When you choose an advertising network, you need to look at a lot more than how much ads cost or how much you will get paid to host ads. You need to make sure that the reach of the ads is appropriate for your target audience.

Advertisers
If you are getting ready to run ads online, make sure that your ads are being seen by the very people you know to be your ideal audience. What good is it going to do to run an ad for new recipe card software if the ads are going to be running on sites for used car parts or dog grooming supplies? You want your ad to be seen by cooks, moms, crafters, or anyone else who might actually click through and make a purchase.

Publishers
If you are going to give up valuable retail space on your website, you want to ensure that your site’s visitors are going to find interest and worth in the ads they see. Otherwise, the only things you are going to get in the end are a bevy of annoyed site visitors and ads that do not generate any income for your site.

Niche Ad Networks
The good news is that there are niche ad networks popping up. I’ll give you an example. One of the more specifically targeted companies is Intergi (www.intergi.com), an advertising company that caters to gamers. They partner with the foremost gaming web publishers to give advertisers the exposure to gamers worldwide. Gamers are a very specific subset when it comes to purchasing trends. They are also super important right now to advertisers targeting the wired generation. Studies have shown that gamers aren’t just kids anymore. Most gamers are older, working adults with a good supply of disposable income. They are an advertiser’s dream.

I have a mailing list for this website I created that is a clearing house for free hair bow instructions. The mailing list is getting close to 1200 members and a majority of them are very active on a daily basis. You can only imagine the amount of e-mail this generates. It is my opinion that using a mailing list to keep this group of people together is not the most streamlines way to go about things.

Since my members upload a lot of pictures, sets of step-by-step instructions, and tips about the crafting industry, I was thinking that a great way to better organize all of the information coming in and still give my members a way to participate heavily would be to add a wiki to my website. A wiki is user-generated set of web pages. You can set the permissions and anyone can make additions and edits. All of the changes are logged so that accountability is present. Your users can add entire pages of information, photos, videos, links,

WetPaint is a site that allows you to create a free wiki. They’ll even host it for you. You can’t knock a freebie that won’t even tax your own server account. Although I would eliminate the dynamic e-mail list I currently use, the free wiki has a discussion forum on it that members can use to interact and comment. It would make finding old information much simpler and organization would upgrade considerably. I have also been looking at other Wetpaint wikis that have chat rooms and blogs. This is a highly nteractive way to bring a group of people with the same interests together.

Now, nothing is really absolutely free you know. There are contextual ads on the pages and links to other Wetpaint Wikis. This is something you can have waived if you are using the wiki in an educational setting and can qualify for the removals. I think this is a GREAT tool for teachers. A classroom wiki is a super way to engage children in learning about collaborative efforts through technology. Technology and children are like catnip and cats, so the draw will be strong.

Wikis are gaining momentum. If you’ve done a search on any given topic lately, you have probably noticed that wiki pages tend to come out near the top of your search results. If you want to bypass all of the irrelevant search results that search engines like Google spit out at you, you can use Qwika. It simply searched through all of the wikis on the net. How cool is that?

Pay once and get web hosting and a domain name forever? 
It sounds almost too good to be true. Well, it is true, but it’s also only available for a limited number of new web hosting accounts. THC is offering their Rudolph hosting plan to the first 1000 plans sold for a one-time fee of $95. That gets you both the hosting plan and the domain for life. You don’t have to pay ever again – no hidden costs or subsequent fees.

The hosting plan is just as powerful, if not more so, as anything else you’ve probably been looking at lately. You get 250 GB disk space, 3000 GB bandwidth, unlimited MySQL databases, PHP4, web mail, professional website design tools and that free domain for life that I already mentioned. It’s ready to go out-of-the-box, so to speak.

Check it out. As I mentioned, this deal is only good for the first 1000 plans they sell. My current hosting plan is good, but I have to pay each year to renew my domain name and my hosting. I’ll spend considerably over $95 in the first two years with my current plan. If you are budget minded or have been getting cold feet about starting up your own domain, this is a great time to take a plunge, at minimal risk.

I love that the internet gives me access to thousands and thousands of cool t-shirt designs. I’ve found some of the funniest, hippest, most cutting-edge designs online and ordered them with the click of a mouse. And, when all else fails, t-shirts are the best gift option out there. Everyone wears t-shirts.

Have you ever wished that you had a way to put one of your signature pithy sayings onto a t-shirt? Or, maybe you have a great design in mind, but no way to actually get it onto a t-shirt? I’m looking at an amazing concept right now on the BlueCotton website. They have a tool called Design Studio.

Design Studio lets you design your own t-shirts. You choose from an array of clipart, fonts, effects, and colors. You cam move elements around, resize them, mess with the color schemes, just about anything you can think of. In the end, you come away with a design as unique as you are. You can use it to make a cool logo shirt for a fundraiser, a design for a special birthday, custom fraternity t-shirts, a saucy slogan for your girls’ weekend out, or anything else you can dream. The possibilities are endless.

Give Design Studio a try, especially if you have a Christmas gift you’re stuck on. This is the perfect gift solution for absolutely anyone.

If you want your own domain or a blog where you have full control or a web presence for your business, you are likely looking for the web hosting services that meet your needs. You can design a website and have it residing on your hard drive, but until you have your site on a server, nobody will be able to access it. So, that is where web hosting comes into play. You pay a monthly or annual fee to a company to host all of your web pages, images, e-mail, etc.

You cannot count on the free hosts. I cannot stress that enough. Your best option is to find a web host that fits into your budget and pay for an account so that you have absolute control over your web content.

Looking around at all the thousands of options for web hosting can be confusing. I spent a good month researching my options before I settled on my current web host. I looked at their customer rating, prices, pre-installed scripts, availability of customer service, uptime, and a handful of other parameters. I feel like I made an educated decision.

When I compared companies, I will tell you that I stuck to the larger, more established web hosting services. I ruled out the small players and new companies. I wanted a company with a good track record and a reputation in the industry that I could see via multiple sources.

One of the companies I researched was Network Solutions, simply because they have been around since the dawn of time – at least in internet years. They are not a fly-by-night operation and their reputation is the most valuable thing they have to offer. Their monthly costs are reasonable and their plans offer adequate space and transfer limits. Plus, they have 24/7 customer support with live people available. That is a whole lot more than the smaller companies will offer you in the way of help and support.

Do your research. That’s my best advice. But, I do suggest you add Network Solutions to your short list of options.

This one is for all of you small business owners who find their way to my blog. I have a mailing list with over 1000 members who are nearly all small online business owners, and I understand the struggle to make a mark online. I see how competitive the market place can be and how important affordable, effective advertising is if you want to rise above the rest.

Google and Yahoo Are Expensive
Are you looking for a way to advertise online in the highly competitive PPP (pay per click) environment? Sometimes it might not seem like it, but there actually is a world outside of Google and Yahoo when it comes to the world of PPC. Adknowledge’s BidSystem can run text ads at up to 30% less than the Google Adwords or Yahoo network prices. Their system has click fraud prevention measures and you do not pay for low converting users, which removes a lot of the risk of PPC advertising.

Why Contextual Advertising?
Contextual advertising is the current online trend and it seems to be the best bet, because you’re ensured that your ad is being displayed to users who are interested in similar content and topics. If a user does a search for Florida beaches and sees ads for a Florida hotel or travel agency on the resulting site, they are more likely to click on the ads since they arrived at the site already interested in the subject matter.

Try This
If you want to see how BidSystm will work for your advertising needs, now is a good time to give them a try. If you sign up now they will give you $50 in FREE PPC Advertising. You can’t lose with a bonus like that.

I have mailing list of over 100 people who are all involved in one way or another in the business of hair accessories. There are hobbyists who only sell to friends, small businesses in their local communities, and big online retailers. We all have the same goal and share a lot of information.

One thing the members of the group are great about is helping one in another in brainstorming things like business names and logo ideas. So, I see a lot of those logos bandies about. I have a couple tips that I would like to share, because all too often the logos I see people choosing to use in the end are complicated, multi-colored designs.

1. Make sure your logo is just as attractive and easy to recognize if it is printed in straight black and white – no grey, no half tones, nothing except solid black and white. There will come a time you want a simple version of your logo for invoices or low-cost flyers. When you get into color, costs go up, so you want to always have a b/w option.

2. Use clean lines and simple designs. Think about what your logo might look like if you need to shrink it down to a 1-inch square. What does it look like if you make a copy of a copy of a Xerox machine? Will it become incomprehensible once you make it small? Is there so much detail that it turns into an unattractive blob?

3. Your logo needs to be easy to remember. If a customer sees your logo, will they remember it? This is your brand, your image. Think about how the Nike swoosh is burned into your brain. Ideally, your logo will incorporate something just as unique, simple and memorable.

4. Make sure you keep your logo in a vector-based file format for future use. A jpg might work if you are putting your logo online, but it won’t print well.

One thing I do a lot of as a freelance designer who specializes in corporate and industrial business work is what I call logo repair or logo recovery. Often, a business or individual will have a copy of their logo that someone else designed for them, but not in an appropriate digital format. They will have a printout or a low resolution jpg and when they need to have print jobs done, they no longer have a clean logo in a print quality format. I go back and re-design their logo, often improving it as I go, and give it back tot hem in an appropriate vector file format. If you need a service like this, please drop me a line via my contact form. My prices are super reasonable.

I talked about several topics involved in getting your online presence up and running when you are a small business owner. I’ve gone over choosing a host, designing a logo, choosing a name for your business and ways to make sure you stay ahead of your competitors in the search engines.

So, how about taking a look at who is visiting your site, how much traffic you are generating and where that traffic is finding you? That is all as simple as making sure you have a good stats program installed on your site and then learning how to make the most of the data it gives you.

GoStats offers both free and paid professional stats for your site. Best of all, they are simple to install and even easier to interpret. I suggest at least signing up for the free stats and seeing how comfortable you are with the data presentation. You can always upgrade to a more advanced account.

The free account does give you access to information about when and where your visitors are coming. I find this to be the most useful part of my stats, because it tells me if advertising is driving traffic, if links from other businesses are successful, or if a particular search engine is returning results for me. It also tells me which days of the week are best for my target demographic and what time throughout the day those people are online and looking for the particular information my website offers.

If you know which pages on your site are most popular, you can gauge where you need to focus future efforts. If I see that a majority of my traffic is coming in to look at a particular product, I will add new products along the same lines.

If you already have stats, learn how to use them. If you don’t have them yet, sign on at GoStats and start learning more about your site’s traffic.

Did you know there is an entire website dedicated to the illustrious topic of poop? Neither did I – until tonight. That’s why I enjoy Marisa’s Scribbleonthewall.com blog. She pointed me the way to this unique website. About poop. I kid you not. Check it out for yourself (it’s non-offensive and actually pretty clever).

Why do you read blogs? I’ll bet you have more than one reason. I know I do. Back when I started reading blogs, they were not even called “blogs” yet. I think we were still saying online journal or online diary. And, that is what they were for the most part – diaries. They were little musings about daily life.

These days people blog about anything. You can use a blog to talk about political opinions, run a quasi-magazine, educate on a given topic, chronicle a journey or life event – the list goes on. I tend toward blogs that are catch-all starting points to find other blogs, websites, and current events. That’s why Scribbleonthewall.com appeals to me. She basically keeps a living history of the most interesting web sites she has found in her online travels. It’s like a fun virtual road trip.

Did you check out the poop site yet? You know you want to.

Some bloggers live for comments on their blog posts. There are those who simper and beg for feedback. There are others who go out of their way to post inflammatory link baiting articles just to incite people to comment.

The question really is:
What kind of comment is actually beneficial to your blog?

If you look at the numerous comments made by the worshipful simpletons over on Michael Arrington’s blog, you might think a string of 25 comments reading “me too!” or “I agree” or “Can you feel my pink lips kissing your hairy ass?” would be the ideal kind of comments to find on a blog. If you don;t know who Arrington is, there is a good introduction in the article I just linked.

I ask – What does that really get you in the end? A puffed up feeling of self importance, perhaps? What do those comments add, though, in the way of SERPs (Search Engine Result Positioning)?

I would rather have no comments or just one good, informational comment per post, when it comes down to it. When I look at my stats, I see that often there is traffic streaming in from the search engines that has found me because someone has added solid information to my article by way of their comment. Once a comment is published to my blog, it becomes part of the fabric of the article.

Here is an example
I wrote an article about chicken pot pie recalls and a reader commented that they would like to see my own recipe for chicken pot pie. That encouraged me to add an additional post to my blog with my recipe. Yet another reader commented on that second post, adding their own twists on the dish. Some of the language in the comment is actually how new readers found my site via search engines. Lots of readers. Thank you to my commentator for adding valuable content to my site.

Now, how would 25 comments on a post simply agreeing with my opinion add to the value of my content? It wouldn’t. That is why I am happier with a handful of solid comments rather than a plethora of empty comments. My traffic is awesome. It is climbing weekly. My repeat visitor count is on the rise and the search engines are indexing me like gangbusters.

Nothing to complain about here, folks.

This is something I meant to get around to about two weeks ago. One of my favorite bloggers, Prija of Blogging, The Movie (also fondly known as the Sneaky Bastard) pointed out that link trains and their ilk are technically “link Schemes” and as such, they are frowned upon by Google. But then, what does not Google not frown upon?

Ponder that one, my friends.

Keeping firmly within all said guidelines, Prija manned the engine and started a NoFollow Link Train contest. NoFollow is the key element here, but even more important is that the prizes include a copy of the 4-Hour Workweek book and some pretty hot exposure for your blog on the Blogging, The Movie website. So, without further ado:

***** Start Here ******

Prize

1. Free 4-Hour Workweek Book.
2. A chance to have a permanent link on front page of Blogging The Movie dot com.
3. Sign the Records Book as it travels to 10 different winners.

Contest

This contest is sponsored by BloggingTheMovie – A featured documentary about Bloggers. This contest contains no-follow links. So it is Google friendly and by creating an original introduction you won’t be dinged for duplicate content. This is an ongoing marketing campaign. There will be 10 winners at which each winner will be able to host their own contest which will be sponsored by Blogging The Movie. 1st Winner: Susan Suarez | 2nd Winner: Investing Adventures | 3rd Winner: Can be you!

Rules

1. Write an original short snippet introduction to avoid duplicate content.
2. Just copy the section between the start and end.
3. Add your 3 favorite blogs with rel=”nofollow” in between the link on the code page. i.e. <a href=”http://www.url.com/” mce_href=”http://www.url.com/” rel=”nofollow” target=”_blank” title=”url name”>URL.com</a>. This is extremely important to ensure that Google won’t ding us. Make sure you contact the bloggers and insist they participate so they can keep this going.
4. Email your URL of your blog post to Free4hourWorkweek@gmail.com
[Deadline: 12/31/07]

Favorite Blogs

Betshopboy | DerekSemmler | Enkay Blog | MsDanielle | JimiMorrisonsHead | Siteguide.us | Darin.cc | JonLee.ca | Samanathon | MrGaryLee | KellyCho | SusanSuarez | RobertaFerguson | Bloggrrl | TheKingKongBlog | TheBeefJerkyBlog | LifeisColourful | MarketingDeviant | MaleWail | RomanDock | 40hourstogo | TylerCruz | JonathanVolk | Egonitron | SuncoastScribe | Gnaka | WorldOfAngel | MyBlogContest | TheGeekBoys | ThinkingOutloud | TableForFive  | NanashiInc. | Add your 3 Favorite Blogs here (it is important that you change the link to rel=”no follow”)

If you were not tagged, you can still copy the list and add yourself on. No worries, it’s a win-win for everyone. So lets get ready. Get on the list to become the 3rd winner on the Train Contest

***** End Here ******

I love being able to recommend Florida businesses on Suncoast Scribe. I’m especially thrilled to be able to present you with a company who has their headquarters in Gainesville, Florida – which is where I used to live before I moved back here to the Tampa Bay area.

More significantly, telling you about the 352 Media Group feels like a good fit for my blog, because I have so many people who come here looking of information on starting their small crafting businesses. I get multiple e-mails each day asking me for input about starting a business website. When I find out that the business owner has no experience in web design or site promotion, I always recommend that they hire professionals to help them.

That’s where 352 Media Group comes into the picture. They are a Florida web development company with offices nationwide –Atlanta, Gainesville, New York, Seattle, Los Angeles, Detroit, Ann Arbor, and Jacksonville, FL. They specialize in custom web design, web application development, CD/DVD production, web marketing, e-commerce solutions, and more. Plus, they won 14 Addy Awards in 2006 alone.

Give them a look and see if they might be the right fit for your business needs. . Don’t forget to check out their blog. It’s amusing.

If you have a store or a restaurant or a school in a physical location I think the old adage “if you build it they will come”. When you have a website, on the other hand, you need to actually put effort into making sure your site is accessible, easy to use, and helps the user navigate the pages. Look at this custom search engine that was compiled for Collins College, for example:
http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=004734434582323036421%3A182liotgk9y

Collins has set up the custom engine to use for searching their website. It’s a great example of utilizing technology that already exists on the internet to integrate usability into your site. When your site visitors feel like they have a better handle on how to find the information they are looking for, they are more apt to spend more time on your site and consider your pages their last stop in their quest for an answer.

Consider integrating a customized search on your own website.

Up until recently, bloggers seem to have been able to get off the hook when it comes to issues of defamation. Blogging has been an unmoderated outlet for people express opinions and it often gets snarky, mean, and utterly raw. What started as basically an online dairy has evolved into not just a place to vent, as you would with a notebook you keep in your bedside drawer, but also a place where the blogger knows others will possibly see their thoughts and opinions.

Now, we see people trying to fight against the voice of bloggers using the legal system. Here in Florida, The New School of Orlando, a private school, is suing Sonjia McSween, claiming defamation. They say that a blog she wrote about her daughter’s experience at the school was critical to the point of going over the line.

The school wants McSween to stop publishing posts about the school and to pay damages. McSween says she simply wanted to share her experiences with others. The school accuses her of reporting fabricated information.

It’s a question about how freedom of speech applies to blogs. Blogs are a soapbox for the author. How far can we go and to what extent can others control what we say?

I’ve already experienced a lock of freedom of speech when two blogs I had on sub domains of Rainbow of Words were pulled offline. The owner did not like my content, and despite a lack of a TOS that outlined her actions, she exerted strong arm tactics to censor me.

There have been countless incidents of bloggers losing their jobs when someone at their company comes across their blog. And now, a school claiming defamation of interference with their business. This goes beyond public relations and becomes an issue of information control.

I think bloggers should use tact and wisdom when writing. I think we should do our very best to speak only the truth and not to perpetuate unfounded rumors and lies. But, I think a blogger’s opinion is their own. A fact is not an opinion. I am sure that the New School of Orlando is teaching even their kindergarteners that language arts lesson. Now, it needs to be put into practice.

Many of my readers may be aware that when I arrived back into town from my grandmother’s September 1 funeral, I was greeted by an almost impossible to comprehend message from the owner of the Rainbow of Words blog host telling me my accounts had been suspended. Apparently she did not agree with the statements I had made in one of my postings.

That two-week suspension turned out to be permanent, as the owner never once responded to me and has yet to allow me access to my blogs – blogs I had been writing in for close to a year.

Anyway, what it taught me is that if you love to blog, you need to have your own hosting account. I had already set this blog up months before and had intended to migrate my other two blogs onto their own domains on this hosting account. I’d been fearful about starting over in the race for Page Rank, but as we all know now – Google Page Rank is as close to worthless in the world of online marketing as it has ever been.

If you do not have your OWN hosting account now, get one. If you are using a free blog host somewhere or piggy-backing on a friend’s account, or any other situation where you do not have full and complete access to the files and the determination of your own Terms of Service, then you need to look into blog hosting accounts pronto.

While I personally recommend Wordpress hosting, there are also other blogging platforms that are just as well-liked and easy to navigate. Movable Type is one of the other popular blogging software packages. Several big hosting companies are able to offer accounts that cost close to nothing on a monthly basis. The benefits are many: control over your blog’s content, the ability to upload files and install plugins, sub domains, matching e-mail addresses, and more. AQHost is one provider, for example, that offers free instant installation of the blogging software and video tutorials to walk you through getting started. Since customer service is a MUST when considering a blog host, this is key information.