Scam Sites

Agloco was the first Internet based economic network that paid its active members for their online activities. All you had to do is install Viewbar software and it would automatically record the time you are actively online. This software had tendencies to slow down your computer, but since users were promised to get paid for it, they were using it anyway.

You could also earn money by referring your friends to Agloco and this was what many people had done. Actually, there was a four level referral system, and you were supposed to be paid for each hour when your friends or family members you recruit would surf the Web with the Viewbar running. There was no limit to the number of referrals you could accumulate, so many users were joining as they thought that the potential to earn money was quite big. Unfortunately, for all of the users, Agloco ceased to exist and stopped paying its users for surfing. In truth, it was a variation of a pyramid scheme and anyone who was using their services became a victim. I am writing this post, because I want to warn all of you who get exited over websites that promise a lot. That is because very often such websites will not be able to deliver what they promise.

Non-Copyrighted Images

Using non-copyrighted images has two main advantages. First of all, you do not need to pay for them, and secondly you do not risk copyright infringement. Besides that there are many high quality images that you can use. In my opinion, the best source of non-copyrighted images is Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons), so I am only going to discuss this website in my post. On the side note, take into account that many images found in Google images are indeed copyrighted. But let us get back to Flickr. The images that I recommend to use are using the creative commons license, especially the Attribution License. This means that you are free to use them for commercial and non-commercial use, and additionally you are allowed to modify the images. You are only required to credit the author of the image. Just follow those steps to get yourself started:

1. Visit Flickr creative commons page.
2. Browse the photos in the Attribution License section.
3. Use search option to find some images with the theme you are looking for.
4. Click on ‘View Most Interesting’ instead of ‘Most Relevant’ as this will show you some really high quality images.
5. Click on ‘Show Thumbnails’ to have many images displayed and this way save a lot of your time.
6. You are done! Simply upload the photo to your blog/website and credit the author by linking to his Flickr profile underneath the image. You may want to do it like I did it below:
Photo by Author�s Name

Advantages of Choosing a Paid Hosting Service for Businesses

If you decided to start a website for your company, then at some point you will have to choose between paid hosting and free hosting. While there are advantages of both types of services, generally speaking, it is a better choice for businesses to choose a paid hosting service. Here are some reasons why it is not such a good idea to decide on using a free hosting service:

-You will probably end up with a long domain name if you choose a free hosting service. That is because your website will most certainly be hosted on a subdomain. If you decide to start a blog, then you will send up with website.blogspot.com or website.wordpress.com, instead of website.com. There are many disadvantages of long domain names and one of them is that it will be a lot harder for your visitors to actually remember your sites URL.

-Your website might look less professional. Many free hosting services will force you to display ads on your website. Sometimes these ads will be in the form of pop-ups, which not only does not look professional, but might be quite annoying for a typical visitors.

-Free hosting services usually are not able to guarantee ~100% uptime. This means that your site might be offline longer that it would be if you have chosen to do business with a reliable paid hosting company.

-In case you need any help, you will not be able to contact anyone to assist you. Free hosting services do not have enough capital to afford reliable customer service.

How to Avoid Internet Burnout

Did you know that the average American Internet user spends 68 hours per month online in front of his computer? This means that on average Internet users spend over 15 hours per week online. You might have heard about so-called Internet or computer burnout. Internet or computer burnout starts when a person spends a lot of time in front of his computer. Here are some ideas on how to avoid computer burnout:

-Try to take a break from your computer at least once every hour.
-Learn to separate your Internet experiences from your real life.
-Have a fast computer, which minimizes the time you will have to spend in front of the computer.
-Do not forget to have some exercise. If your body is tired of sitting in front of computer, you will need it.
-Take care of your personal life and work on your real-life relationships. You might have some friends on the Internet, but nothing will replace your real-life friends. Remember that sometimes people on the Internet might not be who they claim to be.

Launching Your Feed into Space

Around sixty years ago humans first began transmitting television signals powerful enough to reach beyond our earth�s atmosphere. Blog in Space was the first website to allow everyday bloggers to transmit the news and thoughts of an everyday person into space. Blog in Space was taking your feed and transmitting it out on a powerful deep space transmission dish. Does it sound interesting? When it comes to marketing did you ever want to gain potential new visitors from outer space or maybe you just want to do something exciting? Visiting a website like this and submitting your feed might be a good idea. Such sites can transmit countless feeds. I know that the feeds were transmitted from over 100 countries of origin, which is quite a remarkable achievement. Some internet users may feel like there is stagnation on the internet and nothing original is getting released, but such websites prove otherwise. There is a lot of innovation going on and it depends on you whether you try to benefit from it. If you have some interesting ideas, then perhaps you could even launch some innovative website.

Books About Generating Traffic

Generating traffic is an important objective for any webmaster. After all, bloggers are putting their thoughts into writing so that other people will read them. Naturally, there are some blogs that are only meant for close friends and family; however, the majority of blogs are open to traffic from all around the world. Having said that, being open to traffic does not mean that the traffic will suddenly appear at your site whenever you wish for it. You have to put some work into it. Many people decide that the best approach is to buy books about the subject to gain some knowledge about the challenges that need to be faced in order to attract readers. I think that this might not be actually the best solution. My arguments are that you can find a lot of useful information about traffic generation written by bloggers who have the knowledge to offer valuable advice. The part is that they do not charge anything. This means that you will have some money left to spend on traffic generation, instead of researching different ways to generate traffic. Believe it or not, there are many webmasters that are willing to share how they attract traffic. You can find them in many places, including forums.

Over Five Months of Blogging

Just recently this blog has celebrated five months since its creation and I think that is quite a big success. There are many blogs that are being created every day, but only some of them really stand the test of time. The number of blogs being abandoned every day is really amazing. That is probably because it is not that easy to manage a blog. Of course, there are currently blogs that are many years old, but I am really happy about this blog anyway. Currently there are quite a lot of posts on the website and I trust that most of them have been useful to my readers, because I believe in blogging about practical things and giving advice that can be useful in our lives. You may find some of my posts to be less practical, but such posts usually reveal some aspect of me, which I believe is also an important thing to do as a blogger. I do not know how old this blog will eventually be, but all I hope for is that it will be regarded as a blog with useful information. If you are reading this post right now, it means that something attracted you to do so. I hope that it is because you found my other posts interesting as well.

Improving Online Social Life

Some time ago I discussed ways to improve your online social life. Here are some more ideas on how to further enrich it:

� Link abundantly to other bloggers. This can really pay off especially when you do not expect it. People like checking who is writing about them and might mention this fact in one of their posts. I noticed that many popular bloggers do that.
� Join and be active in such communities like MyBlogLog. While trying to find how such communities like MyBlogLog can enrich the social life of many bloggers, I found some interesting articles from which I learned a lot. I myself have enjoyed participating in MyBlogLog and a lot of good things came out of it for my other blog. What I like the most about it is the widget that so many bloggers put on their site that displays the icons of other bloggers visiting their site. Basically, it displays the icons of bloggers that are also part of MyBlogLog community. To get most out of your membership in MyBlogLog, you need to actively participate in the community.

To sum up, I can say that blogging can be a very rewarding activity. It is up to the blogger how his social life looks like. There are many ways to enrich it, and make it even better.

How to Ask for Link Exchange

After launching a new website, you probably want other websites to link to it. The only problem is that new websites usually receive very few visitors. How are you going to convince popular and well-established websites to link to your new website?

Firstly, never accentuate that your website is new. Instead of saying �new� and �inexperienced� to describe yourself or your website, use words such as �fresh� and �innovative�.

Secondly, offer the websites from which you want to receive links something in exchange for linking to you. Offer to write an article about that website if its webmaster chooses to place a link pointing to your website. Alternatively, you can choose to promote the website in many other ways.

Lastly, make sure to emphasize how other webmasters can benefit by linking to your website. Remember to emphasize the fact that everything they will receive will be for free. The only thing they will have to do is link to your website.

Attracting Free Traffic To Your Website

The topic of attracting free traffic is very popular among bloggers. That is because everyone wants to know how do attract the highest number of visitors possible. In this article, I am going to share with you what works best for me. I am also going to discuss other methods that look like they could work, which I did not try yet.

1. Regularly visit other blogs. Whenever you visit a blog, try to leave a comment. In the blogosphere, the more a person is well known and active, the more he will gain. Join communities like MyBlogLog, Bumpzee, and Blogcatalog if you have time. Many bloggers have widgets of these communities on their sites, and if you are a member of these communities as well, your picture will appear among the recent visitors.

2. Comment a lot. Very often, when I look for new blogs to visit, I open a popular blog with a lot of visitors, and I check who commented there. By visiting the blogs of top commentators I am likely to attract to my own blog those who enjoy commenting. They might be later commenting on my own blog.

3. Write high quality posts. Sooner or later, other bloggers will start referring to you, and the word about your blog will spread.