Understanding the Difference between Template Logo Designs and Custom Logo Designs

If you are the owner, operator or manager of a business enterprise it is important that you pay close attention to branding issues and the selection of a logo for your venture. Through this article you are provided an overview with some factors that you need to take into consideration when you are in the market for a logo.

Through this article you are provided with an examination of the differences between template logo designs and custom logo designs. Armed with this information you will be in the best position to ensure that you take the most appropriate course when it comes to selecting a logo design for your business.

The Importance of Your Logo

When all is said and done it is your logo that will be the first image that a typical consumer will have of your business and of its products and services. In other words, potential clients or customers will develop the all important first impression of your business based on the design and appearance of your logo.

For this very reason it absolutely is vital that no matter which course you take – a template or custom design – for your logo that the end result is attractive, professional and functional. Because of this fact, it is crucial that you do choose the most appropriate course of logo design to make sure that your needs, goals and objectives appropriately are met through your logo.

A Look at Template Logo Designs

Perhaps the most important benefit associated with template logo designs is that you can obtain this type of logo design for a fairly low amount of money. In other words, you do not have to spend a great deal of money obtaining a logo template in the first instance.

Even though you might save money over the long term, you do need to keep in mind that a cheap template logo can actually reduce your revenues over the long term. The reality is that because you really cannot get exactly what you need and require in the way of a logo for your business through a template, you won't be able to connect with consumers as effectively as you can do with a custom designed logo. Therefore, in the end, over the long term, you will not be able to attract as much business with a template logo as you will be able to do with a custom made piece.

A Look at Custom Logo Designs

If you really are serious about developing the most powerful brand identity and presence for your business you definitely need to consider seriously obtaining a custom logo design. Indeed, you need to take a close look at engaging the professional services of a qualified, experienced and effective logo design firm.

Yes, you will spend at least a bit more money purchasing a custom made logo at the outset. However, because you will be obtaining a logo that specifically is suited to your business and its products or services, you will have the most idyllic logo to promote your venture and to ensure that you connect directly and affirmatively with prospective customers or clients.

There are other benefits associated with obtaining a custom designed logo from a professional firm. These include:

• a guarantee of the final product
• comprehensive customer service and technical support
• revisions provides at no additional cost
• innovative and creative logo and branding assistance

Are You Really Saving Money by Going the Template Route?

As has been discussed previously, many people assume that you will be able to save money through going the template route when it comes to your logo design needs. You may be able to save some money on the fee you pay initially; but, again, over the long haul you won't have the most effective log. You won't have the branding you need to maximize your revenue over time.

Conclusion

In the end you absolutely cannot underestimate the value of your logo. Therefore, before you elect to go the template route in order to theoretically save some money on the initial design fee, you must closely analyze the significant and lasting benefits that you will be able to realize for your business enterprise through making the wise decision to obtain a custom designed logo.

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Why don’t design agencies charge $10?

Whether you are a small business owner or a large enterprise, in any of the case, you need to have a design agency or a set of firms to handle the different marketing and branding tools of your business. However, if your requirement is to properly advertise your business along with other promotional activities, you got to have a professional design/ad agency who would take care of your requirements, but at a very high price. Their minimum price for a logo design only would be a lot more than a freelance logo designer. So the question is why these design agencies charge so much for each of their services?

This is not a very complex question but you need to understand the difference between big design agencies, logo design companies and freelancers. See you have to grasp the fact, the bigger your business is, the bigger agency or a number of agencies it would require to manage its marketing and branding. Typically, design agencies take charge of everything from designing your logo, website, stationery, ad campaigns and negotiate different print, TV, radio and online media rates for you. This can’t be done by a mid-sized design company or if they do offer all the services, they might not end up with satisfying your needs in the best possible manner. Freelancers, on the other hand, are mostly specialized in one or few areas. They can either design your logo, stationery, website or they can handle and design your advertising campaigns. They can’t do all and if they claim they can, I doubt the quality of it.

Now, how much should you, as a business owner spend in designing a logo from either of the three? Remember! Design agencies would always charge your more than others because they possess broader skill sets under one roof. You pay those more to avoid fatigue, you would have to face if you were handling a combination of different firms that look after different areas of marketing, advertising and branding.

Moreover design agencies are always tagged with high price for a logo because they are:

• Experienced
• Professional
• Accountable
• Renowned and reliable
• Capable of handling large number of accounts
• Loaded with professional logo designers and high quality logo concepts
• Equipped with broader skill set
• Secure to work with
• Frequently available for face to face meetings

Of course if design agencies charge you more, there has to have the above mentioned reasons behind it. They must have a reputable name in the design industry, gained through years of experience and professionalism. They must have shown reliability to their clients and have produced high quality logo designs which later on got successful and converted into big brands with remarkable identity. Unlike freelance designers, they occupy a physical workplace to accommodate a bunch of creative designers or even more to come up with the best logo concepts for their clients. The software they use costs them thousands of dollars, the computers, the stationery etc.

However, if you are a small business owner, my suggestion would be to hire an online logo design company, who specializes in custom logo designs. You will find so many options of logo design companies for your logo that you have to be very critical in evaluating them and finalizing the best one for your logo project. These logo design companies offer different packages to choose from according to your budget and requirements. They are similar to design agencies, but they are specialized in fewer services, mostly in logo, stationery and website designs.

To end it all, I would say if you are a bigger company with huge budgets set for different marketing and branding activities, go for an agency because an agency is capable of handling all your requirements under one single roof. However, if you are a small business and need to have a logo to start off with, the best option to go with is an online logo design company, who would provide you with different package options to choose from. But in any case, you need to evaluate the quality of their work by checking out their design galleries and references, because sometimes even paying thousands of dollars don’t get you satisfying results.

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OLX Free Classifieds

OLX is a classifieds website where users can advertise almost anything they wanted to sell, buy or need for free. It is new for me because I just knew the existence of this website and services eventhough it has been alive since 2006. Established in March 2006, the service has expanded to 87 countries including Austria, Brazil, Grenada, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nicaragua, Peru, and served in 37 languages. Links for every local homepages are available at the footer of every pages. OLX has joined social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious to integrate the advertising services with social networking.

OLX offers focused advertising to countries, states, cities, or zipcodes. By registering with olx.com, users can also use the same login and password for other country localized homepages. This will allow users to advertise on other countries as well. Classified ads are grouped nicely into categories and subcategories for better browsing. Users can also search for items or services using the search options. When posting a classified, an advertiser can specify the ads categories and targetted location to states, cities, or zipcodes. When users view a classified, they have the options to reply the listing, add comments, or add to favorite. Featured listing is also available where classifieds are displayed by impressions on any pages other than in their categories. Featured listing is a paid service but can attract more people to view the ads.

The website offers customization for every ads with Ajax “WYSIWYG” rich-text editor allowing font customization and let users to add images in every listings. It is only up to the creativity of the advertisers to customize and make the ads unique to attract viewers. There are so many ads being posted daily giving high competition for every ads. There is also a mobile version of the website for easier browsing using phones or PDAs which can be accessed at http://m.olx.com/. For more information, visit the homepage at http://www.olx.com/ or the news release at http://olx-newsrelease.com/.

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You think your logo is perfect, you are wrong!

Usually we find logo designing as a subjective matter; we all have different choices for color, design, style etc. That is why business owners generally prefer the logo which is more close to his personal design taste. There is nothing wrong with this; in fact, I believe that following your own design taste would represent the mood, people, and culture of the company to some extent. However, a business owner should also consider certain guidelines and standards that every logo design should follow. Don’t let your logo to fall in the category of bad designs. Consider redesign if you think your logo doesn’t comply with these guidelines.




Does it describe about you?

Is your logo misinterpreting? Many companies struggle in building a unique brand identity with a weak or vague logo that portrays a different image than what the company is actually about. Even a slogan line, a suggestive image, or color element does not help much. Instead, keep your logo simple. Don’t overcomplicate it with too many design elements that nobody can understand what the actual message is.

Is it recognizable?

Does your logo have enough simplicity and creativity that it could be remembered and recognized at a glance? While selecting a logo, business owners usually prefer a logo with more colors and graphics, but it is better if they go with a simple design. In fact, the simpler is your logo the more memorable it will be.

Does it still look good in black and white?

Does your logo have an ability to grab the viewer’s attention even in black and white? With other task of defining colors, fonts and design, you should also focus on the black and white version of your logo. If your logo only looks good in full color, you may have a problem when situation arise where it can only be represented in black and white, for example, when you need to fax a letterhead to the client.

Can you resize it?

Ask yourself another question, can you resize your logo for every medium? If not, your marketing collaterals would be of no use from marketing point of view. The logo should be easily scalable in almost all sizes because this identity of your brand usually revolves in the form of visiting cards, letterheads, envelops etc.

Is it a unique emblem?

The most appealing thing about a logo is its uniqueness. Be sure that your logo should not be a copy of any popular brand identity; otherwise you’ll be in trouble with copyright infringements and law suits. This is usually happened because of the laziness and the lack of creative thoughts of a logo designer. So, check before final delivery, whether it’s a unique emblem or does it more look like any other logo.

Are fonts good?

Using the right font is as important as working with other design elements. Avoid using those fonts that can’t reflect the actual business purpose. Plenty of logos could be found with good designs and styles, but all efforts are wasted due to not choosing the right fonts. Have a look at these real examples:



Ferrari font doesn’t portray it as a racing car company and Nikon doesn’t look like an imaging company. Actual message could be portrayed if the right fonts were used.

So, what do you think about your logo? Is it perfect? If any attribute is missing, an effective redesign would be the right thing you are going to do. Otherwise, it will be difficult for you to rightly position your brand in the market.

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Reporter vs Expert - Why Most Bloggers Are Stuck Reporting

There are basically two types of bloggers in the world - reporters and experts - and some people perform both roles (usually the experts, it's hard for reporters to become experts, but it's easy for experts to report).

If you have ever taken an Internet marketing course or attended a seminar specifically for beginners, you have probably heard about the two different methodologies. Whenever the business model is based on content, and if you blog for money then the model is based on content, people are taught to either start as reporters, or if possible step up as experts.

I'll be frank; you want to be the expert.

Reporters leverage the content of the experts and in most cases people start off as reporters because they haven't established expertise. Experts enjoy the perks of preeminence, higher conversion rates because of perceived value, it's easier to get publicity, people are more likely to seek you out rather than you having to seek others out, joint ventures come easier, etc� experts in most cases simply make more money and attract more attention.

Most Bloggers Are Reporters

The thing with expertise is that it requires something - experience. No person becomes an expert without doing things and learning. Bloggers usually start out without expertise and as a result begin their blogging journey by talking about everything going on in their niche (reporting) and by interviewing and talking about other experts (reporting again).

There's nothing wrong with reporting of course and for many people it's a necessity at first until you build up some expertise. Unfortunately the ratios are pretty skewed when it comes to reporters and experts - there are a lot more reporters than there are experts, hence reporters tend to struggle to gain attention and when they do, they often just enhance the reputation of the expert they are reporting on.

Don't Replicate Your Teacher

If you have ever spent some time browsing products in the learn Internet marketing niche you will notice a pattern. Many people first study Internet marketing from a �guru� (for lack of a better term). The guru teaches how he or she is able to make money online, and very often the view that the student gleams is that in order to make money online you have to teach others how to make money online.

The end result of this process is a huge army of amateurs attempting to replicate what their teacher does in the same industry - the Internet marketing industry - not realizing that without expert status based on a proven record and all the perks that come with it, it's next to impossible to succeed.

Even people, who enjoy marginal success, say for example growing an email list of 1,000 people, then go out and launch a product about how to grow an email list of 1,000 people. Now I have no problems with that, I think it's fine to teach beginners and leverage whatever achievements you have, the problem is that people gravitate to the same niche - Internet marketing - and rarely have any key points of differentiation.

How many products out there do you know of that all claim to teach the same things - email marketing, SEO, pay per click, affiliate marketing, and all the sub-niches that fall under the category of Internet marketing. It's a saturated market, yet when you see your teachers and other gurus making money teaching others how to make money (and let's face it - making money as a subject is one of the most compelling) - your natural inclination is to follow in their footsteps.

If the key is to become an expert and you haven't spent the last 5-10 years making money online, I suggest you look for another niche to establish expertise in.

Report on Your Process, Not Others

The secret to progress from reporter to expert is not to focus on other experts and instead report on your own journey. When you are learning how to do something and implementing things day by day, or studying other people's work, you need to take your process and what you do as a result of what you learn, and use it as content for your blog.

It's okay to talk about experts when you learn something from them, but always relate it to what you are doing. If you learn a technique from an expert it's fine to state you learned it from them (and affiliate link to their product too!) but you should then take that technique, apply it to what you are doing and then report back YOUR results, not there's. Frame things using your opinion - your stories - and don't regurgitate what the expert said. The key is differentiation and personality, not replication.

Expertise comes from doing things most people don't do and then talking about it. If you do this often enough you wake up one day as an expert, possibly without even realizing how it happened, simply because you were so good at reporting what you did.

You Are Already An Expert

Most people fail to become experts (or perceived as experts) because they don't leverage what they already know. Every person who lives a life learns things as they go, takes action every day and knows something about something. The reason why they never become an expert is because they choose not to (which is fine for some, not everyone wants to be an expert), but if your goal is to blog your way to expertise and leave the world of reporting behind you have to start teaching and doing so by leveraging real experience.

Experience can come from what you do today and what you have done previously; you just need to take enough steps to demonstrate what you already know and what you are presently learning along your journey. I know so many people in my life, who are experts simply by virtue of the life they have lived, yet they are so insecure about what they know, they never commit their knowledge to words for fear of�well fear.

Blogs and the Web in general, are amazing resources when you leverage them as a communication tool to spread your expertise because of the sheer scope of people they can reach. If all you ever do is talk to people in person and share your experience using limited communication mediums, you haven't much hope of becoming an expert. Take what you know and show other people through blogging, and you might be surprised how people change their perception of you in time.

Reporting Is A Stepping Stone

If your previous experience and expertise is from an area you want to leave behind or you are starting from �scratch�, then reporting is the path you must walk, at least for the short term.

Reporting is a lot of fun. Interviewing experts, talking about what other people are doing and just being part of a community is not a bad way to blog. In many cases people make a career of reporting (journalism is about just that), but if you truly want success and exponential results, at some point you will have to stand up and proclaim yourself as someone unusually good at something and then proceed to demonstrate it over and over again.

Have patience and focus on what you do to learn and then translate that experience into lessons for others, and remember, it's okay to be a big fish in a small pond, that's all most experts really are.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:

http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/

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What is a Domain Name?

What is a domain name? A domain name is a Web address, such as godaddy.com, that is linked to an IP address (which represents a physical point on the Internet). When someone types a domain name into a Web browser, the requested Web page displays. A domain name consists of a top-level and a second-level domain. A top-level domain (TLD) is the part of the domain name located to the right of the dot (godaddy.com). The most common top-level domains are .COM, .NET, and .ORG. Some other popular top-level domains are .BIZ, .INFO, .NAME and .WS. These TLDs have certain guidelines but are, for the most part, available to any registrant, anywhere in the world. The part of the domain name located to the left of the dot — "godaddy," in this case — is called the second-level domain (SLD) name. The second-level domain name is the "readable" part of the address and refers to the organization or entity behind the Internet address. Second-level domain names must be registered with an Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)-accredited registrar.

Copyright © 1999 - 2007 GoDaddy.com, Inc. All rights reserved.

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My First Review Payment

Today I've received my first payment for a review from Blogsvertise. It about a month after a review was approve before receiving the payment. Blogsvertise is different than other paid post programs because they offer authors or bloggers to write about a certain topic instead of letting bloggers to apply for themselves. This feature reduce the competition for popular topics but bloggers will have to wait until they are selected to write for a topic. After my review was approved, I checked the Blogsvertise website and they have stated they date I'm going to receive my payment. Today I received the payment to my Paypal account just as they had promised. So I don't think it is a scam or what others might say. The difference is only how they manage the service.

I did read some forum threads claiming that it is a scam or they have not paid the bloggers' earnings. The threads that claimed they didn't receive any payments were dated from 2006 to 2007. Maybe Blogsvertise had upgraded their service and realise their mistakes. Hopefully the problem won't happen to me or anybody in the future. Somebody did claim that his post was rejected twice even after modification. Article quality and advertiser's demand are always something to take care about when writing a review. As for now, I still don't have any issue with Blogsvertise and I just hope more opportunities will come to me in the future.

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Google Has Beated Yahoo! in Alexa Rank

I had just noticed that Google is now ranked number 1 in Alexa and Yahoo! is on second position. This is the first time in my internet history to see something like this. Is it because of the change of popularity or because of the new Alexa ranking system? Previously Yahoo has able to maintain the rank because of the variety of services. Now Google is doing the same thing and some of it's services are more popular. I've read somewhere that Google has actually being owned by Yahoo therefore no matter who's on top, same people are getting the profit.

I wonder why my pagerank is still not updated. Does Pagerank and Alexa rank use similar type of algorithm on measuring site popularity?

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Google Launched Adsense for Domain

I was surprised when I checked my adsense account to modify an ads when I found out this new thing. Google has already launched adsense for domain. The service might have been launched within the last two weeks. From this service, you can profit when you have an unused domain or when your site is under construction. AdSense for domains provides links, search results, advertisements and other content.

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Lose Your Readers by Changing Your Blog Name

I've learned a precious lesson today. Changing your blog or website name will automatically loose your readers from search engines. Eventhough your blog is in the top ranking for a certain niche, once you change the name, the blog will fall to probably the last page of the search results. It will take a long time for the blog to climb back to the first page unless you can do some magic and there are no other sites are challenging you for the same niche or keywords. I am so regretful right now as one of my blog which is usually having a constant amount of search engine visitors is now nowhere to be found for it's top keyword. What I did was just modifying the name a little. I really need to do some magic to push the blog back to it's proud position in the first page of the search results.

The blog still have acceptable amount of visitors from referral links but loosing search engine visitors is something that we should really avoid. These search engine visitors are those that make your blog profitable. Today I only manage to get 1 click on my ads on that blog. What a disaster. I learned this the hard way so you should always be careful about this. Maybe somebody had warned about this but I didn't read it. This is only about the blog name. Since the blog URL is maintained, visitors still come from referral links on forums and discussion board therefore the blog is only injured and need some cure before it could back to a healthy state. If you change the URL, you are actually killing the blog and it is then become a new born and need to start surviving from the start. If you don't feed it right, it will not grow big enough to feed you back.

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Alexa Traffic Ranking Tips Compilation

Alexa traffic ranking is important because usually it is proportional to the number of visitors we are having. Some advertising networks will only accept blogs with high Alexa rank and for paid-post network, high Alexa rank will allow you to have higher asking price for your blog. There are so many article on how to increase the Alexa ranking. To make things easier, I wrote this to be the ultimate source on how to increase your blog traffic rank. Read the original articles for detailed explanations.

1) By Marketing Scoop:

• Download the Alexa toolbar and use it every day to visit your own website.
• Use Alexa redirection to replace your site's link ex. http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?yoursite.com (not working anymore)
• Encourage visitors to add their positive testimonials on Alexa’s detailed listings page for your website.
• Write your own site reviews on the top 100 rated Alexa sites and include your redirect URL. (Redirection might not work)
• Download the Alexa ranking button, traffic history graph, info links, and other traffic counters.
• Take an inexpensive advertisement at ExactSeek.com.
• Placing a free listing in DMOZ.

2. By Dosh Dosh:

• Install the Alexa toolbar and set your blog as your homepage.
• Put up an Alexa rank widget on your website.
• Encourage others to use the Alexa toolbar.
• Install Alexa toolbar in every computer in your office/school/college/ and set your blog as homepage.
• Get friends to review and rate your Alexa website profile.
• Write or blog about Alexa.
• Flaunt your URL in webmaster forums.
• Write content that is related to webmasters.
• Use Alexa redirects on your website URL. (I checked this and Doshdosh had been listed as illegal referrer)
• Post in Asian social networking websites or forums.
• Create a webmaster tools section on your website.
• Get Dugg or Stumbled.
• Use PayperClick Campaigns.
• Create an Alexa category/label on your blog
• Optimize your popular posts Alexa widget/graph
• Buy banners and links for traffic from webmaster forums and websites.
• Hire forum posters to pimp your website.
• Pay Cybercafe owners to install the Alexa toolbar and set your website as the homepage for all their computers.
• Use MySpace
• Try Alexa auto-surfs.

3. By Sabahan.com:

• Install Alexa toolbar
• Recommend Alexa Toolbar to Your Users
• Create Contents that Appeal to Webmasters
• Take Advantage of the Social Bookmarking Sites
• Create Sub Domains or Run Multiple Blogs Under One Domain
• Get Involved In Chinese Sites
• Remove Unnecessary Secure Pages On Your Site
• Create Great Content

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I've Joined Paid-to-Click but I Don't Even Click

Around a month ago I joined some PTC programs, PPClix, Neobux, and Makemybux. For those who still don't know what is PTC, it is an advertisement program that pays you to view advertisement on their page. For viewing a page for at least 30 seconds, you'll receive about $0.005 to $0.01. If you want more, click on another ads and view them for another 30 seconds. Unique contents of the advertisers' page might interest you to view for a longer time or take part in their programs. PTC networks offer users from 3 to 15 clicks per day with earning from every clicks range from $0.001 to $0.02. They also provide referral programs where you will also earn some percentage of the earnings of your referrals. QiWoman has been earning steadily from PTC since she is already have many referrals in her PTC programs.

I'm not promoting the PTC services. Actually I rarely use them because I don't feel it is worth my time for viewing the ads I don't even want to. By taking example of one PTC network, most usually we'll have 5 clicks available per day. For 1 click, 30 seconds are required to receive earning. For 5 clicks, 2 and 1/2 minutes are required. That is only if the counter starts immediately after you click on the ads but they are actually not like that. Sometimes the counter starts only after a minute. Therefore for a single PTC network, at least 15 minutes need to be spend just for 5 clicks and $0.025. For 3 PTC networks, I need to spend about 1 hour or more for looking at pages I don't even care about. If you are willing to spend some of your time just to view some ads, PTC would be a good choice.

The PTC networks will only be great if you have so many referrals that would earn you $20-$30 per day but there are still some limitations. Some PTC will only give you referral earnings if you also made your clicks for the day. This means that if for one day you don't use the service, you'll get nothing eventhough your referrals did generate a lot for you. We will always get what we paid for. No job no earning.

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Me2everyone Is Back Active

For the last 2 days, me2everyone.com that is giving free internet shares could not be accessed because they are migrating to a new server. It was a little unfortunate for me since they were a lot of people trying to access that site when it was offline. As promised, I received 3000 units of shares worth £3.00 for every person I referred. Grab your shares now before they stop giving the free shares. You can refer to my previous entry for more information about the site.

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Free Traffic Optimizer

This is the best offer I've received this month. Being an affiliate and can start earning just by referring people. Lance Tamashiro and Jason Fladien had released a great book about traffic report. This is not about internet marketing. Just methods to increase your traffic. The best thing is you are offered to be affiliate and earn $1 for every person you refer the book. That is very different. Most people will use Clickbank to market their book and the only earning we can get is after a sale was made. Now you don't have to wait for any sale. Just refer people and earn. If you make any sale, of course you'll receive more earning.

I don't know if these two guys are crazy or geniuses but they decided to each share their two “silver bullet” traffic methods and guarantee they can show you how to get 1000s of unique visitors to your website in less than a month. It's all in a free report you can instantly download at: http://tinyurl.com/dfkzbb. In the report you'll learn four methods for getting cheap and free traffic in 24 hours or less.

Best of all, after you download the report, you'll learn how to make money form the report simply by giving it away to other people!

Check it out here:
Get your FREE copy of Beverly Hills Traffic Report now.

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Free Internet Share Up For Grab

I had just signed up with me2everyone.com that is giving free shares just for signing up with the website. The main website of me2everyone has not been launched yet and still in development process. me2everyone Limited was incorporated in England in September 2008. Run by an experienced team and advised by a Global Executive board. The aim is to create one of the most visited websites on the planet by 2012. When the main website to be launched will have language support in Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, French, German, Portuguese, Arabic, Russian, Italian and add other languages upon request.

Any shares on this page will be paid for by the company and partners therefore we never have to pay a single penny for the membership. Later this year the company will open an in-world "trading room" where you can offer your shares for sale to other members. Today they may be worth just their face value £0.001 each.... Tomorrow that value could soar! All we need are members who become involved and the rest will be taken care by the company. The company aims to seek a stock market listing in 2012/13 and to create an income stream from business members who are given a new way of reaching customers. From a financial forecast, share price is estimated to be £0.58 by 2012/13.

Get 1000 unit of shares now just by signing up with me2everyone.com. Don't forget to put my id number 33310 in the referral box.

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Want to Monetize Your Twitter Profile?

Are you using Twitter? If you're not, check my Twitter profile to find out. Twitter is a place where you can update your status to friends or whoever is following you. You can also place links to your blog post. Therefore Twitter is more popular as a micro-blogging service where you tell everybody about your blog update.

Twittad is now offering you chances to make money from your Twitter profile. After you signed up with Twittad, your Twitter profile will be analyzed for the amount of followers you have and your activities. Then your Twitter profile will be placed with a price for advertisers. The more followers you have, the higher your Twitter profile would be. If an advertiser agrees with your price and duration specified, the profile will be purchased to display ads. You'll be paid for every hour the ads is running on your profile.

Sign up with Twittad and make money from your Twitter profile.

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Place Your Blog RSS Feed Here

I had removed the 'My Blog List' widget on this blog because nobody has used the links on that widget and I was also not having any traffic from that link exchanges. I am still experimenting with the free advertising and link exchange by Adgridwork.com and I will some more ads from the service and see whether the action can bring more traffic to this blog.

The 'My Blog List' column or widget will be replaced with Your Blog's RSS Feed. I am offering anybody to advertise your blog RSS feeds on this blog for $2/week or $6/month. 5 items of your RSS feeds will be displayed just like the feeds for my personal blog and artwork blog in the lower section of this blog. If anybody interested with this offer, please email me or leave a comment to let me know.

Since I joined Entrecard, traffic has increased a lot but the bounce rate is also high because most people are just visiting to drop their cards. I am still looking for other methods that can be used to increase traffic but with lower bounce rate. I don't extensively read any blog and give comments just tu put my links there. I will only place comments when I really have something to share with the author or other people. Since I'm a little busy right now, I can only manage to read a few blogs per day.

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Free Advertising With AdlandPro

If you are interested in free promotion, free advertising, marketing or networking, then maybe you should try AdlandPro. The service has been offering free and paid advertising services to small businesses since 1996. AdlandPro offers either free or affordable advertising solutions for small businesses and home entrepreneurs. For free services, you can do following no cost to you:

1. Place your free ads in classifieds and community pages ($2.50 value)
2. Place your free ads in Free Traffic Exchange (120,000 users) ($2.50 value )
3. Free subscription to "Adland Digest" Newsletter ($5.00 per month value)
4. Obtain free leads for your business using community system ($5-$10 per lead value)
5. Earn big money with affiliate program (up to $10,000/month)
6. Participate in discussions to learn more about marketing and promotions through the Adland Digest ($5.00 per month value)

All those services are offered for free. If they are still not enough for you, paid services are also offered that will guarantee your ads will get the best viewers and click. With paid services, you can have the following:

1. Renewable ads promotion that will make sure your ads be on top of the search list and never expires
2. Ads submission to 680,000 search engines
3. Your ads to appear in every newsletter sent to every members of the service
4. Paid keyword service that will always make your ads on top of their search service
5. Free traffic exchange to your site with all the members of the service

By being an affiliates, you'll have better performance for your free ads and you will also receive commission for every traffic you refer, every referrals joined and commission from your referrals earnings. You can also display PPC ads on your blogs with statistics for your ads performances. There are more services offered that will be too much to write here. Just chek it out at http://www.adlandpro.com/.

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Just Display Ads to Get Paid

You can only get something with CPC ads only if there are clicks on your ads. While only high traffic can make CPM ads more profitable than CPC. For low traffic blog, CPC is still the best choice. What if you can have both advantage of CPC and CPM for a single ads? You can with Adgitize. This is because by showing Adgitize ads on your pages, you can have earning for both clicks and impressions of the ads. The more ads you place on your blogs, the more you can earn. Earnings for clicks will surely be higher than impression. Even if there are no ads displayed, you will still earn for every pageview of your ads. That is what we really want. Therefore, if your Adsense or any other CPC ads are not performing well, try Adgitize and you'll like it.

Adgitize also offer you to advertise with really low charge of $14 per month to all their publishers network. Since the publisher network are mostly bloggers, your ads will be displayed on thousand of blogs. There are also option to be affiliate where you'll be paid $5 for every new signing and $2-$5 per advertiser. What is more interesting is the $1 non-expiring monthly commission for every advertiser. Payment are made via PayPal with minimum amount of $10 or $50 via check. Joining Adgitize will really give you a continuous stream of earning. Not to forget the cheap advertising.

Adgitize was founded by Ken Brown to provide an alternative advertising platform for bloggers. A social gathering area in our forum where bloggers can share ideas for blogging, advertising, earning revenues and raise blog traffic growth. Adgitize has a unique point system that translates into real dollars for bloggers with blogs of all sizes big or small.

Update: Another thing I'd like to add.. I am also getting credits every time I write a new post.

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Google Launch It's Own Sitemap Generator

Sitemap is a file that contains links to all your pages. For a website, sitemap is important because during development, you can easily see links from a page to others. You can also check if there are any mistakes in the links. For search engine optimization, search engine crawlers or spiders will usually check sitemap of a site before start to crawl on every single pages. From a sitemap, the crawlers can easily find all the pages on a site from the links in the sitemap. Without a sitemap, all pages of a site cannot be crawled at a time. This usually happens to hosted blogs such as Blogger or Wordpress as we do not have the privillege to control the server. This is why not all the pages of your blogs are indexed by search engines.

Since Google has always encourage people to have sitemap, they have published their own Sitemap Generator Tool that can be downloaded from the site. This free tool can be installed on your server and it will create sitemap for your website. It is different in lot of features when compared to the existing third party sitemap generator tools.

The features of Google Sitemap Generator are as follows

• Ping to Google Blog Search for new or modified URLs.
• Generates Mobile Sitemaps for mobile-friendly websites.
• Generates Code Search Sitemap.
• Generates XML Sitemap.
• Find new and modified URLs based on web server’s traffic.

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Let Jessica and Angelina Help You

Do you write about gossips or artists. If you do, writing about Jessica Alba, Angelina Jolie, and maybe Britney Spears can really bring traffic to you blogs. This is because those three ladies have been in Yahoo! Buzz Index for more that 2 months. Write something about their pregnancy, breakup or anything and you'll find somebody come to your blog from search engine searching for those women. I don't write about them but I did tried writing about something that was on the Buzz index and readers for that article came within hours.

Instead of Yahoo Buzz, you can also find some topics with Google Trends or any other services. These tool can really help if you are out of topic to write just as I am right now and they can really bring some traffic to your blogs. If you want a boost of traffic, you can simply write the hot topic of today on the Breakout chart. The faster you write about those topics, the more visitors you'll have.

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Alexa Traffic Rank Update

Today I felt quite happy after playing with the SeoQuake Toolbar. With the toolbar installed, I can see the Alexa, PageRank, indexed page, etc. of all pages I visit. I try to compare my personal blog, Duan Says... with other personal blogs that I visit regularly. I'm happy because although my personal blog is quite new. Only aged more than a month old but already have higher traffic rank than other blogs eventhough they are older than my personal blog. From all blogs that I linked in that blog, only a few have higher traffic rank. That is only because they are very much older and their contents are very good.

What have I done to achieve that? What most important for personal blogs is the chatbox. Chatbox allow you to directly chat with other bloggers and show them the address of your blog. Blogger communities in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and maybe The Philipines are very unique. We can easily change links with each other just by asking in the chatbox. We can quickly be friends by using chatboxes on our blog. Chatboxes are also the best place to find links to other blogs because even in a single chatbox, many users leave messages together with their links. For a niche or flagship blog, the use of chatbox might not seems appropriate.

I did also submit 2 post of that personal blog to Digg and StumbleUpon. Eventhough there are not so many visitors from the two services, perhaps that still contribute to my traffic rank. I did also wrote some topics of current event that I read in the news. Those pages did brought some search engine traffic to that blog. For this blog, the traffic rank is already 3939213 and among all my blogs, this blog has the highest traffic rank. This maybe because I did make some contribution in some forums and placed links to this blog in my signature. Recently, Entrecard start to bring some traffic to this blog. The other important traffic highway to all my blogs are BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog. Read What to Do With Your New Blogs for more information on how to increase traffic to your blogs.

My personal blog still have PageRank 0 but the Alexa rank is higher that other personal blogs eventhough they have Pagerank 2 or 3. In previous post, I showed the Pagerank formula that Google use to measure pagerank for a site. What makes me confused is my personal blogs have the most links to other blogs with higher pagerank but still it has Pagerank 0. This blog however, only made link exchange with few blogs, already have Pagerank 1 eventhough it is younger than my personal blog. My artworks blog, which has the slowest traffic also have pagerank 1. I thought by linking to many blogs of higher pagerank could make that blog have higher pagerank quicker. I am still not sure how this blog and my artworks blog have higher pagerank than my personal blog. I will make an update about that soon.

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Promote Clickbank Ads with TopSafeList

You might have already joined some affiliate programs such as Clickbank or Commission Junction. The problem that you might have is how to get the buyers. You might have a lot of visitors to you blog but none of them buy those products that you promote. This is the time you should try TopSafeList because the site is focused on buyers. It is an advertising club where people join to promote business and to look for new information. Buyers join the program to find products. In addition, members receive credits when they view your ads therefore by joining the program, your ads will always be viewed.

Topsafelist utilize the concept of private advertising club. When you join the private club you immediately have the right to show your advertisement to 1000s of proven internet purchasers daily. There are no email addresses or complicated software to download. You show your ad directly from the servers from an online interface. It is just like posting a message on a forum except our members will actually view your ads. You can promote anything legal but no adult materials eventhough you might find it legal.

Topsafelist is not the only ones bringing in members to the AD Club. They have hundreds of other owners promoting this club. You can even become an owner yourself and make 100% recurring commissions. By being an owner of the club, you can keep all the commission but would have to pay a small hosting fee. With 100's of owners adding up to 10 people per day that can add up to 1000's new people per day to show your offers to.

Check out TopSafeList.

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Site Value Calculator

Do you know how much your site or blog worth? Check out Cubestat.com to know the value of your site/blog. Previously I prefer to use Websiteoutlook.com but since a month ago, the site cannot scan any Blogger domain. Cubestat also provide the same information as given by Website outlook and even more. In Cubestat, a blog or site value is primarily based on traffic ranking from Alexa, Quantcast, and Compete. Pagerank position and backlinks will add more value to the site.

Compared to the value calculator by Business-opportunities.biz, which is based on Technorati, I prefer data given by Cubestat because it is based on traffic ranking. Technorati is just for blogs therefore we can measure a normal website by using the Business-opportunities.biz tool.

Cubestat will show your site value, daily pageviews, daily estimated ads revenue if you have ads on your site based on the pageviews. It will also scan your meta tags if you have any and show your site's traffic rank in Alexa, Quantcast, and Compete, show your Pagerank and backlinks, and number of your site's pages indexed by Google, Yahoo, and MSN. For the indexed page statistic, there is a drawback where I think it cannot show Yahoo indexed page correctly. Every results that I tried came out with Yahoo indexed page. It also cannot detect Dmoz status correctly. Other statistic that are displayed are host IP, host location, host registrar, domain birthday, and domain expiry. Also included in the result page are Alexa, Quantcast, and Compete traffic graph.

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Boost Traffic With Entrecard

I had just joined Entrecard I admit it is a great advertising method. How does it work? Everytime people advertise on your Entrecard widget, you'll receive some credits. That credits is required for you to buy ads on other people's widget. Very simple but it works. The traffic that can be generated really depends on the site you are advertising and also the attractiveness of your advertising picture. There are also other way to increase your credits so you could buy more ads. Check Entrecard now from the widgets on this post or on my sidebar.

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Google Pagerank Formula

David Callan had wrote a very good Google Ranking Tips and what interest me most is he did also write about the Google Pagerank Formula. A little math. The post really explain everything I want to know about Pagerank.

The Formula:

The damping factor:
The damping factor is the amount of your PR which you can actually pass on when you vote / link to another site. The damping factor is widely known to be .85, this is a little less than the linking pages own PR.

PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + ... + PR(tn)/C(tn))

In layman's terms PR(A) is the Pagerank boost your page A will get after being linked from someone else's site (t1). PR(t1) is the pagerank of the page which links to you and C(t1) is the amount of total links that (t1) has. It is important to know that a pages voting power is only .85 of that pages actual PR and this voting power gets spread out evenly between all sites it links to.

Imagine http://ABC.com was linked by XYZ.com's link page which had a PR of 4 and 9 other links, here's how the formula should look like:

PR(ABC) = (1-.85) + .85*(4/10)
PR(ABC) = .15 + .85*(.4)
PR(ABC) = .15 + .34
PR(ABC) = .49

To sum up my site would get an injection of .49 PR after being linked from a page with a PR of four and 9 other links.

Let's say I was linked from a site with a PR of 8, double the previous example's amount, which had 15 other links, a total of 16 outbound links, my boost would be:

PR(ABC) = (1-.85) +.85*(8/16)
PR(ABC) = .15 + .85(.5)
PR(ABC) = .15 + .425
PR(ABC) = .575

The above two worked examples show that not only is the PR of the linking page important but what is also important is how many other sites are also linked to from that page.

I think we've had enough maths stuff for now, just remember that the name of the game is to get as many links from pages with high PR and few other links. The more of these links you get the more your PR will grow and the more your rankings will improve for your relevant keywords.

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Happy New Year 2009

Happy New Year to everybody. Wish that 2009 will be a prosperous year.

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