A: Back in 1998 or so I read a book that really shifted my thinking about small business and the Internet. Called Striking it Rich.com (now out of print), the book profiled 23 “incredibly successful websites you probably never heard of.”

One of those sites was AsktheBuilder.com.

The book profiled the site and its owner, the builder, Tim Carter. Tim is a nationally syndicated columnist and his website is a font of home improvement columns, videos, tips and help.

His is also your prototypical small business, with but one and a half employees. Yet not only has Tim been incredibly successful with his online business, he’s convinced anyone can have similar success.

How? Hold on and I’ll tell you, because last week the affable Tim told me.

But first, let’s get an idea of just what online success might mean for a small business:

When Tim started his site back in the mid-’90s, he sold ads manually — making phone calls and getting banner ads. But the advent of Google revolutionized his business. All of a sudden, instead of having to sell ads one at a time, he was able to sign up with Google AdSense and have Google populate his content with ads.

How successful was this strategy?

So successful that Google recently did a case study about AsktheBuilder. Here is what Google says:

“In April 2004, Carter learned about AdSense for content sites. He recognized that it would enable him to reach thousands of advertisers and screen ad quality with minimal time and effort. Carter immediately experienced a jump in advertising revenue of 400%. His monthly advertising revenues, including AdSense, grew from $1,500 to $7,500.”

Wow!

But it gets better. The case study concluded with the fact that AsktheBuilder soon began to make $1,400 a day in ad revenue, but according to Carter, that is now incorrect. Today it makes significantly more than that.

So how can we duplicate his success? Here are the steps, according to the master himself:

1. Tap people’s pain or pleasure: Tim Carter says that people go online for one of two reasons: Either for pleasure (to play games, shop, learn, etc.) or to alleviate pain (pay a bill, research solutions, and so on.)

To create a site that draws a lot of people, and therefore Google ad revenue, you need solve problems, such as what Carter does by helping people easily learn about do-it-yourself home improvement solutions.

Solving problems therefore requires that you create content on your site, whether that be written or video. If yours is a service business or you are a consultant and you want to sell your expertise online, you need to create easy to understand articles for posting on your site.

Note however, that even if yours is a product-based, this strategy would work for you too. Says Tim, “Figure out how to give your knowledge away for free and become an expert; get people to trust your information and sell ads around that.”

For his part, Carter is now also moving strongly into video solutions and believes there is even more profit to be had there. (You can see his videos either on his site, or on YouTube.com/AsktheBuilder.)

2. Become an SEO expert: Carter does no marketing of his site, other than creating the best, most useful articles and video he can and then making every article as search engine optimizable as possible.

More than 1 million people a month find his site through nothing more than organic search results.

3. Tweak AdSense: Says Google, “Carter quickly began tests using AdSense channels trying different ad formats, colors, and placement to gauge relative effectiveness. He immediately found ads with a yellow background resulted in a 40% drop in income, so he discontinued them. One winning strategy Carter discovered is a rectangular format. … he saw a 20% jump in revenue from placing the rectangle in the upper left corner inside his articles.”

So can a small business make it online? You bet, and in a big way. Just Ask the Builder and you will see how!

[Via - USAToday.Com]

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SEOpen : It have 23 function such as check backlink from Google, Yahoo, Cache Page , Whois domain or view robot.txt file.

SEO For Firefox : Check age of domain, check pagerank , alexa rank , tools to add your post/article to del.icio.us and count inbound link from site begin with .edu

YExplore : Easy way to connect direct to Yahoo Site Explorer Info.

Web Developer :Help you turn off JavaScript, Images, CSS and view your webpage such as Search Enginee

SeoQuake : Analyse result of Search Enginee

KGen : Analyse keywords , leach keywords to Clipboard

Search Status : Make bold links nofollow, back links, page has index, Rank Alexa and Compete.

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Basically there are three version of wordpress; when I say three I mean you have three options to use wordpress as a platform. The first one is the one that you are given for free at wordpress.com. The website itself is using WPMU or wordpress multiuser.  The second is the stand alone version, and the third is the WPMU stand alone version. For the purpose of this article we will only about WPMU.

I have basically spent about 36 hours studying WPMU and comparing it to wordpress stand alone version.  We will not talk about the free wordpress option being offer at wordpress.com because it is just basic, which is mainly geared for simple blogging.  The WP stand along version gives you more control over your blog (capability to upload plugins, custom themes, and applying all sorts of hacks.

My name purpose for trying out MPMU is to see if I could build a social network around it, the more I digged into this matter the more I become shy about from it due to the following reasons:

1. Buddypress is a set of plug ins that is supposed to allow WPMU have the capability to build a social network (comparing to ning.com), but the problem is Buddypress is still in its infancy stage. There are not many Buddypress theme out there at all, designers are still working on it because it is still new in the market.
2. Not many Premium themes are available for WPMU, the stand alone version of WP offer a lot more.
3. If you are thinking about growing your WPMU to be the next myspace or facebook, then please stop and think a little – WPMU is built to be able to scale, but the problem is you have to have a strong server farm working in the background to support it.
4. It will be extremely hard to offer free blog service because there are blogger.com and wordpress.com, they are already offering these service with much more features than your WPMU; the  bottom line is you will have to play a long catch up game with less features.

My feeling is neutral for WPMU and Buddypress, I hope to see them grow because they are free platforms that have the potential to enrich our every day lives.  As of the moment it is hard to build a social network with WPMU Buddypress because it does not give you enough control over the privileges of your members.

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Current Features:
-Price $259
-Double screens, one for reading the other is touchable and is in color.
-ATT & WiFi connection
-Ability to annotate and bookmark
-Lending or Sharing – You could lend an ebook to a friend for a limited 14 days.

Extra Features That will make this gadget more Dominant:
-A browser for surfing the net – This feature would ultimately turn the nook into a small netbook.
-More storage (2 gigs is not enough)
-Play movies and other videos
-Apps

“The nook is using the android operating system, if this thing could be hacked to have the extra features and be like the  iphone then it will definitely make every geek a happy camper.”

When does the nook come out?
It is going to hit the market at the end of November of 2009, just in time for the holidays.  A typical strategy for launching a new gadget into the market.

Video You Should See About the Nook

Conference Meeting About the Nook

Barnes and Nobel cool video about the Nook

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According to L.A Times, “Wallace willfully violated the statutes in question with blatant disregard for the rights of Facebook users whose accounts were compromised by his conduct.” We are not sure if this poor crook has any money, but $711 million is a lot of money.It seems Facebook is fully prepared to wait for the cash.”While we don’t expect to quickly collect the full amount, we’ll work hard to get everything we can,” Simon Axten, a privacy and public policy associate at Facebook, said in a statement. This case is a good example of how spammers are getting punish for their annoying tricks and gimmicks.

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Mistake 1: Generally, people believe that if they get more traffic to their websites that means they will get higher ranks on the search engines but this is not true. Your site is ranked higher on the search engines only if your site having quality back links and SEO friendly website structure. The search engines find the number of the websites that are linking to your website. This shows the popularity of your website. You can read important search engine optimization techniques posted earlier.

Mistake 2: Promotion of only home page is another popular misconception that SEO fresher have. It is necessary to promote all the web pages for better ranking on the search engines.

Misconception no.3: Just getting more sites to link you for gaining high page ranks on search engine. Obtaining inbound links is very essential as it can not only provide you with higher ranks but will also provide you with better and relevant traffic. Therefore, make sure that the link to your website comes from good and relevant websites.

Mistake 4: Your website ranked no. 1 but with not an appropriate keyword, yet it is good for you as you got it ranked on first position. This is the biggest mistake that you can ever make. If your website is not listed for correct or appropriate keyword then the 1st rank on any other keyword is equivalent to having no good rank as you will not get relevant business through it. So target appropriate keywords.

Mistake 5: many a times the SEO fresher thinks that filling up Meta keywords tag is enough, but this is not true. The Meta keywords tag does not have much of impact on the search engines and therefore it will not aid in attaining higher page ranks on search engines.
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