Archive for July, 2009
There are few people who are aware of online classified advertisements but have not heard of Craigslist. Craigslist is a network that joins various online communities that feature free classifieds. For almost anything anyone requires, Craigslist can be used to find it. For houses, rentals, jobs, personals, selling or buying, resume services, discussion forums, communities etc., Craigslist has classified advertisements for all of them.
Craigslist was started in 1995 by Craig Newmark. Initially, it consisted of an email distribution list of friends and also featured local events held in the area of San Francisco. In 1996, it became a web based service. It became a for profit private company in 1999 and expanded to other cities in the United States.
- 2000 – Craigslist spread to Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, New York, Seattle, Washington, D. C., Sacramento and San Diego.
- 2001 - Craigslist spread to Austin, Atlanta, Vancouver and Denver.
- 2004 – Amsterdam, Paris, Bengaluru, Tokyo and Sao Paolo were accessed by Craigslist.
- 2008 – 500 other cities in 50 countries across the world were included in the Craigslist business.
As of now, in 2009, Craigslist is present in more than 570 cities worldwide.
What does Craigslist do?
It earns revenue from paid advertisements in the cities it is present in. It is one of the most popular websites across the world and has more than an average of 20 billion page views in a month. As per Alexa, it is the 22nd most popular website in the world and ranks eighth among websites in the United States.
Every month, Craigslist receives more than 40 million new classifieds. No other website or other medium of advertisements in the similar line of business even come closer in terms of number of new ad listings. Craigslist is also one of the most popular job listing sites in the world and receives more than 1 million new job listings in a month.
Craigslist, as it can be seen from the previous few sentences, is the most popular advertisement medium in the world. You will have entries in Craigslist for every conceivable product and service that you can think of. Craigslist gives you a great opportunity to find products and services locally and buying them without any hassle.
Craigslist is slightly different from other online websites in the sense that it does not help in the transportation of goods from one city to another if the buyer and seller are not located in the same city. People who make the transaction are expected to take care of the transportation too. Hence, Craigslist marks its presence in so many cities in the world so that products and services can be procured locally.
When you buy or sell something in Craigslist, it is a possibility that you never come face to face with the seller or the buyer. However, like any other business, it is good to maintain a positive relationship with other Craigslist users you have done business with. Craigslist follows some universal rules and etiquette.
- When you are contacting some other Craigslist user through phone or email, make sure that you are polite.
- When it comes to haggling for a product or service, Craigslist is not the place to be. Yes, it does help when you haggle but don’t overdo it. If you think that the seller is asking too much for a product, then ignore that seller and move on to other sellers. They are plenty of them available on Craigslist.
- When you don’t get a response from sellers, don’t go after their life. Contact them once and let them know about your interest in their product. If they get back to you, well and good. If they don’t, then move elsewhere.
- If you are Craigslist, then be prepared to finish the transaction quickly. Craigslist users prefer customers who choose fast and settle the deal fast. Don’t spend too much time deciding or you may create a bad name for yourself.
- Make a lasting impression by adding a thank you after you conclude a deal. You never know when you may need to contact the same seller again.
As with any other online shopping website, you as a buyer need to keep your eyes open when you are looking to buy something through Craigslist. Buyers and sellers converge on Craigslist from all over the world and there are bound to be some frauds among them. However, when you know the following tricks, you will find it easy to track a fraudulent seller.
- Improper local language – There may be sellers who will claim that they are present in your city when they are actually located in some other part of the world. Some of them will converse in improper local language. When they speak in an improper local language or use wrong grammar and spellings in their email, you may want to check them out before you make a payment.
- Mail option – Some sellers will tell you that they cannot deliver the purchased item locally and can only send it through post. Craigslist encourages local buying and selling. You may want to purchase a product from another country or city but do that at your own risk. Check for the authenticity of the seller before you make the payment. The seller might just vanish after taking your money.
- Car shipping frauds – Craigslist, through its website, continuously warns its users that car shipping cases are likely to be scams. If a seller tells you that he or she will transport the car and take care of the transportation charge, beware! The seller may give you an excuse that they are going out for a vacation and so on. Since they dangle the carrot in front of you, you may think you are getting a great deal. But the whole deal may be a scam.
- Preference – Some sellers may say that they have multiple buyers vying for their product and they are going to offer it to you on a preferential basis. Back out immediately. Craigslist sellers sell on a first come first serve basis and no one has time to analyze buyers and create their favorite list.
- Wire transfers – Another warning from Craigslist states that wired transactions are scams. Some sellers may give you a story and tell you that they are facing some problem with their bank and can only accept wired money. Don’t even think about it. You may want to pay by cash, cheque or Paypal.
When you are aware of these issues, you are bound to have a wonderful experience with Craigslist. You may like an item on Craigslist and then pay a visit to the seller to see the item and even buy it. There is no need to travel unnecessarily.
Craigslist is also open 24 hours a day and you can browse through your product requirement right at the middle of the night. You can also haggle to an extent and get a good deal by comparing prices of similar products. There is also a free section in Craigslist which you may want to browse through.
With so many advantages and a worldwide reputation, Craigslist is certainly a great place to visit and shop from. Check it out and get the beat deals for yourself.
Have you just set up a website and cannot wait to talk about it to everyone? Are you watching the hit-meter all the time? But, hang on, getting traffic to your website needs professional keyword analysis. If you really want your site to be noticed and not get lost in the cyber jungle, keywords are vital.
• Beating the competition
All sites needs keyword analysis to stand out and build a popularity zone of there own. Keywords are basically small phrases or single words that really define your site. You expect users to use these keywords in search engines and therefore, want your site to be tagged along for these keywords.
If you know what are the most popular keywords and if your site has these popular keywords linked to the genre of the subject of your site, surely your site will be showing up in search engine sifting by users. Read the rest of this entry »
When you establish a presence on the Internet, the main purpose is to have surfers find your website from around the world. Link-building is one of the easiest and most effective method of getting your site up the popularity charts. Here are some tips on how to use link-building.
• Getting friendly
Reciprocal link-building is the easiest and free methods. Two webmasters hook up and agree to share the link of the other’s website. This is how both the sites piggy-back to gain in popularity. The idea is to cash in on a double quota of surfers. Once you start building a network of reciprocal links, your popularity quotient will go up exponentially. Read the rest of this entry »
If you turn over the classified advertisement pages of your newspaper, most probably, you might come across scores of classifieds pouring out the virtues of Google Adsense and/or Adwords and how you can become a millionaire, in no time, by simply registering with these applications. Well, these classifieds don’t seem to be exaggerating because Adsense and Adword, Google’s advertising applications, are doing wonders for people who are using them. So, let’s see how …
Google Adsense
How do you earn money with Google Adsense? If you are the owner of a website, it really don’t matter if it’s a small or a big one, with Google Adsense you can display advertisements from the Google advertising network in your website and earn revenue. When people visit your website and click on the advertisements, the advertisers are going to pay you for each click on their advertisement. If you think these ads are going to be too conspicuous and will draw the attention of the visitor away from the content of your website, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to know that these advertisements are absolutely unobtrusive. These ads are basically text, images or video advertisements that are going to run on their own in an allotted space without disturbing the content or the look of your website.
Google Adsense advertisements are of two types; the Cost-Per-Click (CPC) type or the Cost-Per-Thousand Impression (CPM) type. In CPC advertising you get paid each time a visitor clicks on the advertisement and in CPM, you get paid based on the number of times an advertisement becomes visible to a visitor.
Another way in which you can earn money with Adsense is that Google gives you a search application that any visitor can use while he/she is browsing your website. While using the Google Search application on your website, if a visitor comes across an advertisement on his/her search page and clicks on it, you get paid for that!
Now isn’t Google Adsense a golden egg laying hen for you? You not only generate revenue passively, even in your sleeping hours, but your website becomes popular as well, as with good Google advertisements, more and more people start visiting your website. Here’s one suggestion for you. If you opt to display advertisements that are of relevance to the subject of your website and take the visitor further into the subject in his quest for information, it will become an excellent source of information. This will guarantee high network traffic to your website. So, the Google Adsense is your gateway to both wealth and fame!
For working with Google Adsense, you need to follow some policies and terms and conditions that Google sets. There is a minimum eligibility criteria that you need to satisfy to get Adsense. You should have a website, which should have been in existence for at least 6 months. Google has done this to ensure quality advertising.
Google Adsense serves distinct sectors of information technology. You have Adsense for RSS feeds, which have a huge subscriber base. Adsense images are displayed in the feed and when the RSS subscriber clicks on these images, he/she is directed to the advertisements. We have already seen how one can earn revenue with Google search engine. The third sector that Adsense caters to is that of mobile content, where people can use Adsense on their mobile websites and earn revenue on that. You can also use Adsense on developing domain names and earn revenue from it.
Google Adsense uses a lot of techniques to generate uge network traffic. Usage of attractive phrases, and usage of meaningful and highly useful content help in attracting the visitor and compel him/her to click on the advertisement.
Google Adwords
So much about Google Adsense, let’s see how Google Adwords is beneficial for you. Online advertising is the best way in which you can reach out to every nook and corner of the world in the shortest time possible in a very cost-effective manner. You might want to make your business and your products known worldwide and Google Adsense gives you the best opportunity to do so. Just imagine the amount of money you would have to spend to publicize your products on other channels of the electronic and print media. With Google Adwords, you can place advertisements for your business on the ever-flourishing Google advertisement network and there will be millions of people who will be aware of your business and be interested in taking your service.
If you really want to make some good money with Google Adwords, you should have a target audience who will be interested in your business. If you link up your advertisement with Google Search, your advertisement will be displayed to only those people who are actually on the lookout for the kind of services that you offer. This greatly enhances the visitor response that your website gets. In comparison to Adwords advertising, advertising on television or public hoardings will only target the general audience, out of which only a few will be interested in your services or products.
With Google Adwords you only pay when someone clicks on your advertisement. Apart from the Google Search page, you can place your advertisements on content websites too. Adwords will help you in making an attractive advertisement, in case you are not conversant with designing a good advertisement. Contextual targeting is a wonderful feature that Google offers for your advertisement to get maximum response. The words that you use in your advertisement serve as keywords that are matched against same/similar words in web content and your ad is placed in proximity to the matching words. For example if your ad has vanilla ice-cream as one of the words, your advertisement will be placed in all those websites that have vanilla, ice-cream or ice- creams in their content. Now, that can be quite a big number! Its sure to reach millions of people across the globe very fast. Contextual targeting is used with ad groups and ad groups with placement.
Google Adwrods allows you to advertise textually, graphically or through videos. Choose whatever you think is best for your business. Its best to use videos for demonstrating new products. Textual and graphical advertising is apt for selling serious products like medical equipment. If you are selling fun products, you can always use a lot of graphics and videos to pep up the mood of your potential customers. There is Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising and Placement-Target-Advertising (PTA) for both text and banner ads. You can choose to advertise on local, national or international levels. You can also refer to the progress made by your advertisement from time to time.
Google Adwords brings a lot of benefits for you at a reasonable price. There don’t appear to be any monthly charges but only a one-time activation fee. You can also set the limit on how much you are willing to spend on your advertisement on a daily basis. There is no fixed amount that Google sets for you to pay for advertising. You decide upon how much you would like to pay your visitor.
Google Adsense and Adwords are the best advertising features of online advertising to date. It is upto you to use these features to your best advantage.
Anyone can rake in some cash with affiliates, but grabbing and utilizing those high-earning affiliate programs on your way to a million is kinda tricky.
1. To begin with, you must understand that affiliates pay in three ways:
• Pay per sale: These are the ones with the largest payouts. Either a surfer buys a product, signs up for a service or creates an account and benefits the affiliate program company
• Pay per action: These are similar to the pay-per-sale affiliates but require a surfer to complete a survey, give suggestions, sign up for a free newsletter etc
• Pay per click: Are low-paying but nevertheless help in earnings
• Pay per view: Are the lowest-paying
Now, accordingly, place your affiliates’ adverts. Read the rest of this entry »
Okay, so you’ve got your camera up and running and a script in place! Five minutes is all you have to grab eyeballs and attention. But, have you got the technique right? Not everyone with a cam and an idea is a good vblogger. Here are some tips to stand out from the crowd:
- Choose subject with panache: What is it that you are planning to tell and show the world? Popular genres are personal tales, stunts/weird stuff, journo angst and family vblogging. Personal tales with lot of emotion, eye ex-pressions and some sniffing and sobbing with a strong script are usual hits but the subject better be something serious not just your fav t-shirt getting eaten by the dog. Personal tales of humor or love are the most popular. If you can do something real cool like balance a coin tower on the tip of your nose or tongue, you got it made. Tricks are a sure-shot hit. Be original though. If you couldn’t find a slot on television and want your five-minutes of fame telling a local neighborhood story without the editor snipping off bits, vblogging is perfect. Family vblogging is a wee bit personal but then, you decide how much you wish to share. If you have a business or commercial establishment, vblogs are great for advertising.
Read the rest of this entry »
The latest organisation to make an entry into the social networking site market – Twitter - has fast grown into a very popular social networking site amongst general public and even celebrities. It is the first short message service based social networking site and also happens to be a micro-blogging website. The major reason for its popularity is its short message service application through which you can connect to your followers using even your mobile phones. Any twitter user would probably realise the advantages which this site offers when it comes to internet marketing and thus it is imperative that your twitter profile is as attention gaining as possible. Read the rest of this entry »
On June 3rd, 2009, software giant Microsoft announced the launch of its new search engine which is quite simply named Bing. Incorporating a fresh look and intuitive features, Bing looks to upset the search engine market, which up till now was monopolized by Google Search.
Having its base in Live Search, a previous search offering which failed to make its mark in the market, Bing looks to enhance users’ search experience dramatically. “Bing” is an onomatopoeia, which signifies a sound, associated with arriving at results and decisions. Even the homepage, www.bing.com, is neat and polished. The first major eye-catcher is that there is a background image which is changed everyday, and it is usually a photo of breathtaking scenery.
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