Qassia describes itself as “a credit-driven intelligence engine coupled to a cascading tag-based web directory.”

You can add your websites, and promote them by adding what Qassia calls ‘intel’. Intel is anything from a paragraph of text to an academic treatise, and it has to be rated by 10 other members before it’s added to the database. Every piece of intel you add adds a backlink to one of your sites and increases your credits, in the form of ‘Qassia dollars’. You also get a share of advertising revenue.

It seems really cool, and friendly, too. I’ll be tinkering with it over the next day or two. Oh.. the title is from the end of the ‘About Qassia’ page.

A Cataclysmic Event in the History of the Internet. is a post from: Online Business Blog

Unfortunately, PR does have a place in the real world. The higher the PR of your page, the easier it is to get people to pay you for advertising space. Otherwise sensible, intelligent folks have been known to go crazy at the thought of advancing from a PR3 to a PR4.

Dean Hunt has started a meme for all those who are bored with the PageRank update saga – the intention is to improve PageRank, rather than just sit around in the forums talking about it.

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Little Green Bars is a post from: Online Business Blog

I love the way the blogging community works together to help each other. Joining Bloglines (which is free, by the way) and the Bloglines Train will boost your RSS readership and give you more links in Technorati.

You’ll find it much easier to copy the links if you do it from the page source code (View – Page Source in Firefox).

***Start Copying Here:***

Here are the rules:

1) If you don’t have a bloglines account signup for one, if you do have a bloglines account sign in to your account!

2) Write a short introduction paragraph about what how you found the Bloglines list and include a link to the blog that referred you to the list.

3) COPY the Rules and ENTIRE List below and post it to your blog. To avoid duplicate content and increase the amount of keywords your site can be accessible for, go ahead and change the titles of the blog. Just don’t change the links of the blog.

4) Take “My New List” and move them into the “The Original List”.

5) Add 3 Blogs that you’ve just added to your Bloglines List to the “My New List” section. Remember to also add the “List the Site” link next to your new blogs (i.e. http://www.bloglines.com/sub/http://www.theblogurl.com/feed)

6) Add everyone on this list to your Bloglines List by clicking on “List the Site.” Those who want good karma will list you back. If not, you will for sure get the benefits of readers from the bloggers who continue this list after you.

My New List
Aaron Brandon – List the Site
Stephen Dean – List the Site
Jon Symons – List the Site

The Original List
Search Engine Marketing – List the Site
Online Business Blog – List the Site
Gary Lee – List the Site
Dosh Dosh – List the Site
David Culpepper – List the Site
Ms Danielle – List the Site
Darin Carter – List the Site
Big Rayvin – List the Site
Jon Lee – List the Site
Samanathon – List the Site
Jason Neuman – List the Site
John Chow – List the Site
Kid Blogger – List the Site
Spud Oregon – List the Site
Idiot Brain – List the Site
pyxlb0mb – List the Site
Derrich – List the Site

***End Copying Here***

Get traffic by joining the Bloglines Train is a post from: Online Business Blog

Mona Weathers over at iwebis is hosting a “Mass Buzz Experiment” to grow the community at BlogCatalog. Read about the experiment here.

The great thing about these kinds of ‘interventions’ is that you come across terrific blogs that you might otherwise miss. Here’s a list of the participants so far:

1. iwebis – BlogCatalog Mass Buzz Experiment
2. Pilates & Reiki In Paradise Blog – Why I Love BlogCatalog
3. That Dress is Divine! – BlogCatalog Mass Buzz
4. Blog-Blonde – BlogCatalog Community Mass Buzz
5. My Life and My Views – Do you also love BlogCatalog?
6. Geeky House Wife – BlogCatalog Mass Buzz
7. Franzone.com – 5 Reasons I Love BlogCatalog
8. RATPage Entertainment Plus -BlogCatalog is My Favorite Social Network for Bloggers
9. RK Web Blog – BlogCatalog: The Power Users Social Network For Bloggers
10. RK Web Portal – Social Networking For Bloggers at BlogCatalog
11. The NHL Arena Program: The virtues of BlogCatalog
12. One Day At a Time – The BlogCatalog Community Mass Buzz
13. Nukilan Jejari Azhad – BlogCatalog
14. Bryan’s Blog Personal Finance – Let’s Hang Out
15. Slurping Life – The BlogCatalog Buzz
16. I am Who I am: BlogCatalog
17. Journalist und Optimist – BlogCatalog Massenposting-Experiment
18. Joezul – BlogCatalog: The best blog community!
19. 7 Confessions: BlogCatalog Community Mass Buzz
20. Nusuni – Why I Like BlogCatalog
21. Make Money Online – BlogCatalog
22. Success University -Team Sand – Get Yourself Listed @ BlogCatalog
23. Mom-azing Kreations Blog – The BlogCatalog Buzz!
24. Master The Web – BlogCatalog Social Networking Strategy
25. the beginning – Social Networking BlogCatalog Buzz Experiment
26. Epic Web Strategies – Are you using BlogCatalog?
27. Data Minor Advantag – Meet Me at BlogCatalog
28. Mrs. Mo’s New Jersey – BlogCatalog Mass Buzz
29. blog memories РVoc̻ conhece o Blogcatalog?
30. Creative Writer US – BlogCatalog Mass Buzz – cyber-experiment for bloggers
31. WAHMedia Blogzine – BlogCatalog is a Must Have Networking Tool
32. “To Russia” Blog – BlogCatalog
33. Writer’s Piece – Getting Yourself Listed at BlogCatalog
34. cymru66 – The Power of the BlogCatalog Buzz
35. blog.gkaindl.com – BlogCatalog Community Buzz
36. The SOHO Quest – BlogCatalog Community Mass Buzz
37. Blog Op – BlogCatalog- Are You In?
38. Keith D Commiskey Et Al. – BlogCatalog: Become a Neighbor , Become a Friend
39. Free Affiliate Marketing and Online Promotion Tips – Are You Using BlogCatalog?
40. The SEM Zone – The Great BlogCatalog Buzz Experiment
41. The BenSpark – BlogCatalog, See it there on the right…
42. RennyBA’s Terella – BlogCatalog Buzz Experiment
43. MomReviews – Are You Using BlogCatalog?
44. New 2 Blog – Social Networking- BlogCatalog
45. My Melange – Choose BlogCatalog
46. Blue Beaver Beer -BlogCatalog Community Mass Buzz
47. Neonscent.com – BlogCatalog: The New Fire
48. WengOnline – Viral Marketing and BlogCatalog
49. Save. Save. Save. – BlogCatalog Mass Buzz
50. www.tammiebeagle.com – BlogCatalog Rocks!
51. **Untwisted Vortex – BlogCatalog Community Mass Buzz
52. Crisis and Management – BlogCatalog Buzzing

The BlogCatalog Mass Buzz Experiment is a post from: Online Business Blog

Please go ahead and add articles and links. There’s no pre-moderation for articles, so anything you add will appear (at least until I see it!) For links, the software asks for an email address.

Although Relusi asks for a reciprocal link, your link will appear as soon as you verify your email address. Why? Well, James has a great post on his blog about setting up Relusi, and why you shouldn’t demand a reciprocal link.

Article and Link Directories is a post from: Online Business Blog

Sticking your hand up for the search engines…

Quantcast has recently appeared to challenge Alexa. They offer a different angle. Their free service (while in beta) allows you to check the ranking of your site against 20 million or so others. You have to insert a snippet of code on any site you want to track.

Putting snippets of code on your websites for any tracking program is like sticking your hand up for the search engines – “I’m interested in my traffic; I’m a marketer; this is a commercial site”. So you need to balance that against your desire to have even more statistics.

Take a look at the Quantcast results for Alexa.co,. Google.com and other high-traffic sites – very sexy. You can click on the arrows near the top of the screen to skip to the next or previous site in the rankings. Look at the age demographics for myspace.com compared to facebook.com.

Tracking Traffic Statistics is a post from: Online Business Blog

The hoopla over duplicate content has been going on for quite some time now, and I see it as simply just another money making scheme by online entrepreneurs wishing to chase down the Golden Goose.  Almost every day, my inbox is inundated with yet another “article converter” that is guaranteed to make my private label rights articles hit the top of the search engines with no fear of the Google Police knocking at my PR door, screaming “Duplicate Content!”

I ofttimes wonder how many of the so called gurus take the time to really read the Google Adsense Program Policies.  And I wonder many times during my working day just how many people open their wallets to let fly their hard earned dollars to these people. 

Here are Google’s exact words, and I quote: “Do not create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.”  What does this really tell us?  Does it tell us that the PLR sites that sell thousands of the same articles to people who don’t have time – or are too lazy – to write their own content are breaking Google’s rules?  Not hardly.  Google is telling us that we cannot create what used to be called “mirror sites” (This is a Web site which contains the same information that is located on another site. If the site abc.com is the same as def.com, then it may be disqualified from listing by search engines) in an attempt to increase Page Rank and increase Adsense income. 

Many opinions abound on the forums and elsewhere on the web discussing duplicate content.  And many netrepeneurs have taken advantage of the misinterpretation of Google’s policies to capitalize on this.  Because Google has made this the era of content, everyone that is involved in the online communities is scrambling for the proper answers.  I see threads that are three to five pages in length on the more popular forums with people agonizing over their fear of duplicate content.  What a field day for the guru’s!  I wonder how many thousands – perhaps millions – have been made by people taking advantage of this fear factor?

Lets examine the facts.  If there really was a duplicate content filter then many news web sites that publish AP or Reuters news would be banned from search engines.  Many catalogue sites would go under, because they sell the same products, using the same promotional items as other sites. Affiliate sites would be banned from the search engines because people use the promotional items provided by the site owners.  And even the giant eBay would go under, because anyone who has spent time there sees a ton of items listed which are identical, using the same description, same images, and same user ID.  I wonder how Copyscape.com would handle this?

What about the sites that put articles and ezines in archive. This content ends up being displayed both in static pages and archives as well.  Penalized for duplicate content, when the website owner wants to have his articles available to the general public?  I doubt it…

Common sense is the order of the day.  If you take the time to provide original and unique content to your site, the site is well optimized for the search engines, and you have relevant backlinks, then your site will do well with no fear of penalty. 

Don’t use article scrapers, which mirror the exact content of other sites, and is nothing more than a rip off.  If you buy PLR articles, try to rewrite them in your own unique voice.  If your budget will allow, hire a ghostwriter to create articles pertinent to your particular niche.  And most of all, just use plain common sense!

Visit http://www.for-the-record.biz for more relevant articles on duplicate content, seo, rss and blogging.  Updated weekly…

Google Adsense and Duplicate Content is a post from: Online Business Blog

Almost everyone has probably heard of AdSense by now, if not then I am pretty sure you have seen AdSense and may have not even known what it was. To explain AdSense, I must first tell you a little about ‘ AdWords ‘, Adwords is a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising system that is available through Google the search engine. You create a small text ad, which is placed on Google’s search result pages, the ads match your websites subject or content. You bid or set a fee that you are willing to pay Google every time someone clicks on your ad, this is a great way to get highly targeted traffic that can turn into sales, subscribers, or whatever you are trying to achieve with your website traffic.

Now that I have explained Adwords, I can now tell you about AdSense. AdSense makes it possible for website owners to earn money by simply letting Google place ads on their web pages. AdSense ads can be either text or images, the ads can be altered to blend into the webpages, so they don’t make your site look junky or poorly designed. AdSense ads are highly relevant to the content of most webpages, for instance if you place AdSense ads on a webpage that sells Coins, you will get ads about selling coins or other coin related subjects. Every time a website visitor clicks on one of the AdSense ads on your webpage, you earn money, and every month after your first balance reaches one hundred dollars, Google will send you a check or you can have the money deposited into your checking account. The AdSense program is a great way to earn extra money if you have a website, it’s easy to make a few dollars every day, and some folks are making thousands of dollars per month doing it.

When I first started Adsense, I placed the ads on my webpages and it wasn’t very long until I had made a small amount of money, a few days later my account balance had grown even more. I was pretty happy, but I thought to myself, after reading a lot of articles, I am not making nearly as much money as others are making with AdSense, something must be wrong. Then I thought, maybe my website doesn’t get the traffic that the others are getting ? I chatted with a lot of people on the internet that were in the program, and I discovered that the amount of visitors I get, was higher than some of the traffic they receive. You may think that 200 – 400 unique visitors a day is low for website traffic, you are very wrong, the average website gets a lot less per day, especially if your website is only a few months old or is not optimized for the search engines, or it’s subject matter has a very low search demand. If my website was getting a nice amount of traffic or visitors, why was my AdSense earnings so low ? The first thing that I discovered that was wrong was ‘ adsense ad placement ‘, that’s right, you have to study each webpage’s layout that you plan on placing the ads on.

Wherever your webpage has sections or areas that grab and hold the visitors attention, this is a prime area to place a section of AdSense ads, in other words, place the ads on your webpages where folks will notice them. We are currently allowed to place up to 3 different AdSense ad sections or groups on each webpage. I found after some testing that the best places for my ads are, just under the title or sub-title, near the middle of the page, and near the end or bottom of my page. If you place one section of AdSense ads near the top of your webpage, folks entering your site will probably notice the ads, and if they scroll down a ways and theres more ads, that increases the odds that they will notice them also. Probably the best place to place one section of ads is at the bottom of your webpages, right after your last bit of text or interesting reading, but make sure you place the ads before any other links, because when visitors are ready to leave your site, they may leave by clicking on one of your ads, earning you money, and if you have other links showing before your ads, they may leave your site by clicking on one of them. So after I studied the layout of all my webpages, I went back through and repositioned the AdSense ads, almost immediately I noticed my earnings increased.

I left my webpages alone, and about three months later I received my first check in the mail, it wasn’t a lot of money but still for really doing no physical work I was very glad to get it. My earnings slowly started getting better and better after that first check, the next month I received another check, then the following month I got another and so on. After having been in the AdSense program for about 8 months, and chatting with more folks who were also in the program I found that my earnings were still low compared to some other people. I then discovered another method that increased my earnings even more. I noticed that my ads stood out from the rest of my webpages text and content. I had always thought, I should make my ads a different color than my webpages background so folks would notice my ads, and click on them, I was totally wrong. Almost everyone that has been on the internet for any length of time, has become so accustomed to seeing banners and other flashy ads that almost everyone now has what is called ‘ad blindness’, that is, when they visit a site they are automatically turned off or they ignore anything that looks like an ad. I used the Adsense editor and I changed my ads background and border colors so they matched the background color of my webpages, and I changed the text color of the ads so they matched the text color of my webpages content. The ads blended in very well, to me they were barely noticeable from the rest of my webpage, but right away the number of clicks on the ads increased, and the earnings went up even more.

I left my webpages alone and for another couple months my earnings stayed about the same, I was content with the results, but my earnings were still not as good as some of the other folks who received roughly the same amount of traffic that I did. Then I found out that they had done something else to their AdSense ads, something that made the ads seem to really get peoples attention, they were placing images near the ads, it seemed adding images made the ads look unique and it helped make the amount of clicks on them rise. So I searched the internet and I found some little icons and images that matched the content of my webpages, and near where the Adsense ads were shown, I displayed the images by adding a simple html image tag. I asked google if adding the images was within the AdSense rules, and I was advised that they were fine as long as they didn’t make folks click on the ads, by this I mean, you cannot have a flashing sign that says, ‘ click these ads ‘, or you shouldn’t have a scantily dressed girl pointing to the ads saying ‘ make me happy – click here ‘ or stuff like that, just make some nice little images that pertain to your webpages content.

The next couple months or so, my earnings still continued rising slowly. By this time, besides my regular webpages I had been working on several BLOG’s pertaining to different subjects, so I thought I might as well place AdSense ads on all of my blogs also and make even more money. For a couple weeks my earnings went up quite a bit, and I was very happy, then all of a sudden, just like someone turning off a switch, my AdSense earnings plummeted. I was now making in a day, what I had made when I first joined the program, what the heck happened I thought to myself ? My traffic was still slowly rising, the number of clicks was rising, but for some strange reason, the earnings per click, (EPC) had dropped a lot, it was horrible.

Then I learned that Google had introduced a new feature or system into the AdSense program, called ‘smart pricing’, ‘smart pricing’ automatically adjusts the cost of an ad click. Using Googles system of analyzing AdSense data, if it shows that a click from one of your webpages is less likely to turn into an online sale, or other business result for the Ad publisher, the amount you earn per click in AdSense is greatly reduced. When ‘smart pricing’, was introduced, some AdSense users saw their EPC drop to as low as 3 cents a click, where before ‘smart pricing’, that same click might of earned them a dollar or much more, this was quite a drastic drop in earnings. What is horrible about ‘smart pricing’, besides the earnings loss to AdSense users, is that one site or webpage can trigger it, and once triggered by that one webpage, it effects your entire account and every webpage you have will now earn substantially less per click. Remember awhile back when I had added AdSense Ads to my BLOG’s, that seemed to be what had triggered smart pricing for me. The BLOG’s were on numerous subjects, but they were not business or real professional sites, so hardly any business results such as sales, occurred from folks clicking the ads on these sites. After I removed the Adsense ads from the BLOG’s, it took about a week, then I noticed that the EPC was once again climbing back up, yes the ‘smart pricing’, spell had been broken. If you are thinking about trying AdSense, or if you are already in it, beware of the smart pricing curse, or if it has already effected your earnings, try removing AdSense ads from your webpages a few pages at a time, the smart-pricing system is evaluated each week, so it will take a few days to see if you have removed ads from the page(s) that triggered it.

One of the best products available to help you maximize AdSense earnings can be found at this website address:

http://rwtroll.dealspot.hop.clickbank.net

By Robert W. BenjaminCopyright © 2006 You may publish this article in your ezine, newsletter or on your web site as long as it is reprinted in its entirety and without modification except for formatting needs or grammar corrections.

Google Adsense Tips For Maximum Earnings And How To Avoid ‘smart pricing’ is a post from: Online Business Blog