A Tale of Three Blogs

A Tale of Three Blogs

This blog is about technical reviews, SEO, internet marketing and all that schtick. And like everyone at the moment I need some extra money. So I decided to perform an experiment. I have two Blogs, one that is mature, but which I have not done much with, and one that is new, but updated frequently. I have and AdSense account for my main website, Celtnet... almost everything I need for a little experiment.

I will be adding another blog to the mix and from now until the end of November I am going to be running these blogs in parallel, whilst using different strategies to promote and monetize them. Below I will introduce the blogs and explain my strategies.

1 Celtnet Recipes Blog.

This is the most mature of the blogs and it's been going since 2008. However, I have been concentrating on running my main website so this blog has not really been updated for a long white. As you might have guessed from the blog's title, this is a recipe-related blog. Originally I used it to feed traffic and links to my main Celtnet Recipes site. I had a steady but small traffic flow of about 30 visitors per day. So this is an established blog with not much content and not much traffic.

As  Google now allows product ads in the UK I am going to be monetizing this blog using AdSense ads and by putting ads for recipe-related products in the blog body. I am going to post 1 or 2 new recipes onto the blog every day. I will get backlinks from commenting on other recipe blogs. I will also try and get five backlinks from articles to the blog or individual posts every week.

I am going to add a 'popular blog posts' widget and I will link as many posts as possible into themes so there are crosslinks in the blog.

And that will be the whole strategy.

2 Dyfed's Adventures in Publishing.

I started this blog about a month ago mainly as a personal journal for me about my various writing and publishing exploits. It has some but not much content and very little traffic. I have really not promoted this blog at all.

I will use AdSense ads and I will also use this blog to sell my own eBooks as well as putting links to relevant affiliate products for writers. This will be completely content based and I will (I hope) provide good and useful information.

To promote the blog I will use comments on appropriate blogs, article marketing and guest blogging only.

3. Repossession Homes.

This is a completely new blog with no content. And it's never going to get any meaningful content. What I will add are basic descriptions of houses and electronic products and AdSense ads.

This blog will not be advertised at all, but I will use free ads on Craigslist and the like to entice visitors to the blog. There will be no links there apart from Ad links and hopefully they will click.

Aims:

Here, then, are three different blogs each with different content and different marketing and linking strategies. My aim is to make a minimum of $300 each per month with the blogs.

Whether that is achievable or not, I do not know, but I think it's an interesting experiment to find out.

Basically this experiment is to find out whether an existing domain or a new one is better. Whether guest blogging is better at getting traffic than blog commenting and article links and whether you can actually make an income from a blog with minimal traffic and absolutely no marketing at all.

Things have been running for about a week now and traffic on the Celtnet Recipes Blog has increased to over 100 hits per day. The Dyfed's Adventures in Publishing blog has gone from nothing to just over 30 hits per day, with the occasional spike of 80 hits or more when some articles are published. The final  blog gets occasional spikes of traffic, but it's very low. However, I only have two pages of content at the moment. That will increase as I add a new page and new ads every day.

The aim is to work on each site for only an hour every day, leaving time for writing other articles and managing my main site.


And this blog? Well think of it as a control. I will add content as and when I can, but I will not add any links to it. It will be used just to document what's happening with the other blogs so that there will be a complete record of what's happened over the next month or so.

Viral Marketing with eBooks and Widgets

Introduction

There are a number of ways of creating a viral 'buzz' on the internet. The aim of these campaigns is for your link to spread throughout the internet as quickly as possible. Use social media and standard link systems to propagate the information about your viral 'bait' across the web.

If you are a good writer or a paparazzo then this could be a story of a photograph. But if you are an internet marketer it's more likely to be a free report or maybe an app or widget.

As a writer and a sometime programmer the eBook and the widget are my preferred methods and it's these that I will discuss here. Of course, I will use my own content as examples (which is another excuse for me to give them a plug).

The Free eBook

Giving away free eBooks and free reports has been a central marketing strategy... and it still works. The aim is to provide an eBook (you can use a mix of blog posts and fresh content) that is full of links to your website. If you have a product you can also plug that product at the end of the book.

I've done exactly this from my Free Halloween Recipes eBook. For this eBook, you just go to the link page I have provided and download the eBook, free, no strings. Most marketers want you to enter your eMail address before you grab the eBook as this lets them grow their list. But I am not that kind of marketer.

I'm a writer and the eBook has links to the other recipe books that I've written.

Basically what I'm doing here is providing something useful for people completely free, but at the end of the eBook I am providing links back to my site and links to the other eBooks I have written.

On the download page I tell people that they are free to download and distribute the eBook as they see fit. They can send to their friends or they can add as a download on their own website. This is the key of any viral campaign, get the word to spread as much as possible.

I also know a marketer who has a very large list and she will send the eBook to her list (2 million people), which is an incredible way of viral marketing.

So why don't you go over to my other site and download the Free Halloween Recipes eBook for yourself to see what I have done with it and how the process works.

The Free Widget

Widgets can also be a great way of viral marketing or of getting backlinks to your site. I wrote a JavaScript method to convert between different volume, weight and temperature measurements a long while ago. Then it dawned on me that I could package what I had done in a simple way that would be suitable for putting in the sidebar of a website or a blog. I added this to my blogs and my website and it worked well.

It was served from a central site so I could update and adapt the application, but it could be deployed anywhere. A little tinkering with the code and I had something that anyone could use.

I branded it and put a backlink to my site in there. What I eventually got was this:

Unit Converter

A classic functioning widget. I then put a 'This widget on your site' link in the widget and I wrote about it on guest blogs, saying that the code to embed in websites and blogs was freely available for anyone to use. Then I watched the code get used and the backlinks to my site increase.

Some very simple coding proved to be incredibly valuable in getting links back to my site.

If you run a recipes or food site, or a site using measurements, then you can go to my: Add the Celtnet Unit Converter Widget to your site page to grab it for yourself.

Conclusion

Neither of these two methods took me very long to write over all, but by being clever I was able to distribute them through the web. The ebook literally landed on millions of users' desktops and the widget was placed on many hundreds of sites.

I obtained lots of backlinks and lots of visitors (and sales) to my sites and products. All for a couple of days' work, all told.

Viral marketing really, really, works.

Best-paying AdSense Niches

If you are writing a website or blogging for money, then you have probably started writing about something that you love and know. This is a great way of getting a name, but may not be such a good way of making money.

The truth is that if you are blogging for an income, the right niche to choose may not always be something you know a lot about. Indeed, the topic you end up writing about may not even be something you like.

Most blogs and websites make money from advertising, and the money you get from the advertising reflects what the person paying for that advert is willing to pay. Advertisers bid on ads based on keywords. The more competitive a keyword is, the more they will have to pay for an ad spot.

Topics where the ads are expensive are known in marketing parlance as 'high paying niches'. These include areas like consumer electronics, health and fitness, credit cards, home mortgage loans, etc. In these areas, because lots of advertisers are bidding on the same keywords, the ads that are displayed on your website will earn you more for every click that someone makes on them.

In some niches, some ads have been known to pay out over $5.00 per click. 99% of the time, those ads come from highly-competitive sources who pay a lot of money on developing attractive ads (which often means that the number of clicks you get also increases). After all, if a company is paying a lot for an ad, they only want their ads displayed where readers are most likely to purchase something from them, so it is important that your niche is unique, relevant, and has good competition.

The best paying niches are very competitive, and are almost impossible for a beginner to break into. That said, every niche has sub-niches and you will be surprised at which ones have very few people creating content for them.

So, if you are thinking of creating a new blog or website do your research first. Start searching for keywords that might relate to your website, and you can instantly see how much people are paying to place those ads on a Blog just like yours.

To get you started, some of the best-paying niches out there include:

Health: Anti-ageing, Weigh Loss and Fitness, Dentistry and Orthodontics, Cancer

Insurance: Health Insurance, Medical Insurance, Auto and car insurance.

Computers & Internet: Dedicated Hosting, Computer Repairs, Computer Hardware, PC & Internet Security, SEO software and SEO tools, Online Degree, ISP and Networking, Stockbroking/Automated Trading and Web Development

Banking and Finance: Debt consolidation, Credit and Finance, Loans and Mortgage.

Legal representation: Just search in Google for: "attorney increased the bidding rate".

Digital Photography: Careers in photography, digital photography education, digital photography schools and certificate, wedding photography.

Psychotherapy: It can be included in Health but this can also be considered as different Niche since it gives you high Revenues.

Real Estate: Real Estate related Niches are good for getting huge Revenues in Google AdSense.

Consumer Electronics: Electronic devices, Gadgets, Mobiles and other

Antiques and Collectibles: This Niche also gives you high AdSense Earnings.

Dating: This is nice Niche since there are lot of sites that pay well for Dating related Niches.

Leveraging Hashtags for Campaigns and Traffic

Put simply, a hashtag is a word or phrase that's prefixed with the hash (#) symbol. It derives from the early days of Unix where the '#' symbol was used to mark comments or metadata in code. Today, however (unless you are a programmer), the hashtag is used more commonly to mark short messages in microblogging and social networks (like twitter and Google+) to denote discussion topics. For example, #Wikipedia is the hashtag for Wikipedia discussions, and searching for the string #Wikipedia using search engines or on Twitter will cause that word to appear in search results. Such tags have to be a single string of characters (no spaces) and are case insensitive, though they are often written in mixed case (known in programming circles as CamelCase) to make them more readable (eg #HelpCeltnetRecipes). Use of hashtags has a long history. They began on internet relay chat (IRC) networks in the 1970s as a means to label groups and topics. They were also used to mark individual groups as being on a particular topic or of being of interest to a specific group. This inspired Chris Messina, the open source advocate, to propose that a similar system could be used for Twitter. Indeed, it was he who published the first Twitter feed to incorporate a hashtag in 2007. It was only in 2009 though that Twitter produced a search system for hashtags. This, of course, made them much more useful and began the explosion in their use that we see today. Because the twitter search system is public, you can add hashtag searches in your own web pages. To add a hashtag search to your web page, simply use the url: http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23xxx (replace the xxx with the text of your hashtag, but do not add the hash sign '#' itself). For example #HelpCeltnetRecipes would be http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23HelpCeltnetRecipes. Because search is a navigation tool within the Twitter platform, this functionality became yet another way that people could discover new and interesting Tweets outside their immediate group of followers. And, because adding the # at the beginning of a word flags it as a searchable string in both Twitter and Google+ feeds it means that you can start a new discussion yourself with a hashtag, or you can point users to a discussion topic based around that string. When a user clicks on this #hashtag keyword in a Tweet or searches for it in the Twitter searchbar they see a real-time stream of Tweets that include the phrase. As a result, hashtags allow users to watch threads and tweets that are discussion based. You can even add multiple #-linked keywords in your tweets. It's best not to add no more than three, though, or it can start to look like spam. For optimal results it's best if you can fit the hashtags into the text of your tweets it saves space. For example: Follow #CeltnetRecipes and see how the #HelpCeltnetRecipes campaign is performing on #Twitter. You can also search for multiple hashtags as well as single ones. This is an excellent marketing tool, as users who specifically search for your #hashtag keyword combination are guaranteed to be interested in your keyword subject. It also allows fine-tuning of hashtags down to a very specific discussion. Given that tweets are basically free, you have room to experiment with keywords. Indeed, when using #hashtag keywords you’re likely to find it’s not easy to predict which words or phrases will attract your audience so try some out. Test broad keywords and also more specific words. You have nothing to lose. When you find one that works, stick with it. When a hashtag becomes popular it is 'trending' and is put on the front page of twitter and on Google+ pages. This potentially gives you lots of people. Of course, you never know which keywords will trend. Trending is a double-edged sword and if your hashtags are too general they will not be seen in a mass of other tweets and posts. But if your hashtag is too specific no-one will look for it. Experimentation is key, but if you crack it, traffic will flood into your site. If you want to see if your hashtag is original or not, then you can use hashtags.org. This is a very valuable new marketing tools. Start using it now!

Viral Marketing — Popular Viral Marketing Techniques

Viral marketing is all about creating a 'buzz' about a free product or service that you can offer people and in which your ad copy (URL, contact information, link, etc) can be embedded. When they download your product, they can then freely pass it on to other people. This is a very effective means of multiplying your marketing efforts at no additional expense or effort on your part.

Below are some popular marketing techniques that you can employ to begin a viral marketing campaign.

1. eBooks — Write an ebook about a topic that you know well. Share this free with your website visitors. Make certain that you include a nice, full colour, advertisement inside with links to your most popular product lines. Include links to your website and eMail. Allow all recipients of the eBook to share it with their own site visitors and contacts. Encourage it to be given away with eZines.

2. Software — If you sell software, then share a trial or 'lite' version of your software with website visitors for free. Remember to include your ads and links in the software's splash page. Also tell people to freely share the software themselves. The latest trend here is to write widgets for websites (these are pieces of JavaScript code that perform functions like unit conversions etc). They can be added to websites free and have a link back to your site. There are also apps for mobile phones. If you are not a coder yourself, you can hire someone to write software or widgets for you on sites like eLance.com.

3. Web Hosting — Become a web hosting reseller or offer free hosting. Offer to host small business websites on your server at no charge. In exchange for this service, ensure that you place banner ads for your own products at the top of every site for viral marketing. Basically you are offering to set up a folder for other peoples' sites on your server. They then pick their own domain name and you redirect that the the folder you set up for them.

4. Templates — Design website templates. Add your links and contact information in the footer, then give them away as free downloads. Ensure you grant permissions for any recipients to pass them along for free.

5. Articles — Write articles about your industry, or about things that interest you or will attract visitors. Include the URL to your website and contact information in the byline (resource box) and grant permission for others to copy and republish the article, as long as they keep the byline intact. This way your article, and with it, your byline spread virally as it's republished from site to site.

6. Forums — Set up a forum on your website and place your banner ad on the header. Create a lively discussion area and invite others to link to posts.

7. Begin a campaign — Using hashtags (#hashtag) in twitter and Google+ posts allows you to create an on-line buzz about a topic quickly. Ensure that you include the appropriate hashtags in any marketing materials you prepare.

8. eZines — Yes, I know they may be old had, but they still work. When people download your freebies, get them to give you their eMail address as long as you can send them your eZine. Use this to provide useful information, but also provide links to your products and services.

Viral marketing strategies allow you to easily and quickly multiply your marketing efforts by using the power of the internet to spread messages. Using freebie giveaways and creating marketing campaigns remain the most effective strategies for achieving this.

Marketing to Women, Don't Ignore the Female Dollar

Research has shown that today, women often earn as much as men and in families, they frequently control the finances. This means that women have a lot of purchasing power and cannot be ignored.

This is especially true in the areas of home furnishings, health, weight loss and domestic appliances. Research clearly shows that these areas women's purchasing power is much higher than that of men.

As a result, if you target these areas for your on-line marketing campaigns you must write your copy and design your site to appeal much more to women than to men.

Women as Buyers

Overall, women are less decisive than men when it comes to making purchasing decisions. Men, typically, will make a quicker, more 'on impulse' decision and take a far more linear route towards making a decision. Women, in contrast will tend to go into lots of detail about their purchasing decision and will check and re-check any information that they are presented, particularly if they are uncertain about something.

As women feel more satisfaction in caring for others, they tend to go into high levels of detail when making a purchase, and they are always on the lookout for where best to spend their money. They also want the best and most suitable product on the market to suit their needs.

As a result of this, women take a more spiral type of decision path and require more reassurance that their purchase is going to be the right choice.

For women you need to create empathy with your website as women are more person-orientated. Women take longer to make a decision, so ensure that your website covers all the levels of detail that they will require to make a purchase.

Factors when Marketing to Women:

When aiming your content towards women, here are some of the factors to consider:

1. Ensure that your website has a more personal approach. As a minimum, ensure that you have a profile section about you on the site.
2. Write the website in the first and second person.
3. Use emotional advertising
4. Focus on human benefits rather than just the plain facts and figures. Think of the emotional impact.
5. Make sure that all the details of the product you are promoting are on your website and no more than one click away from where the user is now.
6. If there are any details supporting the product (medical backing and clinical studies for example) ensure that these are available on the site.
7. Make certain that you have a personal touch. Liberally use testimonials, have review sections and figures on how many people have visited the site recently. A forum is a good idea to get user feedback. Allow discussions on the 'hot topics'.

How to Write for Women

Women make decisions in groups and are more people oriented. Women value relationships with other people and believe that nothing is too mundane or profound in a relationship.

Women's aspirations are more family and benefit oriented. Not immediate personal benefit, but broader benefits. Your site should reflect this. Women crave detail, richness and depth and your site must reflect this. But the site still needs to be logically organised and easily navigable. Women do not like a messy site either.

Do not make the common mistake of putting the product centre stage. It is not the 'product as hero' for women, but how the product can be beneficial to the problems women face.

Use case studies focussing on normal women. It's not the aspirational that women latch onto, they want to see other women like themselves.

Use everyday language and focus on the human benefits. Use emotional styled ads to create lots of empathy.

When using images, feature women prominently and think about the right kind of image.

Women are good at giving feedback and online surveys and quizzes are an excellent way to glean more information from your target audience.

If you are targeting both women and men, then have separate landing pages for both sexes and separate navigation through your site.

Twenty of the Very Best Affiliate Networks

Affiliate networks are an excellent source for monetizing your websites. You sign up to them, pick products to promote then write articles or even mini sites around those products to promote them.

Each time someone buys a product based on one of your links, you get a commission payment.

The main problem is where to find the products to promote. As a result, I have collected together a list of twenty of my favourite affiliate networks to share with you.

Twenty of the Very Best Affiliate Networks:

1. Commission Junction: Commission Junction (CJ) is one of the leading affiliate networks in the world. The network has been providing its services since the last few years. The products that you want so sell have been sorted according to categories and there are a number of popular brands that you can endorse.

2. ClickBank: This is another popular alternative that pays you attractive commission. You can be assured of commissions in the range of 40 to 75 per cent for every product you sell. There are more than 10000 products that belong to various categories like technology, health, fitness, sports, etc.

3. Amazon: This network belongs to one of the most popular names in the IT industry. The network will be best suited for those running eCommerce sites and applications. You can directly pick up any product from the main store of Amazon and place its context links on your blog. For every sale you make you can earn a commission of 10 to 30 per cent. You can place the links just like the Google Ads.

4. E-Junkie: This affiliate is one of the best in the market. The network deals in products across multiple categories. You can buy, sell or simply put the process on autopilot so that you can be assured of guaranteed income. The network will provide in suitable inputs and other technical support so that you can sell better. The system uses PayPal as its primary payment gateway.

5. ShareASale: This is another decade old network that has proved its mettle in the field of affiliate marketing. There are more than 2600 dealers to choose from which varies from sports to travelling and technology. The network is number one in United States.

6. Google: The Google runs its affiliate program via the AdSense service. The options are limited but the commissions can be attractive. This program also requires professional commitment from your side.

7. Affiliate Window: This is a UK based network that mainly deals in shoes, perfumes, cosmetics, chocolates and other commodities. The network has some of the best brands in UK and the commission rates are also high. It pays only once in a month and has excellent statistics.

8. LinkConnector: This is a relatively new network that is rapidly catching up with the other major networks of the world. The network was launched in 2004 and uses Pay Per Click, Pay Per Lead and Pay Per Sale models. The network also considers the PageRank of your site before sending some quality traffic.

9. CPA Empire: CPA stands for Cost Per Action. This network is suitable for those who can do a lot of email marketing and promotions. The empire is all set to expand its base and has several acquisitions under its belt.

10. Nitro Marketing: This network offers a vast collection of technology products. There are a number of educational products also. The mode of payment is monthly and has a high commission to offer for every product you sell. Best Affiliate Networks

11. Affiliate Future: AffiliateFuture is an international company with headquarters in London. It also has offices in New York and Spain. Most of the programs offered are UK companies targetting UK buyers, but there are a small number of merchants who are based outside the UK. Affiliate Future is owned by TMN Group plc. This is one of the top UK affiliate networks offering a range of well known and niche products and companies that you can market on your website. Some of the well known companies that you can partner with through Affiliate Future include: PC World Business, Kuoni, Virgin Atlantic, Vernons and Curry's Entertainment. There are also a wide range of sites covering niches such as fishing, Distance Learning, cat flaps, plastic fascias (for construction and DIY), gentlemen's shaving products and adult toys. ver 65,000 websites currently act as publishers for Affiliate Future, and they offer about 900 different merchants for you to partner with.

12. Clixgalore: Clixgalore is a multinational affiliate network with over 7500 merchants that you can promote on your website, including many from the UK. Clixgalore is made up of five main networks based in the US, UK, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. The company's head office is based in Australia. Affiliates can join merchant programs either one at a time or in bulk. Some applications are automatically approved, whereas others are approved manually (the merchant has a look at your website and decides whether or not to approve you.) The Affiliate Tookkit allows you to create additional user logins, view any special offers that the merchants may be running, allows you to email merchants and check those merchants that have a "low balance".

13. LinkShare: LinkShare is a US corporation currently offering affiliate programs and marketing to users based in the US, Canada and the UK. They also specialise in other online marketing services for advertisers such as search engine marketing and lead generation. The company has been in existence since 1996, and has advertisers which include Avon, Napster, British Airways, Lego and House of Fraser. Once you have been approved by an advertiser, their links will be made available to you. You can in general choose from a range of text links and banners, or set up your own deep links to individual pages if you would like to. Some of the merchants also offer rotating banners or "Storefronts", where you can paste some code into your site and feature a range of products that are automatically updated. LinkShare also offer the Lead Advantage Network, which enables publishers to high commission programs not available in the rest of the LinkShare network. You will be paid for providing leads and new customers to companies, as opposed to direct sales. For example, if you are promoting a company selling conservatories, you could be rewarded with a commission every time a prospective customer applies to receive a catalogue.

14. Paid on Results: Paid on Results are an UK company based in Glasgow that have been operating sine 2002. Payment is made via BACS once a month once your balance has reached £25 or more. Note that you have to request a payment through the payment centre in order to be paid. Paid On Results currently offer about 120 merchants that you can promote on your website, including many niche markets. Some of the websites that you can promote include Dr Nirdosh (skin doctor to the rich and famous), Genie Gadgets, Schultz Jeans, Surewin Racing Club and Handbags and Gladrags. One of the better known merchants featured on the Paid on Results Network is Grattan, the catalogue company.

15. TradeDoubler: The company is international, but payment to UK affiliates is made in £ sterling via BACS once a month once your balance has reached £30 or more. Tradedoubler is an international company with headquarters in Sweden. It boasts 18 offices throughout Europe and recently launched its technology in Japan. It has a network of in excess of 125,00 publishers across the globe and over 1,600 advertisers use the Tradedoubler network for affiliate marketing. The larger companies that use Tradedoubler include Apple, Carphone Warehouse, Dell and Kelkoo. However, they are also used by a number of smaller companies including World of Linens and Travelbag.

16. Webgains: Webgains is an UK based company, but in addition has offices in Spain, Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden and The Netherlands. The company was established in 2004. It is owned by Adpepper, an independent online marketing company based across Europe. Webgains offer an impressive array of linking options and reporting tools in a user friendly website setting. At the time of writing there are 257 merchants to choose from, with lots of niche sites that you can create targeted websites to promote. Webgains have recently introduced "Page Peel" technology. This provides affiliates with a unique way of making the most of the advertising space on their websites. "Page Peel" encourages the site visitors to "peel" back the page by hovering over the peel back area that is situated in a top corner of the page. Once peeled back, an advert is revealed. This is a great technology for the affiliate - he can keep his website full of content, but entice the visitor into viewing ads in an unobtrusive way.

17. eBay: Like Amazon eBay also have their own affiliate program. The eBay affiliate program used to be managed by Commission Junction, but since April 2008 eBay have moved to handling their affiliate program in house. The eBay affiliate umbrella includes the following affiliate programs - eBay UK, eBay US, eBay Belgium, eBay Canada, eBay Singapore, eBay India, eBay Honk Kong, eBay France, eBay Spain, eBay Italy, eBay NL and eBay Australia. It also includes the US based half.com program. The program is well thought out with lots of options. The Dashboard allows you to see at a glance which programs are working for your site, and reports can be itemised by day, campaign, tool / creative and program. You can also download the raw transaction data for use in your own data analysis or spreadsheet program. As the range of products is so broad, it's easy to build a list of "campaigns". In essence, these are different areas of the eBay site that you are accessing. This makes it very easy to integrate eBay products with a whole range of websites. Using the tools provided, you can provide links and creatives. Access to the API also allows you to incorporate eBay feeds into your site.


18. MoreNiche: MoreNiche was founded in 2002 and they specialize in the health and beauty, anti-ageing, weight loss and skin care markets. They offer good affiliate payments, bay bi-weekly, have excellent support and pay twice a month. If you are in the health and beauty niche, then this has to be on your list of affiliate networks. They also pride themselves on being the most transparent and ethical affiliate program available today.

19. OneNetworkDirect: OneNetworkDirect is DigitalRiver's affiliate marketing network for software products. It features the largest selection of digital products offered online today, including some of the world's most recognized titles. Founded in 1994, Digital River (NASDAQ: DRIV) is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with offices located across the United States, Europe and the Asia Pacific.

20. Maxbounty: Established in 2004, MaxBounty is a large network with over 14 000 affiliates and hundreds of advertisers. They are an international company that offers payouts in a number of currencies and methods. This CPA advertising network is unusual in that you have to undergo a telephone interview before you can join. They are renowned for their customer service and the support from their affiliate managers.

Sign up to these networks and you will have more than enough products to promote on your websites,

Why Websites are the Best Investment in Today's Market

If you have a lump sum and you want to invest for growth, then how this is done has suddenly become a big problem in today's market. With interest rates falling globally, and stock markets suffering almost daily jitters, is there anywhere you can invest your money to get a decent rate of return?

Let's say you have $10 000 to invest. Even if you found a very generous interest rate of 5%, and you invested your money in a savings account. After a year you would have $10 500 only. In fact, because of taxes you would have less than that and inflation would also diminish the value of your earnings and your capital. Of course, your initial lump sum is safe — but your earnings are pitiful.

What about the stock market? If you are good at your research then you might make a 30% return on your investment, if you are good. But if you invest in stocks yourself, you are just as likely to make a loss. It might be safer to put your money in a fund that will manage the buying and selling for you. But, still, it's a long-term investment and the stocks purchased by a fund may not increase that much. But say, on average, you make 20% then you would have $12 000 at the end of the year. Of course, you would have to pay taxes and brokerage fees, so you would have less than this. Also your capital and earnings are tied-up in stocks which you would have to liquidate to access your earnings.

Need an Investment, Think Websites

Websites? I hear you ask. Well, let's take a look at how you would invest in a website and what earnings you could make. I will take you through a site that I invested in last year. It was a small blog earning about $40 per month from adsense. It cost me $450 and I paid another $150 to get some new articles (30 new articles). Almost all the on-page SEO, was done by myself, though I outsourced link-building for $100. Let's say that total SEO costs were $300.

I also added Amazon ads on the site. I made a total investment of $900 in this website, increased its traffic and its earnings to $60 per month. The site is making me $720 a year. Hold, on, you're thinking to yourself, isn't that a loss? Actually, no, I still have the website itself as my initial investment. Even being conservative and saying that the website is worth 10 months' income, that's $600, so my total for the website is $1320. I paid $900 in all, so that's $420 profit — 47% increase on my initial stake. I've tried to be very conservative here. I kept adding content and by the end of the first year the website actually made $90 per month. I kept it for two years and sold it on in the third year. During the first year it earned me $2050 in income. Because the site had matured and I could show steady and increasing income for over a year I sold it for the value of 18 months' average income, so when I sold the site on I got $1600 for it. So, in two years the site earned me $3670. Based on the initial spend of $900 and $5 per month hosting costs, that's a total profit of $2650, or over 100% per year! 

Not all websites are like this, of course. Small site and blogs have lots of potential, but you need to know what you're doing. If you're a beginner, then you are more likely to go for a bigger site with a larger and more stable earnings potential. I have a couple of established sites that I have grown for years and I once bought a similar site just to see what I could do with it. The site cost me $20 750 and its stated earnings were an average of $2500 per month for the previous year. I outsourced a blend of lightweight on-page SEO and offsite SEO costing $200 per month. So my total investment over a year was $20 750 + $2400 = $23 150. Even if earnings drop a little to $2000 per month, my income is still $24 000. If the price of the website remains stable, my earnings are $24 000 - £2 400 = $21 600 (the SEO costs being the overhead). This is a 93% profit compared to my total outlay! Even if the site tanked and income dropped to $1000 per month, over 1 year, factoring in the decrease in the site's overall worth I would break even and after two years I would make a profit.

But it's not just monthly income that affects a website's overall worth. Websites are like fine wine, the older they are, the more they are worth. This is for three main reasons. Older websites are more trusted by the search engines, older websites tend to have more backlinks and more quality backlinks and older websites can also show consistent earnings over a long period of time. All these factor drive the selling price of the website up. Expect to pay between 12 and 18 times the average monthly income for a mature website.

The Pitfalls

Large profits can be made from websites. But you do need to know what you are doing. Websites can tank, because websites are dependent on search traffic driven by the major search engines. If there is something wrong with the website or it's contravening Google's terms of service in a way you have not seen will earn you a ban on Google. Get banned and you have no traffic and no income.

There are black sheep amongst sellers. One of the classic tricks is to have a small site with only few visitors. The owner then drives lots of traffic to the site for 2 months and there is a spike in income. The webmaster then tries to sell the site, but only shows income data for 1 or 2 months. If you buy a site like this, the traffic dries up to nothing, there is no income and you are stuck with a lemon.

Buying a website is like buying a property. You need to nose around the site, look at the code and see what the webmaster was doing. Look at the backlinks coming to the site and look at Google and Alexa rankings. See what the average income was for at least 6 months and make sure that this was steady and that there are no strange spikes. I actually think a site with traffic that's falling slightly towards sale time is much better than one with a huge spike just before it's sold.

Conclusion

Like all investments, websites are not the best opportunity for everyone. You definitely need some knowledge in the field and you need to know what to pick and what to avoid. Of course, content and SEO can be outsourced, so improving the site once you've bought it is not such a big problem.

Typically I move the sites I buy to hosting that I know is reliable and does not have traffic caps. I always do this kind of thing myself (but, of course you can outsource this kind of work — but it will cost you money). 

To get you going, here are a couple of resources: The site flippa.com is one of the best known marketplaces that sells web properties and you get the whole range of sites here. The Digital Point Forum is also a good place to find web properties. You do get fewer stats and information about sites (but the prices are lower). eBay and Sedo also sell sites, but these tend to be good sites with lots of traffic that sell for high ticket prices.

Of course, you always need to do your due diligence and most websites are a long-term investment. However, it is possible to buy a site cheap on Digital Point, perform intensive improvements and SEO on it for 1 month, then sell it more expensively on Flippa. This is called 'website flipping'.

If you know what you are doing, then there is real money to be made in website investments.

Fifteen ways to Make Quick Cash on the Internet

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

This is probably one of the most discussed topics on the internet, often from people who have fallen for some 'get rich quick' scheme. They are completely disillusioned and are seeking the truth of whether it's actually, really, possible to make any money on the internet or not.

The truth is that working for yourself over the internet is extremely exciting and rewarding. However, no one will or even can become successful over night. It takes time to build a website, build content, build products and services or to build a reputation. During the first few years there will be shortfalls and you will be looking for other sources of income as you build your real on-line career.

During these times you will need to make extra money elsewhere, often in a hurry. Below are fifteen things you can do to earn emergency income. I have done most of these myself, so I know they work.

1. Freelancing.
This is by far the quickest and best way of making money in a hurry. For internet entrepreneurs this is also often the best method, as the income you make will be entirely dependent on your personal skills. And the more skills you have, the better your prospects. You can go all the way from data entry at one end of the scale through article writing, blog posting, eBook ghostwriting to graphic design, web design and programming. The broader your skills base, the better your earnings potential.

The more experience you have, the more you will make, so whilst working on your other jobs build up your portfolio so that if you need to fall back on freelancing you can earn top dollar. But a job is a job. You may even find that you enjoy freelancing.

2. Online Auctions and/or Drop-shipping
There is probably something that you have hanging around that you can sell on an on-line auction (eBay, craigslits etc). Turn around can be a few days and you can have the money quickly. Items could include books, electronics, computer parts (good if you have old laptops or even dead laptops you can break into parts). You can even turn this into an income stream by selling products from third parties who will even distribute the products for you (dropshipping).

3. Start a Home-based Business
Do you have a marketable skill or product that you can create a home-based business around? If you do then you can use this to work either full time or part time.

Here when I am talking about a home-based business I'm not referring to an on-line job. Rather, this is a business you can do from home. Maybe you are a web designer and programmer. You could go round local businesses and offer to improve their website, or if they do not have a website offer to make them one and maybe even host it yourself.

What you an do depends on your skill. But you need a clear knowledge of what you can do and what you can't and how you can offer this to prospective clients.


4. Teach English Online
If you are a writer then you should have good English skills. There are lots of clients, particularly in Asia who want to learn English one-on-one. You can either do this through and agency as a freelance or through you own site. Typically you will need a text to follow and lessons can be taught via skype. All you need is a good headset and a good quality video camera.


5. Coaching or Consulting Services
If you have an expertise in a specific area then you can consult and coach people about it. Internet marketing, blogging and websites are an excellent area here. Often, the people who hire you for consulting purposes know what they want already. They just need an 'expert' to validate their choices or to do a bit of handholding.

You can do this virtually, but you can also offer your services to local businesses. Let them know that you are highly knowledgeable about what you’re saying and make sure you have enough proof to back it up. For example, if I want to be giving small businesses advice on building a blog and using it for their business I can easily back myself up with some points such as having a successful blog, being featured on some of the best blogs in the world etc. things like these boost your credibility, makes your clients give you more respect and trust and helps make sure you stay out of trouble.


6. Product Creation
If you have been writing a blog online maybe you could convert some of the content into an eBook to sell. Maybe you have an expertise in something else: gardening or DIY. Maybe you are a coder who can make website templates or skins or maybe you have a collection of code snippets. All these can be turned into saleable products that will make you money.

For example, I create fonts on my main website to allow me to show historic recipes on my website exactly as the original publishers wanted them to be displayed. I ended up with ten fonts overing almost 1000 years of writing and publishing in Britain and I packaged these into a font collection for sale.


7. Write eBooks
The rise and rise of eBook readers means that there is now a huge market for electronic books on platforms like the Kindle and iPad. If you sell eBooks on Amazon and elsewhere it can take time for your to be paid your earnings. But some places like smashwords pay you monthly. You can also sell these eBooks on your own blogs and websites. For more information about this, see my guide to writing kindle ebooks that sell.


8. Writing Paid Tutorials.
If you want instant money then this is one of the very best ways of making cash. If you are good at Photoshop or Indesign or your are a web designer or programmer then there are lots of sites that will pay you for high-quality tutorials. They're usually quite quick to write and you can make between $50 and $250 for each one accepted.


9. Look for a Niche or an Unique Product to Sell
This can take a lot of imagination, but if you look around you and spot a gap in the market, or an unique way of marketing something you can really make a lot of money. The classic example of this being the guy who wrote the 'million dollar website' where he had just a single page and sold pixels on it for people to attach their website URLs to.



10. Affiliate Marketing
Basically this is selling other peoples' products and getting paid for it. As long as you can write, you can market products. You can write general information and embed product links in this for the areas you are discussing or you can directly write reviews to sell products. There are loads of sites out there that help put affiliates together with product providers. For each product sold you will be paid a percentage of the product sale price. How much you get depends on the product and the program.

Payments range from 60 days after the end of the month (Amazon) to 30 days (the most common) to 15 days (ClickBank). There are programs for electronic products, physical products and services. Another feature of affiliate marketing is that it depends on you, it can take you months to make a single sale and it can take you days. It can be a great way to make quick cash if you’re ready to give it your all. The more and better you write, the more you will make.


11. Sell your Photos Online
This is a source of income that many people who are online ignore. You can make quick cash by selling your photographs (if they are good enough) on stock photo websites. Shutterstock is the big image website and they pay people to upload photographs. Other sites allow you to price your own photographs and you get a commission on each sale.


12. Sell Web Hosting (Web Hosting Reselling)
Becoming a web hosting reseller is very easy, anyone can do it and if you have an established site or blog you can easily begin selling hosting to other people. This is particularly good if you can support this by selling website templates and skins (or even enticing customers by giving them away free) and code snippets.


13. Act as an Agent
This is becoming a more and more common method of making money on the web. Act as an agent or middleman. Bid for jobs on freelancing sites, or offer services on your own website. Then, rather than doing the work yourself, subcontract to others at a lower rate then pocket the difference. This can be a good method of making money from some jobs, particularly programming tasks.


14. Ask for Donations
Yes, I know, it can feel like begging. But if you have a site where you can provide an useful service for free this can be a very quick method of making some spare cash. Tell people what your aims are, and what you hope to achieve, then slap on a PayPal donation button. For the right kind of website this can be golden.


15. Get a Part-time Job
For many this is an option of last resort only. But sometimes just making it online can be extremely, ridiculously, tough. In these cases, you need to accept reality and take a part-time job just to get you through the hard times. Part-time jobs are plentiful and if it gets you through the real hard times so that you can still keep your dream, then swallow your pride and do it (and, yes, I have been there).

If you find yourself cash-strapped on your quest to be financially independent from the web, then hopefully these ideas can help. Even if you just want to make extra money in the evenings or at weekends, there should be ideas here that will help.

Leveraging Hashtags for Campaigns and Traffic

Put simply, a hashtag is a word or phrase that's prefixed with the hash (#) symbol. It derives from the early days of Unix where the '#' symbol was used to mark comments or metadata in code.

Today, however (unless you are a programmer), the hashtag is used more commonly to mark short messages in microblogging and social networks (like twitter and Google+) to denote discussion topics. For example, #Wikipedia is the hashtag for Wikipedia discussions, and searching for the string #Wikipedia using search engines or on Twitter will cause that word to appear in search results.

Such tags have to be a single string of characters (no spaces) and are case insensitive, though they are often written in mixed case (known in programming circles as CamelCase) to make them more readable (eg #HelpCeltnetRecipes).

Use of hashtags has a long history. They began on internet relay chat (IRC) networks in the 1970s as a means to label groups and topics. They were also used to mark individual groups as being on a particular topic or of being of interest to a specific group.

       
 This inspired Chris Messina, the open source advocate, to propose that a similar system could be used for Twitter. Indeed, it was he who published the first Twitter feed to incorporate a hashtag in 2007. It was only in 2009 though that Twitter produced a search system for hashtags. This, of course, made them much more useful and began the explosion in their use that we see today.

Because the twitter search system is public, you can add hashtag searches in your own web pages. To add a hashtag search to your web page, simply use the url: http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23xxx (replace the xxx with the text of your hashtag, but do not add the hash sign '#' itself). For example #HelpCeltnetRecipes would be http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23HelpCeltnetRecipes. Because search is a navigation tool within the Twitter platform, this functionality became yet another way that people could discover new and interesting Tweets outside their immediate group of followers.

And, because adding the # at the beginning of a word flags it as a searchable string in both Twitter and Google+ feeds it means that you can start a new discussion yourself with a hashtag, or you can point users to a discussion topic based around that string. When a user clicks on this #hashtag keyword in a Tweet or searches for it in the Twitter searchbar they see a real-time stream of Tweets that include the phrase. As a result, hashtags allow users to watch threads and tweets that are discussion based.

You can even add multiple #-linked keywords in your tweets. It's best not to add no more than three, though, or it can start to look like spam. For optimal results it's best if you can fit the hashtags into the text of your tweets it saves space. For example: Follow #CeltnetRecipes and see how the #HelpCeltnetRecipes campaign is performing on #Twitter.

You can also search for multiple hashtags as well as single ones. This is an excellent marketing tool, as users who specifically search for your #hashtag keyword combination are guaranteed to be interested in your keyword subject. It also allows fine-tuning of hashtags down to a very specific discussion.

Given that tweets are basically free, you have room to experiment with keywords. Indeed, when using #hashtag keywords you’re likely to find it’s not easy to predict which words or phrases will attract your audience so try some out. Test broad keywords and also more specific words. You have nothing to lose. When you find one that works, stick with it.

When a hashtag becomes ropular it is 'trending' and is put on the front page of twitter and on Google+ pages. This potentially gives you lots of people. Of course, you never know which keywords will trend. Trending is a double-edged sword and if your hashtags are too general they will not be seen in a mass of other tweets and posts. But if your hashtag is too specific no-one will look for it.

Experimentation is key, but if you crack it, traffic will flood into your site.

If you want to see if your hashtag is original or not, then you can use hashtags.org.

This is a very valuable new marketing tools. Start using it now! Begin the discussion about your own blog or product.

Ninety-five Blogs Allowing 'dofollow' Comments

Thanks, in large part to Google attempting to squash the phenomenon of paid and spam links, links from one website to another now come in two flavours: 'nofollow' and 'dofollow'. If you add the tage rel="nofollow" to your link anchor text (eg <a href="http://www.celtnet.org.uk" rel="nofollow">) then that link does not pass any page rank to your site.

If you want to improve the visibility and ranking of your site then you must have links that pass 'link juice', links that actually improve your site. Nofollow links do not do this and are useless for any link-building campain. You need 'dofollow' links to improve the ranking and visibility of your blog or site.

As this Blog is completely new I need content (which, for the most part, I have pre-canned), so that's one half of the equation sorted. But I still need to get links and to get traffic. I will deal with this process in another post, but just because it's on my mind, here's a list of 95 blogs that allow you to add 'dofollow' comments so that you can easily get inbound links. And links means traffic, traffic means money.


Computers and Internet:
1. Blogs With Wings (http://blogswithwings.com/)
2. BizChickBlogs.com (http://www.bizchickblogs.com/)
3. Associate Blogger (http://www.associateblogger.com/)
4. Inzone Internet (http://inzoneinternet.com/)
5. New Media Bloggers (http://blog.newmediabloggers.com)
6. Internet-Business-Review.net (http://internet-business-review.net/)
7. Trusted Affiliate Marketer (http://www.trustedaffiliatemarketer.com/)
8. Make Money Online Beginners (http://internetwealthlab.com/blog/)
9. Make Money Blogging (http://www.brandonconnell.com/)
10. WebMaster Success (http://webmaster-success.com/)
11. Organic SEO Marketing (http://brandyorrange.com/)
12. Learn Google Adsense & SEO (http://adsenseurdu.com/)
13. Precise Internet Marketing (http://preciseinternetmarketing.com)
14. TechJaws (http://www.techjaws.com)
15. DoFollow Blog (http://dofollow.info/category/blog/)
16. Omega Web (http://www.omegaweb.com/)
17. Keep Up With The Web (http://keepupwiththeweb.com/)
18. Search Engine Optimization and Social Media News (http://blog.seooptimizers.com/)
19. Niche Marketing Blog (http://www.marketingsyndrome.com/)
20. Get the Best Free Web Traffic (http://getfreetraffic.co.cc/)

Health and Wellness
21. Quest for Balance (http://www.questforbalance.com/)
22. What To Know About Things (http://whattoknow.org)
23. Creative Personal Development (http://www.wellbunny.com)
24. Healthy Diet Weight Loss (http://www.drkalsweightlosstips.com/)
25. MyDiet.org (http://mydiet.org)


Technology:
26. Mobilespace (http://www.mobilespace.in/)
27. Tech-Freak Stuff (http://techfreakstuff.com)

Business:
28. Successful Internet Marketing (http://nine95.com/)
29. Penny Seeds (http://pennyseeds.com/)
30. Green Home Blog (http://www.greenhomedesign.co.uk/)
31. VBS Insight – Small Business Information (http://vbsinsight.visionsbiz-online.com/)
32. Your Virtual Assistant (http://www.thevirtualasst.com/blog)

Recipes and Cooking:
33. Simple Malaysian Recipes (http://www.seleramalaysia.com/)
34. The Chef’s Cookbook (http://www.thechefscookbook.com/)
35. Daily Shot Of Coffee (http://www.dailyshotofcoffee.com/)

Writing:
36. University Eight (http://www.universityeight.info/)
37. Freelance Writers Club (http://freelancewritersclub.com/)
38. Corner Scribe: Write Well. Get Published (http://www.cornerscribe.com/wordpress)

General:
39. The Blog About Everything (http://theblogabouteverything.com/)
40. 113Tidbits Of Smack And More (http://113tidbits.com/)

Other Blogs:
41. http://newcritics.com
42. http://www.thebayrental.com/
43. http://www.thevirtualasst.com/
44. http://www.serradinho.com/
45. http://www.interviewquestionshq.com/
46. http://www.techatlast.com
47. http://www.smartbloggerz.com
48. http://www.theblog.ca
49. http://www.graphicdesignblog.co.uk
50. http://www.articlesnatch.com/blog
51. http://pixelheadonline.com/blog
52. http://www.howtowakeupearly.com
53. http://www.currybet.net
54. http://www.howtowakeupearly.com
55. http://www.communityspark.com
56. http://www.peterleehc.com/blog
57. http://www.ecommtips.com
58. http://tucsonseosolutions.com
59. http://www.memwg.com
60. http://www.howtospoter.com
61. http://www.seotops.com
62. http://www.organicseo.in
63. http://www.reviewerofsites.com
64. http://infodotnet.blogspot.com
65. http://www.tlmarketing.net
66. http://www.dollarsblog.com
67. http://www.affiliatebestprograms.com
68. http://www.yimto.com
69. http://dmiracle.com
70. http://www.voice-broadcast.com
71. http://www.extremejohn.com
72. http://www.bloggodown.com
73. http://tycoonblogger.com
74. http://techpatio.com
75. http://www.ruhanirabin.com
76. http://sighnetdollars.blogspot.com
77. http://zebida.com
78. http://followlist.com
79. http://www.blogengage.com
80. http://newcritics.com
81. http://blog.mofuse.com
82. http://www.bloggingjunction.com
83. http://weblogtoolscollection.com
84. http://www.netchunks.com
85. http://www.seobythesea.com
86. http://rumahabi.com
87. http://bytesizecss.com/blog
88. http://www.marketingblagger.com
89. http://www.bluehatseo.com
90. http://workathomemomrevolution.blogspot.com
91. http://www.powerdosh.com
92. http://niceblogger.com
93. http://www.dumblittleman.com
94. http://cashtactics.net
95. http://ez-onlinemoney.com

I am providing this list here, as these blogs will be useful in your link-building campaigns. But, please, use this information responsibly. Only post comments when you can add something to the general discussion and only add a single link to your comment. Blogs that allow dofollow links are getting rare, due, mainly, to people spamming them. Help keep these sites 'dofollow' by being nice, actually contributing, and following the rules.

Twenty-five Simple but Effective Ways to Protect Yourself Against Phishing

Phishing is a form of confidence trick that scamsters use to try and get you to part with sensitive information. It started with attempts to gain access to bank accounts, but these days it can be an attempt to gain access to any accounts where money is stored or can be used to buy goods.

Various forms of phishing are also known as: carding, brand spoofing and web spoofing. The scammers are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their attacks and apart from the tried and tested method of embedding seemingly-innocuous links in emails that redirect the user to fake sites they also employ pop-up windows that encourage you to enter sensitive information, URL masks that conjure up real Web addresses, and keystroke loggers that are lurking around waiting to capture your user ids and passwords even as you type them.

Phishing is usually conducted using email and more often than not directs users to a website which is masquerading as a genuine site. The term phishing is a variant of fishing and alludes to the use of increasingly sophisticated lures to 'fish' for users' financial information and passwords. Indeed, recent phishing attempts have been targeting the customers of banks and on-line payment services such as PayPal. While the first such examples were sent indiscriminately in the hope of finding a customer of a given bank or service, recent research has shown that phishers may in principle be able to establish what bank a potential victim has a relationship with, and then send an appropriate spoofed email to this victim. This practice of targeted phishing being termed spear phishing.

There is a constant cat and mouse game between the fraudsters who perpetrate these swindles and the the security people who are hot on their heels. The good news, for the user, is that you don't have to be a tech-savvy geek to protect yourself from phishing attacks. As long as you have some basic information, know some tricks and keep your wits about you then you can keep yourself safe on the internet.

Here are twenty simple guidelines to help you:

1. Don't trust strangers. This is advice every child is given, but it apples just as well to everyone on the internet. If an email comes in from someone you don't know, do not even open it. Even better, set your email junk and spam filters so they only deliver mail from those people who are in your address book.

2. Don't trust email links. If an email manages to make it way through your spam filter and you accidentally open it, then don't click on any links. Even if you get an email from someone you think you know and the link might be suspicious, navigate directly to the site yourself, don't use the embedded link.

3. Protect your privacy. OK, so you clicked on a link in an email, and you are taken to a site that asks for personal details. DO NOT ENTER ANYTHING. Often these sites will use threats to try and get you to enter personal information. Just ignore these warnings and leave the site.

4. Use the Phone, Not the Mouse. If you get an email claiming to be from a bank or an utility company or the like, don't click on any links. If you have reason to believe it may be genuine, pick up the phone instead and call them to verify.

5. Use the keyboard, Not the Mouse. It you get an email claiming to be from on-line banks or companies like eBay or Amazon, these are frequently used by scammers. If the eMails do not address you by name, they are a scam. Even if they do address you buy name, do not click on the links in any email. Instead, type their web address directly into your web browser and check the information out that way.

6. Look for the Lock. Valid sites that use proper encryption to secure personal data transfer are characterized by a lock (typically on the bottom right of the browser, sometimes to the left of the input box (where you type in URLs or search terms)). Also check that the web page itself is secure. A secure web page begins with https:// rather than the more usual http://.

7. Learn to Spot the Difference. The fact that a website displays the encryption lock symbol does not necessarily mean that the site is authentic. Always double-click on the lock icon. This will bring up the security certificate for that site. Ensure that you check the name on the security certificate matches the name of the site on the address bar.

8. Check a Site Using Wrong Input. If you believe that you have accidentally gone to a spoof website, there is a very easy way to check this. Deliberately enter an incorrect password into the form they provide you. A genuine site will let you know that the password is incorrect and will let you try again. A spoof site will accept that password and, in all likelihood, will then redirect you to a page saying that they are having technical difficulties before asking you to try again later. Real sites have error trapping, fake sites do not, because they cannot.

9. Don't Replicate Passwords. Yes, I know, you are a member of umpteen sites and you can't remember the passwords for all of them. But, if you use the same password everywhere, then if your password is caught by one phishing attempt, all your accounts have been cracked. The rules are, use different passwords everywhere and replace your passwords often. Technology can help you though. Two Stanford professors have come up with software called PwdHash (for Password Hash) that scrambles any password you type, and then creates an unique sign-on for each site that you visit. Also ensure that you use STRONG passwords. A mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols. For example V3ry~5tr0ng would be a 'very strong' password. Easy to remember, but not that easy to guess.

10. Keep Aware, Keep your Eyes Open. Most spyware type spam emails are written by those who do not have English as their first language. They are typically littered with typographic and grammatical errors. They may even be written in ALL CAPS. Teach yourself to recognize such emails, then report them as spam.

11. Familiarity Breeds Awareness. Learn to reconize spam and phishing type emails. They are typically all written and framed in similar styles. Once you have seen a few, you can easily spot them. There are lots of websites out there that maintain examples of spam, phishing and general scam emails so you can familiarize yourself with them.

12. Scammers Love Greed. I am certain that you have heard the phrase 'if it's too good to be true, then it probably is' applied to confidence tricks of all kinds. Well, the same is true in the internet world. It someone promises to give you money for your personal details, or if there is an offer that's too good to be true, then these are most probably scam-type emails.

13. Secure your Computer. Never, ever, leave your computer logged on and unattended. Always log out from any site that you are logged in to and either lock or shut down computer before you leave. Don't make it easy for identity thieves.

14. You can Never be Too Careful. If you have an on-line bank account or credit cards, log on to the account on a frequent basis. This way you can check for and spot any suspicious activity before you are cleaned out.

15. Even a Little Knowledge is a Good Thing. When it comes to phishing and other internet scams, a little knowledge is always a good thing. The more you know, the more you can protect yourself. Always keep up with the latest news.

16. Dispose of Old Computers Properly. We all keep so much personal information on computers. If you are selling or disposing of an old computer, make certain that it has been completely erased first. Erase the hard drive several times then re-install a fresh copy of the operating system before giving it away. This rule also applies, increasingly, to smartphones.

17. Use Verifiable Email Systems. Just like websites, emails can be spoofed. However, if you use email clients that support S/MIME digital signatures you can check that both the sender's address is correct and you can then verify their digital signature. This is a very effective anti-phishing methodology.

18. Keep up to date. Ensure that you software, particularly operating system, antivirus and email software is always up to date. This gives you the latest bug fixes and protects you from the latest viruses and trojans.

19. Maintain a Firewall. Always ensure that your computer and home network are protected with antivirus software and firewall software. This will prevent you from being infected with Trojans and keyloggers and will stop anyone from accessing your computer remotely.

       

20. Use Dual-level Login. If you are logging on to a sensitive site, it is best to use a dual combination of login methods. A password and remote verification of a pin number or your ATM card, for example. This makes it doubly hard to crack an account.

21. Using Tokens. Consider using ad ID Vault USB Token. This encrypts all user IDs and passwords, storing them on a flash drive. This drive can then be used to securely log onto various websites. These tokens also come with a list of legitimates sites and help to prevent key-logging software from working effectively. The USB Vault itself is password protected, so thieves have to crack this device as well as users' own passwords.

22. SPYBLOCK. Developed by the same Sanford professors who also developed PwdHash, this tool helps prevent Trojan horse keyloggers from stealing passwords.

23. Extend your Browser. Browser extensions like Antiphish used as a plug-in by Mozilla's Firefox offer protection against phishing attacks by maintaining LISTS of passwords and other sensitive information, and issuing warnings when users type this information on fishy sites.

24. Sender ID Famework. This is new technology that is in the pipeline from Microsoft and CipherTrust. This fights against spoofing websites by verifying the source of each email.

25. Delayed Password Disclosure. Also referred to as DPD, this technique protects against pop-up windows that ask for sensitive details (known as doppelganger window attacks), works against phishing attacks when users enter passwords letter by letter, one following the other only after a corresponding image is recognized.

And just because we are all moving to wireless in our homes, here is an extra security precaution.

26. Protect your Network. Always password protect your network with a strong password. This protects your wireless network and the computers on it from being hacked from outside. Turn off your network when you are not using it, particularly at night.

When it comes to phishing, ignorance is never bliss. The more you know, the more chance you have of having the right level of awareness to be able to protect yourself.

Learn more and keep yourself safe on the internet. The truth is that the thieves can only continue their phishing attempts because there are gullible people who falls for it. The more people who know the warning signs and know how to protect themselves, the more unlikely they are to be taken in.

Scams, Reviews and Marketing

Welcome to my new blog about scams, reviews and marketing. I have been working on-line for almost ten year now, mostly on my own website Celtnet, where I publish Celtnet Recipes and Dyfed's Adventures in Publishing where I write about writing and publishing.

Elsewhere on the web I have been writing about internet scams, internet security and internet marketing for almost five years.

But all that information has been either on other sites, as guest blogs or as ghostwritten material. It has hardly ever been under my own name.

I was using my knowledge to make money for other people, and though I was being well paid for my writing skills, I would probably have been better off sharing my knowledge directly and making money off that knowledge.

Recent events have made me re-evaluate things in my life and this blog is the result of that.

Partly it will be a place where I can bring together various bits of content that I've created in the past. It will also be a place where I can practice what I preach, whilst bringing you along with me.

How quickly can someone, with a bit of experience and more than a little knowledge get a completely new blog off the ground, and start making money from it.

Today is day 0.