Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Search Engine Submission Tools Open Traffic Floodgates To Websites
Search engine submission tools are excellent tools when it comes to getting our websites indexed in the search engines. Such tools can either be provided by search engine submission services or in the form of software. What they can do for us is rather straightforward – submitting our website details for inclusion in the search engines. Why is it so crucial that we make use of these search engine submission tools?
There are a few reasons why we submit to search engines. One reason is to get our websites indexed as quickly as possible. Indexing is important so that people can locate our websites in the search engines. Websites that are not indexed cannot be found at all, so it doesn’t matter even if we have built a 1000 page website. Indexing in search engines is powerful because search engines network with one another. Once it is picked up by one search engine, the rest would slowly catch up. One trick is to submit your website to MSN, as they allow you to suggest websites for their search engine spiders to explore. MSN tend to index websites faster than Yahoo and Google. Once your website is accepted and indexed in MSN, the rest would follow shortly.
Another reason why we submit to search engines is to optimize exposure of our websites. There are literally hundreds to thousands of small search engines which you may not have heard of. Some of them are in collective partnership with the major search engines, so there is an intricate network of search engines that interact with one another. Pitting yourself against big-timers or established websites in the major search engines can be a draining and most of the time, unrewarding journey. Submitting to the small search engines and getting them indexed gives you greater opportunities to rank high in them.
While submitting to smaller search engines is an excellent idea, webmasters also understand it is a chore to submit to the search engines one by one. It feels like eternity to submit to hundreds of them. People by nature don’t like repetitive tasks especially you are one of those who hate to perform data-entry tasks. The solution is therefore to employ the services of search engine submission tools like search engine submission services or software.
There are many choices in the internet but unfortunately, some of them charge an exorbitant fee to submit your website. Unless your pockets are deep or your returns from search engine submissions far exceed your expenses, you would find using search engine submission tools barely a good investment or website promotion method. Naturally, there are also some unscrupulous services that employ unorthodox or blackhat search engine submission tools to spam the search engines and their network partners with your website details, getting you banned rather ranking well. Discover what the cheap yet effective options are at my blog if you are looking for affordable search engine submission tools.
This article may be freely reprinted or distributed in its entirety in any ezine, newsletter, blog or website. The author's name, bio and website links must remain intact and be included with every reproduction.

Davion is a successful webmaster and author. Read more about search engine submission and reviews of search engine submission tools and find out how these tools can automate search engine submission for faster indexing, instant traffic and more sales at Search-Engine-Submission-Tools.blogspot.com.


Brainstorm: The Essential First Step to Website Development
Brainstorming could be one of the most important steps when starting a website. Brainstorming gives you the focus on what content that you want to relate to your audience. It gives you ideas of what topics will interest you. As well as, it gives your mind the chance to dream. So, get a pencil and let's get started!
Sit down and ask yourself the following questions: First and foremost, "What interests me?", "What drives your interests…Is it swimming? ". Now for example if your interest is swimming, you need to ask the question "What is it about swimming that interests me?". Is it accomplishing a certain amount of laps a day? That is just one example here are some others: Is your interest fishing? What kind of fish do you catch? What lures do you use? Is it traveling? What was the most exotic location you ever visited? What did you do while their? What sites did you see?
You see you need to take time to jot down all the things that interest you. Allow your mind to be free flowing during this exercise. Do not limit yourself in any manner. Also do not erase any ideas, this is just brainstorming. Which means you cannot be wrong. This is important because this one list could drive your whole career in affiliate marketing. I still maintain my original list and I update it regularly. I keep my notebook by my side at all times, because you never know when something will give you that inspiration that could make you thousands of dollars one day.
Try to get a page full of interests. This in why I said, allow this stage to be free flowing. Just look at it like this. The more topics you have, the more content you will have, the more content you have, the more money you will make. Every interest/topic you have can potentially be a website in itself. Just imagine this, if you just had five websites from five topics that generate $40 dollars per day each. That's $200 x 30 days = $6000 dollars per month. Multiply that by 12 months and you have $72,000 dollars per year. And that's from just five topics from your list. Now let's say you have 20 of these website, its mind boggling.
So do everything you can to brainstorm a full page list. And continue to add to it any time you get inspiration. It will definitely pay off in dividends in the future.

Kenneth Elliott is the owner of Market Associate. A website geared towards developing individuals to take control of their lives. To learn more, start here


Beware of Randomizer Schemes
There seems to be a never-ending stream of new scams to hit the Internet virtually every day. One of the more recent additions to this list are the so-called "Randomizers". These are nothing more than a variation of the classic Ponzi scheme, and are blatantly illegal. They sell no product. Their means of bringing money into the program is solely by recruitment of new members. The person at the top (scheme originator) is guaranteed a payout but the other members aren’t. The primary means of funding is from the members themselves, not by sales to people outside the membership. By legal definition, that is a Ponzi scheme.
If you think I am overstating this, I invite you to research the legal definition of ponzi/pyramid schemes as defined by the Federal Trade Commission. In it's simplest definition, a ponzi scheme can be identified by three main criteria:
1) they sell no actual product,
2) the members themselves are the sole contributors to the scheme
3) the focus is based on recruitment of new members
Randomizers are a classic example of those criteria.
There is typically a lottery associated with these programs. Of course, the scheme owners use some convoluted language to say it isn’t really a lottery, but all you have to do is look at how these programs work. Lotteries are legal, but only if you are licensed and officially sanctioned to do run one.
When a new member joins, usually for $10-$30, a part of that immediately goes to the program owner; he can’t lose, except perhaps legally when he/she winds up being indicted for fraud. Another part of the cut goes to the person who referred the new member, which makes the referrer an accessory to felony. And finally, a part (typically $5) goes into the “pool”. Each time a new member joins; someone within the program is randomly selected to receive the $5 pool allotment.
I don’t know any other way to say this, so let me be blunt. The people who think they are going to make money through this system obviously have no understanding of basic mathematics. Not only are the odds against you, those odds continue to decline as the program grows.
The math is painfully simple. If there are 100 people in the program and 5 new members join, your odds of being randomly selected for the $5 are 1 in 20 (5/100 = 0.05%, which translates to 1 in 20). When the membership increases to 500 and 5 new people join, your odds of winning one of the randomly selected pool slots drops to 1 in 100 (5/500 = 0.01%). When the membership reaches 1,000 members, the odds drop to 1 in 200. If the membership reaches 10,000 and 5 new members join, your odds drop to a rather daunting 1 in 2,000. If your "membership" fee was $25, you need to "win" the lottery pool (at the odds I have just given) five times simply to break even.
All Ponzi schemes are beset with a basic conundrum. The schemes need additional members in order to pay out to the current members, a structure typical of chain letters. But as additional members join, your odds of a payout decrease dramatically. Eventually, the scheme collapses due to the sheer weight of its increased membership. When that happens, the vast majority of people walk away with less money than they started with. The owner walks away with a profit. Yet people continue to get sucked into these scams.
Of course, you don’t have to rely solely on the lottery. You also receive a “commission” for bringing new members into the program. That means that in order to make money, you are now in a position of having to recruit people for what is an illegal activity. As is often the case with such scams, the people who are drawn in are all too often the ones who can least afford the membership fee: single moms, senior citizens, and so on.
Now, the owners of the Randomizer sites will try to convince you that they are perfectly legal. I have even seen a few such sites take a proactive approach and state on the site that their particluar version is completely legal. When that happens, you need only ask the owner a simple question: "Would you mind if I contacted the Attorney General's office of your state to ask them if your "opportunity" is legal." The owner will then become amazlingly quiet, or downright belligerent. That should tell you all you need to know.
The sad fact is that most of these schemes are penny ante operations and usually not on a District Attorney's radar unless enough complaints are received. There was a question about the legal aspect of these schemes directed to a Randmizer owner in one of the forums I occasionally frequent. The owners reply was that if it was illegal the government would have shut him down. Talk about convoluted logic. Just because he hasn't been shut down doesn't make it legal. It only means that the government considers him "small potatoes", or hasn't gotten enough complaint filings to initiate an investigation.
My wife and I run several web-promotion sites (traffic exchanges, classifed ad, etc). In all cases, Randomizers are specifically banned from those sites. Other diligent owners of such traffic promotion sites also ban these scams. Unfortunately, not all owners of such facilites are so diligent. As a result, these scams appear in promotion vehicles all over the Internet.
To anyone who is considering joining one of these schemes, you would be well advised to run far, far away as quickly as you can. If you aren't sure about a particular site, ask other Internet Marketers that frequent discussion groups such as Warrior Forum. If all else fails, ask an attorney. But don't let yourself become just another victim.

Ray has a 30+ career in the Computer and Business sectors. He has been a Systems Analyst, Database and Network Administrator, Website Project Manager, IT Architect and Director of IT. Ray has run a number of successful online businesses in the past as well as currently. He has written several print books, ebooks, and magazine articles.
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