Some Basic HTML Tags for Article Submissions

Posted on September 24th, 2007 in Tutorials/Helps by Dan

If you’re going to be involved online, you should probably learn some basic HTML. I know that I talked about this is a previous post as well, but this time I want to give you some specific examples. Specifically, I want to go over the tags that you should know for article submissions.

Most of the article directories that I’ve dealt with only have basic text editors for you to enter your article into. Well, if you want your article to have a little formatting, you will have to do all of that stuff manually. Whether it be adding stuff in bold, italics or whatever, you’ll have to do it the old fashioned way. So here are some of those basic tags and how to use them.

Bold

<strong>text to be bolded</strong>

Italics

<em>text to be italicized</em>

Unordered List

An unordered list is one that has bullet points, not numbers. So to start one, you have to use <ul>. Then you’ll have your list of items. Before each item, you put the tag <li>, then after each item you put </li>. Once you are done with the whole list, put the tag </ul> to end the list.

Example:

  • Item 1
  • Item 2

Ordered List

An ordered list is a list with numbers in order next to each item. You do these the same as the unordered list, only you need to open the list with <ol> and close the list with </ol>.

Example:

  1. Item 1
  2. Item 2

Hyperlinks

For information on creating hyperlinks, I’m going to refer you to a post I did previously that will cover it in more detail:
Creating Links for Article Submissions

Is Overture’s Inventory Tool Dead?

Posted on September 19th, 2007 in Website Tools by Dan

From the looks of it, yes! Granted, they have been on the death bed for several months now, only showing keyword results from January. So in some senses this is probably a good thing.

Before you start worrying about what you’re going to do without the Overture tool, let me give you some other options. One that I use a lot is the WordTracker Free Keywords Tool. This tool gives you an average daily number rather than a monthly number, so make sure you take that into account.

You can also use the regular WordTracker tool, which will give you some other calculations. This tool is a subscription tool, but you can do free trials on it.

Rumor has it that Yahoo! is going to be introducing a new tool in the future but who knows when that will be. So don’t let this be your excuse to not do any keyword research. Find other tools and get it done!

PS. Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day!!!

Overnight Success….

Posted on September 17th, 2007 in Motivation by Dan

I don’t know what it is, but I’ve noticed that a lot of people get involved with starting a new internet business and expect that it is just going to be an overnight success just because it’s online. It’s almost like there is a magic URL out there that has an “Easy Button” that will make all of your wildest dreams come true. (If any of you have this URL, please send it my way ;-) )

Jeremy Schoemaker, the guy behind ShoeMoney.com, made a great little video a while back that I think illustrates his thoughts on this topic perfectly. Here’s the video.

Here’s something I think we all need to be reminded of from time to time: being successful in anything is going to take working at it. Whether its an online or offline venture, you’re still going to have to treat it like a business. You’re going to have to learn new things, try new things and see what happens, and as with most businesses you may lose a little money along the way. But keep going. If you keep going and keep working at it you’re going to get there. Don’t give up on what you’re trying to achieve.

Anyway, this is just something that I’ve been thinking about quite a bit over the last couple of weeks and thought I’d share the though here. Feel free to share any of your thoughts or comments as well!

List of Social Media Sites

Posted on September 13th, 2007 in Offsite SEO by Dan

As most of you probably know, there are a whole bunch of social sites out there. Getting involved with these is one way that you can get a lot of social links. If you’ve ever heard of the term SMO (Social Media Optimization), this is exactly what I’m referring to.

I’m going to give a big long list at the end of this post with a whole bunch of these social sites. What you should probably do is before just jumping in and trying to tackle all of them, get familiar with a couple of them and then gradually start to use more. The concept behind each one is usually pretty similar, but you’ll have to play around with them to really get the hang of it. In future posts I’ll go over a few that I use most consistently.

This is in no way a comprehensive list, and if you have any others that you like that you think I should add to this list, let me know!

Here’s the list!

BlinkBits.com
BlinkList
Blogmemes
BlogMarks.net
Blue Dot
BUMPzee!
co.mments
Connotea
del.icio.us
de.lirio.us
Digg
DotNetKicks.com
DZone
FARK.com
Feed Me Links!
Furl
Fleck.com
IndianPad
linkaGoGo
Ma.gnolia.com
mister-wong.com
Newsvine
Netscape.com
PlugIM
ppnow
RawSugar
reddit.com
Shadows
Simpy
Spurl.net
Sphere
StumbleUpon
Taggly
Technorati
Tailrank
ThisNext
Webride
My Web Yahoo!

Why Would You Need a List?

Posted on September 6th, 2007 in Marketing by Dan

I get asked all of the time, “How do I develop a list?” Almost every time I am asked this question I respond with a question like this: “Why do you need a list?” I get a variety of answers, but the most common answer that I get is “So I can continually market to the people on my list!”

Let’s think about this for a second. Let’s assume that you have just signed up to be on someone else’s list, and every other day you get an email from that person marketing to you. So every other day you get an email in your inbox that says “Buy now!”, “Buy now!”, “Buy now!”. How long are you going to stay signed up for that list? I don’t know about you, but I’m not sticking around very long.

If you’re going to have some type of a list, make sure you have some good, quality content that you can share with these people. Treat your ‘list’ like people that are signed up because they feel that you know something that they don’t. Use this as an opportunity to allow them to see some of your knowledge without giving everything away.

Do we market to these people? Yes! But don’t make it so obvious. Focus on the information and helping them before you focus on cramming another product down their throat.

Having a list that you can keep in contact with is a very good thing to do. Just make sure you’re approaching it from the right mindset.