Figure Out What Works For You And Then Stick To It - Entrepreneu. Jonathan Beebe recently contacted me asking to submit a guest article. Normally I say no because it is tough to find good writers with good content, but Jonathan did a few things right that convinced me to give him a shot. His email was short, to the point and he came across as a nice guy. He explained how he knew me as a long time blog reader, and here’s the most important bit – stated that he makes a living online, enough to support himself and his family of four. Whenever I hear someone makes a living from the Internet and it’s enough to support an entire family, I immediately get curious. Jonathan showed me samples of his writing, which demonstrated he can put words together in an interesting way, so I asked if he would consider telling us his full story about how he became another one of the few who live the Internet lifestyle.
This is his story… Is It Just Plain Luck? In the Beginning… Fast forward two years… What DIDN’T Work For Me The Online Grunt Work Finding My Place Jonathan Beebe. SEO With Google Webmaster Tools - Part 1: Setting Up a Site. Many people are afraid of Google's seemingly "big brother" approach to the web. Google appears to keep digging their hands further and further into our lives, collecting data and using in ways that some may not trust as being completely benevolent. While I have some concerns about Google's approach to collecting data from our websites, I'm also a big fan some of the tools Google offers web developers and site managers. Google Webmaster Tools is one of the tools that I really like and which can be very helpful to site owners and webmasters to figure out what problems their site has, fix potential errors, and provide Google some feedback on how our sites should be treated. For the most part, the information provided to webmasters through Webmaster Tools is stuff that Google already knows.
They collect this data whenever they crawl your website. Webmaster Tools just provides a way for us to see our website through Google-tinted glasses. Setting Up a Site Verify Ownership Dashboard. SEO With Google Webmaster Tools - Part 2: Site Configuration. In Part 1 of this series I introduced Google webmaster tools and walked you through adding websites. Now that you have your site(s) in the system, you'll need to configure your site so you get the most out of the data provided through the Webmaster Tools interface. Site Configuration Site configuration allows you to review and adjust your basic configuration settings.
You don't have a lot of leeway here but some of the very basics are covered which allow you to adjust how Google handles your site. Webmaster Tools gives you four primary ways to configure your website: Sitemaps If you have an .xml sitemap for your website you can submit that to Google through Webmaster Tools. Each time your site changes, with new pages being added or removed, you should re-create your site map and resubmit it to Google. If you're showing a disproportionate number of URLs not being index from those submitted, this may represent a problem with your site map or the architecture of your site. Crawler Access. SEO With Google Webmaster Tools - Part 3: Your Site on the Web. OK, so you've got your site set-up and configured in Google Webmaster tools. Now it's time to start looking at the data. Your Site on the Web Google Webmaster Tools allows you to view some basic stats and data for your site.
It's not nearly as robust as Google Analytics--not even close--but it does provide some quick and easy data that you can use to assess your site and correct problem areas. Top Search Queries This section of Google Webmaster Tools gives you information on what keywords people are using to find your site. Just because a keyword query isn't listed here doesn't mean it is not a good keyword to go after. Onto the data... At the top you can filter the results by image, mobile, smartphone and web search results. You can also filter results by country.
Finally, you can filter the results by date range. At the top you can see a graph of your site impressions and clickthroughs for the selected period of time along with the totals. Just below that are four columns of data. 26 Considerations Before You Whip Out A Website | SmallBizResour. 5 Internet Marketing Mistakes That Cripple Profits | SmallBizRes. Online Database Application Platform.
3 Audacity Tips To Enhance Any Recorded Interview. Regardless what you intend to do with the interview, one thing that’s for certain is that you want to develop a reputation as a professional interviewer that produces high-quality, interesting conversations with fascinating people. Only part of the recipe for this is developing interesting and thoughtful questions for your interviewee to answer, but the other significant part of the equation is how well you’ve edited the audio interview into a high-quality, professional show.
Many avid audio enthusiasts may find some of the edits below somewhat simple, but for the blogger or podcaster with little audio editing experience, these tips are critical to know. 3 Tips To Enhance Your Interview Audio With Audacity I use the Audacity audio recording software to record and edit all of my interviews. The beauty of Audacity is that you have the capability to “fix” those flaws. Before we start doctoring the audio file with the Audacity audio recording software, let me first introduce the patient. Welcome. Formstack: Easy Web Forms With Sophisticated Options. I was recently asked to add a couple of forms to a client’s website.
Over the years, my company has built a number of solutions for creating forms, notifying clients, and storing the collected data, but they all take some manual setup, and the client wanted the forms in a hurry. So I figured that I would try Formstack, based on Darrell’s recommendation from a few months ago. Since Darrell wrote about this product, its name has changed from Formspring to differentiate itself from Formspring.me, a social network project from the same company. But as he described, it’s very easy to set up forms, and they can be embedded in existing websites by copying the HTML code that Formstack creates. And with a little more knowledge of HTML, one can do some surprisingly complex manipulation of those forms, like pre-populating fields, and passing field data from one form to another.
Of course, creating forms is just the beginning of the data collection process. Do you use Formstack? Five Best Personal Web Hosts. @madisomi: Rackspace is the best of the best, but the service comes at a price. I have worked with Rackspace for the past couple years while managing several Linux servers and a Windows Server (now cancellled...). 1. Rackspace customer is excellent. These guys spend big money to build a highly experience technical support team. They will help you with anything you need and, if it's out of scope, they'll bill you hourly. 2. Reliability is essentially 100%... They had a couple problems last year, one of which such down the entire Dallas Fort Worth server farm. OK, that was a freak accident and it only serves to underscore one thing - nothing is "bomb proof". 3.
You pay, I would say, at least 30% more for dedicated servers at Rackspace than, for example, Wiredtree.com. Also, Rackspace has an excellent control panel for managing servers, DNS, ticket history, firewalls, back-ups, IDS, etc. 4. Big companies, because they can afford it. Keep this in mind: Reader (360)
10 More Websites To Show You The Hottest Twitter Topics Now. A couple of days ago, we showed you how to find the most popular stories linked on Twitter, the tweets with the most favourites, as well as how to find listings and popular music on Twitter. Today, we’re going to continue with a few more ways to dig deeper into the wealth of information on Twitter, with location-based searching, finding the hottest Twitter topics like lists and a few other goodies. 1 – Location Based GeoMeme There are a few location-based sites that show you what topics are popular in a specific area.
GeoMeme takes a novel approach by pitting two sentiments or topics against each other, such as Love and Hate, and sees which one is mentioned more on Twitter in any given area. You can choose to include updates found on MySpace, Buzz and Facebook as well if you like. GeoChirp GeoChirp is a much more straightforward but feature rich location-based website. TwitDir TwitDir is a great resource if you simply want to find other Tweeters in a specific city or area. 2 – Twitter Lists.
6 Powerful Life Hacks for Bloggers. Reader.