with powerful tools but the knowledge to use them has pushed TheSecondTier to the top of competing programs. Russell has taken affiliate training to a whole new level.

He understands that he can have hundreds of affiliates that don’t know what they are doing and get decent sales OR he can give them the knowledge and tools they need to create explosive amounts of money AND share with them a very generous portion of the profits from each sale they generate!

Here are just a few of the things that you’ll learn inside of TheSecondTier:

• How to choose the right product for you to promote – One of the biggest mistakes that almost all affiliates make when they first start out, is that they try to promote too many things at once. This video will show you exactly how to choose the right one or two products that will make you the most money.

• How to set up an “Affiliate Squeeze” page – Less then 2% of all affiliates use this powerful technique, but after you implement it into your affiliate promotions, you will see your commissions grow exponentially.

• How to drive targeted traffic to your “Affiliate Squeeze” pages for FREE – Once you learn this simple (and free) concept on how to drive traffic to your “Affiliate Squeeze” pages, you will be able to start literally writing your own paychecks.

• How to build an huge targeted opt-in mailing list – You will learn how easy it is to build an opt-in list, and use that to exponentially increase your affiliate commissions EVERY week!

• How to strategically place “Affiliate Land Mines” and watch your profits EXPLODE! – Follow this one simple strategy and you will start getting checks in the mail every month!

• How to dominate your Pay Per Click ad campaigns – It’s very powerful if you learn how to do it right. This video will walk you through the process to get high converting PPC ads!

• How to use teleseminars to close ten times the clients in 1/2 the time – One of the secrets to selling a lot of products as an affiliate quickly is doing teleseminars. I was nervous when I did my first few, but now I can’t stop because every time I do one, my affiliate checks from that day are anywhere from $2,000 – $15,000 (and it’s a lot easier then you’d think).

• How to broker JV deals and make a fortune on your 2nd tier – Many of our affiliates earn thousands of dollars each month from the efforts of others. These videos will show you exactly how they find super affiliates to add to their second tier.

• How to protect your commissions from thieves while increasing your conversions – One of the number one concerns that affiliates have are people stealing their commissions. You will learn the techniques that will protect your links and also guarantee that even the worst thieves will gladly give you their commissions instead of keeping it for themselves.

• and a whole lot more….

Russell does not discriminate against less experienced affiliates. In fact, he’s already taken countless numbers of people from knowing 0 to being listed among his top affiliates. It is so effective that some people actually pay to sell products for him!

The products Russell puts out are of top quality and always in demand. In fact, people call his office months before products are ready just begging to know when they can get their hands on them. Combine this with all the promotional and training tools Russell provides and you’re already half way to making serious affiliate commissions.

The other half will be done when you take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!

Resource Box:
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TheSecondTier is a free affiliate training center for those interested in learning how to make money online as an affiliate marketer. You can get your free account today by registering at:

http://infopage.thesecondtier.com/thesecondtier
—————————————————————–

I just came across what I consider to be one of the best tutorials on getting traffic to your online business…it’s FREE and in video format so you don’t strain your eyes reading tiny words.

Just press “play” and when you’re done click on the comments link below and tell me what you think.

Also, don’t forget to check out the recent posts, links, and archives you see to the right to find what you need to make your online business successful.

“Each day at StepForth Placement we view dozens of websites that request a SEO Review and a vast majority of these sites have fundamental usability problems. Often times neglecting this important element of a website can lead online visitors to become lost, frustrated and/or confused. All it takes for a visitor to decide to stay, explore or leave a site is 0.4 of a second. Attracting visitors to your website is a formidable challenge; it is yet another to build a fast connection with them and keep them there. With this in mind, here are some simple measures that can be taken to remedy these mistakes and help promote your online conversions.

Having great search engine placements is one thing but to create a usable website environment is just as important. What good can come from ‘being found’ if users quickly exit your site? A solid search engine friendly and usable website should be your answer to both of these major components for your online success.”

Yahoo! Search Marketing – On Target – November 2006 – What’s News: “Yahoo! poll shows three out of four holiday shoppers will buy gifts online, and most are likely to purchase from small businesses

Three out of four (76 percent) holiday shoppers said they plan to shop for holiday gifts online, and a similar number, 75 percent, said they are likely to purchase gifts online from small businesses, according to a new survey commissioned by Yahoo! Small Business and conducted in October by Harris Interactive®. Shoppers expressed strong support for e-commerce with small businesses that offer a secure payment system, easy customer checkout and free shipping.

Nearly a third of holiday shoppers (30 percent) said that they would do half or more of their holiday shopping online, and nearly two thirds (63 percent) said online specialty, ‘niche,’ or boutique retailers are one of the ‘best places’ to shop for unusual or hard-to-find gifts.”