Just Blogging

Elaine Currie asked:




What’s In A Niche? When talking of niche websites, the answer to that question is, in my humble opinion, not very much at all in most cases. Certainly much less than should be in a niche. Is it just me - are my expectations too high? I don’t think so because I have seen some good niche websites as well as many horrors. A real niche website that has been built with care and passion is a thing of beauty (or, at the very least, interest) and is usually a treasure trove for visitors who share a love of the niche subject.

What I am complaining about are the so-called niche websites people are throwing together for the sole purpose of collecting advertising revenue. These sites have little (if anything) in the way of content. The colourful pictures and plentiful advertisements do not make up for this lack. Advertising is fine, in fact it’s usually essential if you want to stay in business. What makes me see red is clicking on misleading advertisements and landing on website after cloned website only to be confronted with a few sentences of poorly written text and dozens of gibbering advertisements. To test the integrity of a niche site, look at what would be left if you removed all the pay per click advertisements.

It is unfortunate for people who are surfing for information that the Internet is being overrun by the awful flimsy looking template produced websites that are being churned out at a crazy rate. If you spend any time on the Internet, you will know the type of thing I mean. These websites consist of a couple of pages with nice enough looking header graphics (that’s the pictures at the top, if you are not “in the trade” so to speak), and clumps of advertisements placed so that they are the first thing you see. If you manage to get past the advertisements, you might find a few articles which have been copied from other websites just for the sake of having something on the pages to lend them some credibility. These websites don’t exist to provide information or services or to promote anything. Their sole purpose is to carry advertising that will earn the owner money in return for just about zero work on his part.

How much time and effort goes into creating one of these monstrosities? Practically none: in most cases it is all done by a software package. The pseudo webmaster doesn’t ever need to worry about actual webpage design or building. All these charlatans need to do is decide upon their niche topic, toss a bunch of keywords into the mix and the software will do the rest. These people can create their pseudo niche websites on any subject anyone in the world might think of. It’s easy because they don’t need to know anything about the subject themselves. Whether it is dog training, bridal dresses, funerals or haemorrhoids, an online search tool will provide a list of keywords and the software will do the rest. Nobody cares that the laughing man clutching a fistful of cash or the sports car pictured in the heading has no relevance to the content and would be frankly inappropriate if you were looking for a funeral director or medication for a painful medical condition. The webmaster has no intention of offering you anything of value. In fact, it is in his interests if you take an immediate dislike to his web page because that makes you more likely to click away from it via one of his advertising links and that’s how he makes his money.

After a couple of days of trying to do some semi-serious research on the Internet, I feel like unplugging my pc and dusting off my library tickets. Ok - so you can’t judge a book by its cover but the cover doesn’t usually set out to deliberately mislead you as to the contents (quite the opposite in fact). When I type a query into a search engine, I want the results to lead me to websites containing the answer to that query. If I am searching for information about a particular subject, I don’t appreciate being directed to websites that consist of a few keyword loaded sentences walled in by blocks of advertisements for other similar websites.

Roll on the day when someone invents a search engine that can distinguish between a real niche website and an advertising vehicle built from a cheap kit. Maybe we can get back to the time when searching the Internet was faster than catching a bus to the library and thumbing through books.

Copyright 2006 Elaine Currie

S McIntyre asked:




You have a very nice growing list of subscribers to your newsletter. Sometimes it’s hard to find new ideas to add or if you’re new at this, what type of content you want. If you display your newsletter for visitors to read, then your goal is keep them interested and eventually become subscribers and of course, you want to keep your subscribers subscribed.

Here are seven ideas for newsletter content.

1. Newsletters are great for informing and keeping your subscribers/readers up-to-date on current happenings or coming events. Make announcements about online workshops, web conferencing or new project ideas. For something extra, you may want to publish special holiday editions during the holiday season.

2. Ask the expert, a question and answer or poll section. This is a great way to generate feedback, encourage participation and readers’ interest.

3. Product or e-book reviews. This is a benefit for you. By doing product or e-book reviews, it’s a great way to increase sales. You know the saying; people will buy from people they know and trust. Offering something of value is always a win-win situation and of course you want the best for your subscribers.

4. Offer a freebie. Who doesn’t like freebies? It could be anything really. If they subscribe to your newsletter, you can give them a sneak preview by allowing them to download a chapter or two of your e-book. If they are interested, they can purchase the e-book at a discounted price. The sky’s the limit when it comes to freebies.

5. Profile subscribers. This is a nice way of getting to know your subscribers and to show them your appreciation. Don’t you think they may have something to offer and share with the group that would be beneficial?

6. Helpful tips. You don’t need to have a full-fledged article for it to be considered informative and resourceful. Simple, easy to remember tips can go a long way.

7. Mix it up and offer a joke of the day, smile of the week, inspirational quotes or even a brain teaser. All work and no fun can become a stressful day. A quick pick-me-up can do the trick for early starters and late workers who need just a bit more energy before they call it a day.

Your newsletter doesn’t have to be long, but it needs to have useful content so you will get more subscribers and keep your current ones excited for your next update.

Don Beavers asked:




Fresh website content for your visitors can be of real benefit when attempting to generate repeat traffic. Most webmasters, however, just don’t have enough spare time to frequently update or rebuild their pages manually. If your web site hosting company provides free access to PHP and MySQL, this article will show you how to combine those two open source tools and replace a portion of your websites’ static content with frequently changing dynamic content.

Why do you need dynamic content for your website?

Static pages on a website eventually become “stale” and visitor traffic can fall significantly over time. The drop in traffic can be attributed to these primary factors:

1) The reluctance of search engines to include and display your potentially “out of date” pages in their search results,

2) The finite number of other subject related websites that would be willing to link to your information on a specific topic, and

3) Visitors that learn to view your static website with a “been there, done that” attitude.

Creating and maintaining a web site requires a significant investment in time and resources. Loosing repeat visitors diminishes the value of your investment. Without repeat traffic it is virtually impossible for a website to be a continuing success.

How can you add dynamic content without having to purchase expensive software?

One proven (and easy to implement) method of creating dynamic content for your website is by rotating information on key, higher traffic web pages using PHP with a MySQL database. Rotating content can take the form of a series of rotating articles, a rotating group of product listings, or even a simple “thought for the day”. What is important is that your clients and visiting search engines find new and interesting information each time they visit your website.

As an example of dynamic content creation, we will build a system that rotates information about a group of products on the main page of a hypothetical retail sales web site that markets widgets. Our goal is to present information about a different type or model of widget available for purchase whenever a consumer visits the shopping web site.

Step One: Create a content table to hold your widget data.

There are a couple of options for storing the data to be displayed in your dynamic content rotation. The first option would be to create a new database, or perhaps simply add a table in an existing product database that will hold the information that you wish to display.

Let’s take five theoretical widget products and design a table as follows:

+——+———————–+

| item | product |

+——+———————–+

| 1 | Plastic Widgets |

| 2 | Metal Widgets |

| 3 | Wooden Widgets |

| 4 | Rubber Widgets |

| 5 | Stone Widgets |

+——+———————–+


1-a) Create your table with the following SQL statement:

CREATE TABLE `content_table` (
`item` int(4) NOT NULL auto_increment,
`product` varchar(10) NOT NULL default ”,
KEY `item` (`item`)
) TYPE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=6 ;

This table contains two fields. The first is an item number and the second is a description field that will hold the product name and features. Note: You can add fields to your actual table including: an image URL field, shopping cart direct purchase URL field, product page field, etc.

1-b) Insert the example data into your new table as follows:

INSERT INTO `content_table ` VALUES (1, ‘ Plastic Widgets’);

INSERT INTO `content_table ` VALUES (2, ‘ Metal Widgets’);

INSERT INTO `content_table ` VALUES (3, ‘ Wooden Widgets’);

INSERT INTO `content_table ` VALUES (4, ‘ Rubber Widgets’);

INSERT INTO `content_table ` VALUES (5, ‘ Stone Widgets’);


Once you have completed these two steps you will have a table compete with data to be shown on your website.

Another option would be to utilize your existing product table. If there are hundreds of different models and styles of widgets already in one of the tables in your database, you could utilize the same structure we are learning now to connect directly to that table and display the already existing data.

Step two: Working with your new table:

For dynamic content displays to function there must be a mechanism in place that instructs your web page as to which item should be shown to the visitor. These mechanisms vary in complexity from extremely simple commands to the more complicated use of cookies or IP tracking to determine which item should be displayed.

For this tutorial, we will utilize one of the most effective mechanisms and perhaps the easiest to incorporate. This is the use of a random number generator for deciding which item will be shown.

To create a random number generator using PHP you must first calculate the total number of possible items that you want the system to choose from. In this example we had five items so the maximum number of choices will be 5. The reason we need this number is to limit the random numbers being delivered. If we have five items, we want the number generator to only give us a result of between 1 and 5.

We must now create a variable for our PHP code that will hold our new randomly generated item number as follows:

$mynumber = rand(1, 5);

This little snippet of code will act as the mechanism to “select” a widget product item at random from the five provided in the content table that we created.

If we created 100 different items for your dynamic display instead of just five, you would simply change the “rand (1, 5)” part of the code to reflect the different maximum number. In this case we would change it to “rand (1, 100)” so that the random number generator gives us back a number somewhere between one and one hundred.

We are now ready to extract the randomly selected item’s information from your table so that it can be displayed on your webpage.

You can now connect to your database and query your table to find the data for the item that matches the random number you created, as follows:

$query_content = “SELECT * FROM content_table WHERE item = $mynumber “;

Step three: Displaying your data:

When displaying your data it is important to maintain consistency in presentation size. It is preferable to create a table of specified dimensions (such as “width=400”) and display your results within this table. In this way the page proportions do not have to change with each new item (which can be very confusing for visitors).

Simply display the results just as if these where any other MySQL query using the echo command:

echo $query_content [' product '];

Every time your page is loaded a different widget product will be selected at random for display on that page.

What else can you do with your dynamic content?

The only limits are within your imagination. By adding a title and meta description tags to your content table, you can alternate the title and search engine description for that page. You can also utilize this system to promote affiliate programs or sponsorship opportunities by rotating affiliate links and banners.

The proper use of dynamic content can bring your website back into favor with search engines and encourage your visitors to return frequently to see what is new.

Connie Ragen Green asked:




People learn in various ways. What is best for one person will be different for another. You will want to present your information to people in two or three different ways so that they can choose how they receive the information and you will be serving everyone’s individual needs.

The different ways of learning include visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile. A visual learner will search for ways to learn and take in information by reading and watching videos. They want to see it so that their brain can process and remember the information. The visual learner will look at you when you are talking to them.

An auditory learner wants to hear the information on a CD or on their mp3 player. They form their own pictures in their mind while they are listening. These people will generally be looking down or away from you when you talk to them, leading you to believe they may not be paying attention to you. They are just processing what they hear auditorily so that they can process it.

The kinesthetic learner wants to move around while they learn. They process information best when they can move their bodies. Their brains are wired for movement.

The tactile learner will want to print out an article or ebook or hold a book in their hands when learning. By touching the information the connection is made in their brain to retain the information.

When you write articles or ebooks, remember to repurpose the information so that you can include every type of learner. You can make recordings and videos using your written information and even print out your writing in hard copy for the tactile learners. There is no need to exclude anyone from what you have to offer.

Helene Salmon asked:




The explosion of online web video sites just exemplifies the egalitarian appeal put forward by Internet. In today’s internet world, along with the boom seen in internet blogs and messaging services, video tube is another such section which is gaining popularity. Most of the video tubes online offer you with daily and updated videos. These videos can be interesting, funny, serious, or can be odd as well.

The entire idea of a video online tube is to allow you to easily upload your home and personal video contents and make is easily accessible on a webpage.

Applications & Features

Videotubes are form of networking sites. They allow their members to upload video content, watch the existing uploaded content and share their ideas.

One can tag the video contents so that they can identify those easily with the keywords

One should take care that the content uploaded is not a copyrighted material and that no one can raise objections on it.

Video tube services also provide you with a library of film and music tubes along with sports clips and advertisements.

Watching Content

Tube vids and online videos allow you to watch videos online. You can type for keywords and can search for any content to watch. For example: If you have missed a cookery show to be seen on television, you can find the episode on any of the online video content website. Similarly, with the facility of watching content online, one need not bother about catching a program live. You can watch any program as per you convenience and availability.

Apart from this, many of the other benefits include one of the most sought after thing. Generally, this service is available for free which means that you can watch whatever you want as per your convenience without having to pay for it.

Sharing Video Content

This facility allows members and viewers to see content online including music files and games. At the same time, it also allows you to download content for free. Online videos and other related content like photo sharing, music clip availability are continuously growing with the increasing participation from viewers. You can share content and download it on your laptop or music instruments like iPods.

Sharing content is made easy with the availability of EDGE, GPRS and WAP in your IPods or mobile devices. You can decide to share content with a specific group of your friends or with the masses. Thus if you are in marketing business, you can also market your ideas, concepts and products this way. Support of professional equipment and software is available. The only thing you should remember while sharing content is that it should be rich and short in duration.

Uploading Video Content

Once you have created your own videos, you might want to upload them in any of video tubes. This would increase the viewer ship of your videos. Normally there is an upper cap on the size of video that you can upload. A limit of 100 MB is placed and the length of video should be around 8-10 minutes.

True to conclude, Video tubes give you an array of benefits. You can use video tube service for entertainment, for business, for marketing your products online, for getting customer suggestions, for training and self development and to enhance your personal experiences.