The Hearst Corp., the parent company of San Francisco Chronicle newspaper, announced yesterday that it must quickly slash costs including severe workforce reduction, or has to sell or close the newspaper. Hearst's announcement is triggered by the greater than expected loss projected for the year. According to Hearst, the newspaper has been losing money since 2001 including a lost of more than $50 million last year.
The Chronicle is hardly alone. Hearst recently announced that it was closing the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, unless it can find a buyer. The Tribune Co., which operates the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, filed for bankruptcy protection in December last year. The Philadelphia Inquirier and Daily News' parent company also filed for bankruptcy over the weekend. In addition, the Rocky Mountain News in Denver and Tucson Citizen in Arizona may close, if they can't find a buyer.
There is nothing new that the newspaper industry has been hit hard by the popularity of the Internet, which has drastically changed how news is produced and distributed. The newspaper companies used to be the only source of news. Not any longer. At CNN's iReport.com, individual citizens are contributing lot of news content at real time. I was very much impressed by the number of eyeballs I attracted, when I published my Cartoosh's View editorial cartoons to iReport.com. In my post about a cartoonist's dream, I also discussed the change in the syndicate industry.
The popularity of iReport.com is just one of many success stories in the new era of "user-driven content" business. In my post about how to produce passive incomes, I discussed user-driven content sites including eHow, HubPages, Squidoo, CafePress, Zazzle, and SaleForce.com's AppExchange.
Although news readers now receive free news from the Internet, many of them feel overwhelmed by the massive amount of information. With keywords you enter, the search engine returns lots of relevant web pages. Thanks to the technology that analyzes content relevance and website authority, such as, Google's PageRank, the quality of search results has significantly improved. Websites like Digg and StumbleUpon are offering an alternative to highlight important or interesting news and information by human surfers instead of search engines.
Still, how to consume news and information effectively with limited amount of time available in people's busy daily schedule remains a challenge. The news companies can play a new role in finding a solution of this challenge. Although the printed newspapers are not going to disappear completely, the future of the newspaper companies is closely related to how they leverage user-driven content and address effectiveness of news consumption.
Showing posts with label online publishing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label online publishing. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Light Up The Engine Of Your Internet Business
[Updated 2/20/2009]
It's a wonderful day today. The cloudy sky in California finally broke up for sunshine after restless raining for about two weeks - which is very much appreciated, since California had not got nearly half of the rain as in the normal winter season.
But, the other great thing is that the second phase of my Internet business has reach a new altitude. The gigglePanda - our latest gigglePet member to join giggleZOO (see the attached picture) won Today's Best Award at Zazzle. Within a day, I've received quite a few excellent 5-star ratings and comments from the visitors of my Cartoosh Gallery. It feels like watching your kids receiving wonderful praises or joining the principals honor roll list (which actually happened to my son last week :) The traffic to both my Cartoosh Gallery and giggleZOO has increased as a result.
I'm still at the early stage of the second phase of my Internet business. I'm still exploring myself to see what I could do in arts and trying to find the angle to differentiate myself in the crowded and competitive art-selling marketplace. I still have a long way to go. But, the recognition at this stage helps confirm the direction and the strategy in my Internet business.
If you're contemplating what to do for your own business adventure, I'd suggest you start by "looking inside yourself for potentials and trying to leverage your strengths" rather than simply follow the crowd or "the so-called experts." Some self-claimed experts on the Internet, for example, suggest you read articles published by others and "rewrite" them to become your own. Or, use a program to collect the articles from the Internet based on certain keywords and instruct the program to produce copies that are often not readable by human. To earn a sustainable income, you'll be spending the whole day producing at least twenty or thirty articles. That's fine, if you enjoy doing that and feel proud in dedicating your life on that. Even if you can make decent money, would you be able to tell your kids that's something you've been doing for the past five or ten years?
Passion can evaporate in a few weeks or months. Passion alone is not enough to make a successful business. You need a business that is in line with the values of your life. Not only is producing cartoon arts a long-time hobby of mine, but I'm also thrilled in sharing a few giggles with people. I've been exploring my own potentials in cartooning and found something I didn't realize I could do before. That's what keeps me going everyday. Don't settle for something solely to produce incomes. You have to find "the true engine" of your own and light it up.
It's a wonderful day today. The cloudy sky in California finally broke up for sunshine after restless raining for about two weeks - which is very much appreciated, since California had not got nearly half of the rain as in the normal winter season.
But, the other great thing is that the second phase of my Internet business has reach a new altitude. The gigglePanda - our latest gigglePet member to join giggleZOO (see the attached picture) won Today's Best Award at Zazzle. Within a day, I've received quite a few excellent 5-star ratings and comments from the visitors of my Cartoosh Gallery. It feels like watching your kids receiving wonderful praises or joining the principals honor roll list (which actually happened to my son last week :) The traffic to both my Cartoosh Gallery and giggleZOO has increased as a result.
I'm still at the early stage of the second phase of my Internet business. I'm still exploring myself to see what I could do in arts and trying to find the angle to differentiate myself in the crowded and competitive art-selling marketplace. I still have a long way to go. But, the recognition at this stage helps confirm the direction and the strategy in my Internet business.
If you're contemplating what to do for your own business adventure, I'd suggest you start by "looking inside yourself for potentials and trying to leverage your strengths" rather than simply follow the crowd or "the so-called experts." Some self-claimed experts on the Internet, for example, suggest you read articles published by others and "rewrite" them to become your own. Or, use a program to collect the articles from the Internet based on certain keywords and instruct the program to produce copies that are often not readable by human. To earn a sustainable income, you'll be spending the whole day producing at least twenty or thirty articles. That's fine, if you enjoy doing that and feel proud in dedicating your life on that. Even if you can make decent money, would you be able to tell your kids that's something you've been doing for the past five or ten years?
Passion can evaporate in a few weeks or months. Passion alone is not enough to make a successful business. You need a business that is in line with the values of your life. Not only is producing cartoon arts a long-time hobby of mine, but I'm also thrilled in sharing a few giggles with people. I've been exploring my own potentials in cartooning and found something I didn't realize I could do before. That's what keeps me going everyday. Don't settle for something solely to produce incomes. You have to find "the true engine" of your own and light it up.
(Click to see the award winning product!)
Labels:
on-demand printing,
online publishing
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Earn Extra Holiday Cash from eHow
Happy Holidays! Just want to pass on good money making opportunities to everyone. eHow is offering a special promotion and extra cash during this holiday season. If you'd like to learn more about eHow and online-publishing, read my post regarding how to make more profit from eHow, Squidoo, and HubPages.
Here is the detail from eHow:
Here is the detail from eHow:
The holidays are a time for giving-- not only is eHow extending the holiday promotion, but we are DOUBLING the money we are giving away!
We are extending our holiday promotion until 12/29/2008. Contribute your original articles now and have a chance to win $200 or more by being featured on the eHow homepage. Articles must be featured on any day from Monday to Friday and be in one of the following areas: Today's Top How To, Featured How Tos, or the eHow of the Day. You will receive $100 if your articles are featured on Today's Top How To and Featured How Tos, and $200 if your articles are featured on the eHow of the Day. We will deposit all winnings in PayPal accounts on December 31st, 2008.
Want to start earning money for your articles, but aren't currently a member of the eHow Writer Compensation Program? It's easy, just click here to fill out your information and start earning more money today!
Labels:
online publishing
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Boost Site Traffic via Article Marketing?
[Updated 12/12/08]
After spending lot of effort in producing content for your blogs or designing your web sites, you start wondering how to bring in visitors. There are many marketing mechanisms ranging from search engine advertising like Google AdWords or Yahoo! Search Marketing to off-line medias. One of the popular marketing approaches has been Article Marketing.
What is Article Marketing?
As the term has suggested, article marketing promotes a product, service, or web site via articles. Article marketing is really nothing new. Many companies have written up and give away so-called white papers to the prospects who want to do a bitof research of their own, before they initiate the conversation with any potential vendors about their business problems. The white paper typically starts with a discussion that demonstrates the company's understanding of the business problems, before presenting their product.
Article promotion works the same way. An article typically consists of three parts: the title, the body, and the resource box. The article body is a short-form of a white paper that seeks to establish the author's credentials in the reader's mind. The resource box at the end of the article is the bio about the author, which is perhaps the whole reason why the article is written. The resource box briefly describes the author's expertise followed by a couple of links that help direct the article readers to the author's blogs or web sites.
How and where to distribute your articles?
Once you've written up a nice piece of article, how do you distribute it to people who may be of interest in the products or services you're trying sell? There are many so-called article directories happy to do the distribution job for you. Here is how it works: You register with an article directory as an author and submit your articles. Once accepted, the article directory will start distributing your articles to thousands of publishers through various means; for example, e-newsletters, e-zines, RSS subscriptions, or syndication. Or, your articles may be viewed or picked up by opt-in readers who visit the directory. The basic requirement for the publishers to freely reprint the articles is to retain the entire article and the resource box intact.
For your convenience, I have included a few article directories as follows:
Does article marketing really work?
Submitting your articles to the directories should in general improve the ranking of your web sites or pages in the search results thanks to the increased number of back links. That statement is yet to be proven, though. The search engine determines the weight of each link based on various factors including the credibility of the publisher site that reprints your article. Unfortunately, many article publishers pulling content from the directories are those sites whose sole purpose is to make money from the ads all around your article.
On the other hand, read a few submitted articles in the directories and you'll find that most of them rush to direct you to their "single page web sites" that either promise you easy income or sell you secrets to make quick bucks. If you're somehow interested in any of those marketing schemes, I'd urge you to reconsider that decision and save that money for better uses. There are effective ways to start or grow your Internet business, but no shortcuts to success. To see for yourself, simply click on the links from whichever articles you stumble on that were published a while back. You'll find many of those pointed sites no longer exist, barely functional, or very out-dated. The sites that are still fully functional are those that run a serious business via hard work.
Still, article marketing could work for you. If you are able to produce a lot of high quality articles, chances are some of them may show up in reputable web sites. Not only do those articles improve your search result ranking, but will also help direct quality traffic to your web site. You have to be persistent and tenacious in both quality and quantity for article marketing to work. To tract the progress of article syndication, use the "intitle:" operator (case-sensitive) in the Google search box; for example:
After spending lot of effort in producing content for your blogs or designing your web sites, you start wondering how to bring in visitors. There are many marketing mechanisms ranging from search engine advertising like Google AdWords or Yahoo! Search Marketing to off-line medias. One of the popular marketing approaches has been Article Marketing.
What is Article Marketing?
As the term has suggested, article marketing promotes a product, service, or web site via articles. Article marketing is really nothing new. Many companies have written up and give away so-called white papers to the prospects who want to do a bitof research of their own, before they initiate the conversation with any potential vendors about their business problems. The white paper typically starts with a discussion that demonstrates the company's understanding of the business problems, before presenting their product.
Article promotion works the same way. An article typically consists of three parts: the title, the body, and the resource box. The article body is a short-form of a white paper that seeks to establish the author's credentials in the reader's mind. The resource box at the end of the article is the bio about the author, which is perhaps the whole reason why the article is written. The resource box briefly describes the author's expertise followed by a couple of links that help direct the article readers to the author's blogs or web sites.
How and where to distribute your articles?
Once you've written up a nice piece of article, how do you distribute it to people who may be of interest in the products or services you're trying sell? There are many so-called article directories happy to do the distribution job for you. Here is how it works: You register with an article directory as an author and submit your articles. Once accepted, the article directory will start distributing your articles to thousands of publishers through various means; for example, e-newsletters, e-zines, RSS subscriptions, or syndication. Or, your articles may be viewed or picked up by opt-in readers who visit the directory. The basic requirement for the publishers to freely reprint the articles is to retain the entire article and the resource box intact.
For your convenience, I have included a few article directories as follows:
- Ezine Articles (PageRank 6/10) is the industry leader that emphasizes on "quality" by accepting only articles that meets certain criteria.
- Search Warp (PageRank 4/10)
- Go Articles (PageRank 6/10)
- Other article directories include Article City, A1 Articles, iSnare, Idea Marketers, Free Article Zone, Article Bin, Article Marketer, Amazines, etc.
Does article marketing really work?
Submitting your articles to the directories should in general improve the ranking of your web sites or pages in the search results thanks to the increased number of back links. That statement is yet to be proven, though. The search engine determines the weight of each link based on various factors including the credibility of the publisher site that reprints your article. Unfortunately, many article publishers pulling content from the directories are those sites whose sole purpose is to make money from the ads all around your article.
On the other hand, read a few submitted articles in the directories and you'll find that most of them rush to direct you to their "single page web sites" that either promise you easy income or sell you secrets to make quick bucks. If you're somehow interested in any of those marketing schemes, I'd urge you to reconsider that decision and save that money for better uses. There are effective ways to start or grow your Internet business, but no shortcuts to success. To see for yourself, simply click on the links from whichever articles you stumble on that were published a while back. You'll find many of those pointed sites no longer exist, barely functional, or very out-dated. The sites that are still fully functional are those that run a serious business via hard work.
Still, article marketing could work for you. If you are able to produce a lot of high quality articles, chances are some of them may show up in reputable web sites. Not only do those articles improve your search result ranking, but will also help direct quality traffic to your web site. You have to be persistent and tenacious in both quality and quantity for article marketing to work. To tract the progress of article syndication, use the "intitle:" operator (case-sensitive) in the Google search box; for example:
- intitle:"The Title of My Syndicated Article" to look for all the articles with the given phrase in the their title. You should replace it with your own article title.
- intitle:"The Title of My Syndicated Article" +source +ezinearticles.com to look for the articles with the given phrase in their title and 'source' and 'ezinearticles.com' in the page. This assumes that you submitted your article to ezinearticles.com and its name is included as part of the article. You should replace it with the directory you use.
Labels:
advertising,
online publishing
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Find The Home For Your Blogs: Blogger v.s. WordPress
[Updated 12/5/08]
As discussed in my post regarding passive incomes over the Internet, one of the most popular platforms for publishing your informational content is blogging. Blogs are on-line journals or diaries of a topic of your choice. By default, blog posts are organized in the chronicle order upon their publication. They can also be grouped in categories or tagged for easier navigation or look-up.
Today, there are many hosted blog services that free you from hosting your own and form the communities with millions of bloggers. Among the popular ones are Blogger, WordPress, Yahoo! 360, Windows Live Spaces, and TypePad. Alternatively, you can post your blog entries at e-publishing sites like HubPages and Squidoo. Squidoo also provides its lensmasters a blog service, called SquidTop, via WorkPress. It's worth noticing that WordPress can also be downloaded and hosted by your own. Movable Type - an open source organization that brings blogs, web sites, and social networks under one software does not offer the hosting service.
To make it easier for you to find the home for your blogs, I have compared Blogger and WordPress feature-by-feature in the table below. While browsing through the table, you should start considering which features are critical for your blogs. For me, the primary factors are the following:
Also, read this post at eHow and HubPages.
As discussed in my post regarding passive incomes over the Internet, one of the most popular platforms for publishing your informational content is blogging. Blogs are on-line journals or diaries of a topic of your choice. By default, blog posts are organized in the chronicle order upon their publication. They can also be grouped in categories or tagged for easier navigation or look-up.
Today, there are many hosted blog services that free you from hosting your own and form the communities with millions of bloggers. Among the popular ones are Blogger, WordPress, Yahoo! 360, Windows Live Spaces, and TypePad. Alternatively, you can post your blog entries at e-publishing sites like HubPages and Squidoo. Squidoo also provides its lensmasters a blog service, called SquidTop, via WorkPress. It's worth noticing that WordPress can also be downloaded and hosted by your own. Movable Type - an open source organization that brings blogs, web sites, and social networks under one software does not offer the hosting service.
To make it easier for you to find the home for your blogs, I have compared Blogger and WordPress feature-by-feature in the table below. While browsing through the table, you should start considering which features are critical for your blogs. For me, the primary factors are the following:
- Fees: I think you would agree with me on opting for blog services that are free of charge with a reasonable sets of functionality and storage space. It is particularly important, when my adventure is still at the exploration phase. Consider a brand-name service from Blogger run by Google, Windows Live Spaces from Microsoft, and a few others, so your precious work wouldn't be lost due to malpractices or abrupt business turmoils.
- Multiple blogs: Although your blog can cover all interesting subjects, I recommend that you create separate blogs for different topics. Not only would the separation improve the rankings of your posts in search results, but also help make searching engine advertising more efficient. By being focused, your blogs offer more relevant posts to your readers. In return, you'll find a better targeted group of readers. As such, the capability to have all my blogs (e.g. Project BKO and Fishtarian) under one user account makes my jobs much easier.
- Customization or extension: Most of the blog services provide a rich set of features without any special customization or coding. It is, however, important to keep customization or extension as an option. The blog service should have public APIs available for developers to add new widgets or plug-ins. When necessary, I may need to customize the template or implement certain features (e.g. supporting excerpts).
- Advertising: Internet advertising is a key element of the Internet business. Although not a primary reason, generating passive incomes is always a welcome gift.
- Team contribution: This feature is important so that my kids can contribute to my blogs. It would become handy, when I later recruit some partners to join my adventure.
- Openness: It is also important that I am able to move my posts to other blog services via export and import utilities and not get stuck with a service. You may want to perform your own backups occasionally.
Table 1: Comparing Blogger and WordPress
| Features | Blogger | WordPress |
| Fees | Free. | Free WordPress.com blogs come with 3GB of space for storing uploaded files and images. Pay fees for very advanced features or more upload space. |
| Setup | Hosted. | Hosted or download the software and host your own blog. |
| # of blogs per user | Unlimited. This is very useful, if you plan to blogs on various topics. | Unlimited. |
| # of pages per blog | Only the home and the post pages. | Can create additional pages to the home and post pages. Pages are not meant for displaying posts (although possible via plug-ins) but to display static content (e.g. About, Copyrights, Policies) that is less time-sensitive like posts. |
| User name | Display name can be different from the email you use to login and can be changed later. You can also choose to show your real name. | Display name is the login user name and can not be changed. |
| Import | Import from AOL only or a Blogger XML file. | Support Blogger, Moveable Type, TypePad blogs, WordPress export file, or LiveJournal XML. |
| Export | Export to a Blogger XML file. | Export file in WordPress eXtended RSS or WXR format can be downloaded and saved as a backup. |
| Page design | Support additional page elements in header, body, side-bar, and footer areas. drag-and-drop positioning. | Spport additional widgets only in side-bar. |
| Themes | Choose from about a dozen of templates; preview with the pre-loaded image. Template CSS and HTML can be customized. | Choose from over 70 templates with a two- or three-column layout. Excellent preview with the real post content and the click-able links. Template CSS can be modified. |
| Post editor | Support rich text and HTML editing. Tables are supported by editing the HTML. Remove all line breaks between <table> and </table>. | Support rich text and HTML editing with support for excerpt, categories, and tags in the same editor page. Better support for audio, video, and polls. Tables are supported by HTML editing. |
| Post categorization | Assign tags to the post. Posts can be grouped and viewed by tags. | Assign categories and tags to the post. Posts can be grouped and viewed by categories or tags. Categories and tags are very similar and sometimes confusing. Categories generally don't change often, while tags usually change more dynamically with every post and can be shown in the "tag cloud". |
| Permalink | Automatically generated; can not be changed. | Automatically generated; can be changed. |
| Comments | Support anonymous comments and moderation. | Support anonymous comments and moderation. |
| Linkbacks to keep track other sites that have links to the posts. | Support backlinks. | Support trackbacks and pingbacks. |
| Advertising | Ads are allowed. AdSense ads are natively supported. | For performance reason, Adsense, Yahoo, Chitika, TextLinkAds, sponsored/paid posts including PayPerPost, ReviewMe and Smorty; affiliate/referral links to the following domains: usercash, clickbank, clickhop, cashrocks, payingcash; clicktrackers and any promotion of the “I made a million on the internet and so can you” type of advertising are not permitted to be added by users, unless you're one of those VIP blogs. AdSense ads may be added by WordPress, but can be avoided with a fee. |
| Custom domain | Supported. | Supported. |
| Traffic analysis | Supported via Google Analytics. | Supported navtively via Blog Stats. |
| Team blogging | Grant users admin or author roles. | Grant users admin, author, contributor, and editor roles. |
Also, read this post at eHow and HubPages.
Labels:
online publishing,
technology
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Write For More Profit: eHow, Squidoo, and HubPages
[Updated 11/25/08]
Recently, I have posted several "hubs" on HubPages to have some first hand experience with how it's different from eHow and Squidoo. Based on my previous post, I'll compare all three of them in this new post, so you can decide which suits you better.
As I discussed informational content in my previous post regarding producing passive income over the Internet, three of the most popular sites in the on-line publishing market came out: eHow, Squidoo, and HubPages. All three sites provide a free platform that inspires people to write down their insightful knowledge or know-how, and rewards them for doing so. eHow focuses on how-to or do-it-yourself (DIY) types of information, while Squidoo and HubPages are wide open for all kinds of subjects.
You do not have to be a professional writer to start making your share of contribution. All you need is a topic and a passion for sharing with others. Of course, your success in the on-line publishing marketplace depends on quantity, quality, and the value of the information you publish. And, more success usually translates to better rewards. The rewards primarily coming from ads and affiliate programs depend on the site traffic. All these sites have worked with major search engines to make sure their content properly included in the research results, invested in marketing to attract traffic, and formed on-line communities to entice writers. My personal experience shows that eHow appears to have most traffic at the moment.
That said, let's get straight into comparing how they work.
#1 eHow
The difficult part of writing an eHow article is finding out what you want to demonstrate and doing the preparation work for the article. When it comes to what to demonstrate, the good news is that there are virtually unlimited categories you can consider. The bad news is that you should really know your subject. It does not mean that you must be an expert in that area, though. My advice to you is that you should at least try out the instructions you are going to write and make sure they work. Getting your hands dirty actually has several benefits. For one, you know whether the instructions or tools are correct and/or complete. During that exercise, you may find out additional tips to avoid potential failures. Secondly, you can take pictures along the way to illustrate how things are done. Remember - a picture is worth a thousand words. Here is a good example posted by my daughter.
Once you have done the preparation work, it is time to just enter the information on eHow. The tool they provide focuses only on the article itself and is very simple and straightforward. eHow then takes care of the ads and the affiliated content. For most cases, that appears to be good enough. I have seen others customize the page layout to make the article more appealing and effective, though. Even though eHow accepts articles of any subject now, you still author articles using the same editor for composing a 'how-to' article.
#2 Squidoo
As I mentioned before, Squidoo is not focused on how-to or DIY. You can write about anything you want including on-going events, as long as you believe there is value in your article. An article at Squidoo is called a lens, and the author of a lens is called lensmaster. Squidoo has a ranking system, LensRank, that inspires the lensmaster to do better and more for their lenses. Your new lenses at Squidoo are likely to start out as work-in-progress and at a low rank. Squidoo offers some advices in the health report to make your lens more polished. As you revise your lenses with more useful information and improve them with more interesting modules, their ranks improve. At one point, they will become featured lenses that Squidoo starts to promote and include in search results. So, it is important that you keep on working and revising your lenses, even long after you have created them.
A lens consists of a number of modules. There is a wide variety of modules including the most commonly used - introduction, text/write, and comments modules. The text/write module needs improvement, even though it accepts some basic HTML tags, such as for hyperlinks. The most interesting modules, however, are those related to merchants like Amazon, CafePress, and eBay. For example, the Amazon modules allow you to place Amazon products in your lens and bring in income as a result of affiliate sales. You can configure the Amazon modules to either let Amazon recommend the related products to your subject, or you pick the products best suited for your readers. You can also customize the product presentation.
Squidoo splits the profit of a lens evenly with the lensmaster, after excluding the operation costs.
#3 HubPages
HubPages works in a much similar way to Squidoo. An article is called a hub, while HubPages users are called hubbers. HubPages ask each individual author to sign up affiliate programs with their sponsored merchants (e.g. Amazon and eBay). HubPages states that the author gets 60% of the ad revenue from the hubs.
Although with a slightly different look, the HubPage editor works similarly to Squidoo's. Instead of modules, HubPages calls them "content capsules". At the moment, HubPages only has a small number of capsules available. The text capsule is the best among all three, which offers various fonts and formating capabilities. The support of rich text in the text capsule makes authoring much more productive compared to the others. I find the Amazon and eBay capsules a bit hard to use. For one, the search capability seems to be inflexible and very limited. I have had a hard time getting the list of the products I feel comfortable with. Although I am allowed to hand pick my favorite products, the capsules do not provide adequate look-up functionality.
HubPages assigns HubScore (1 - 100) to each hub upon publication based on a verity of factors. Among the three sites, HubPages sets out many rules to ensure high quality of the hubs. Violation of those rules results in either penalty to the HubScore or removal of the hub. Hubs with HubScore lower than 40 would have lower ranking by the search engine and other negative implications. In addition, HubPages also assign a score for every hub author. You should get yourself familiar with those rules collected in this hub, before joining HubPages. Below are perhaps the two most common violations many hubs have been flagged about:
A few final words: set a realistic expectation
You may have heard people claim that they have made a significant income off these online publishing sites, which may have motivated you to jump right in. I would remind you that there are no quick bucks or short-cuts to success here. Treat it like a career, if you may. Your success requires both quantity and quality in your writing. Make writing a habit and learning a part of your life, if you wish.
Read this post on eHow (part 1, 2, and 3), HubPages, and Squidoo.
Recently, I have posted several "hubs" on HubPages to have some first hand experience with how it's different from eHow and Squidoo. Based on my previous post, I'll compare all three of them in this new post, so you can decide which suits you better.
As I discussed informational content in my previous post regarding producing passive income over the Internet, three of the most popular sites in the on-line publishing market came out: eHow, Squidoo, and HubPages. All three sites provide a free platform that inspires people to write down their insightful knowledge or know-how, and rewards them for doing so. eHow focuses on how-to or do-it-yourself (DIY) types of information, while Squidoo and HubPages are wide open for all kinds of subjects.
You do not have to be a professional writer to start making your share of contribution. All you need is a topic and a passion for sharing with others. Of course, your success in the on-line publishing marketplace depends on quantity, quality, and the value of the information you publish. And, more success usually translates to better rewards. The rewards primarily coming from ads and affiliate programs depend on the site traffic. All these sites have worked with major search engines to make sure their content properly included in the research results, invested in marketing to attract traffic, and formed on-line communities to entice writers. My personal experience shows that eHow appears to have most traffic at the moment.
That said, let's get straight into comparing how they work.
#1 eHow
The difficult part of writing an eHow article is finding out what you want to demonstrate and doing the preparation work for the article. When it comes to what to demonstrate, the good news is that there are virtually unlimited categories you can consider. The bad news is that you should really know your subject. It does not mean that you must be an expert in that area, though. My advice to you is that you should at least try out the instructions you are going to write and make sure they work. Getting your hands dirty actually has several benefits. For one, you know whether the instructions or tools are correct and/or complete. During that exercise, you may find out additional tips to avoid potential failures. Secondly, you can take pictures along the way to illustrate how things are done. Remember - a picture is worth a thousand words. Here is a good example posted by my daughter.
Once you have done the preparation work, it is time to just enter the information on eHow. The tool they provide focuses only on the article itself and is very simple and straightforward. eHow then takes care of the ads and the affiliated content. For most cases, that appears to be good enough. I have seen others customize the page layout to make the article more appealing and effective, though. Even though eHow accepts articles of any subject now, you still author articles using the same editor for composing a 'how-to' article.
#2 Squidoo
As I mentioned before, Squidoo is not focused on how-to or DIY. You can write about anything you want including on-going events, as long as you believe there is value in your article. An article at Squidoo is called a lens, and the author of a lens is called lensmaster. Squidoo has a ranking system, LensRank, that inspires the lensmaster to do better and more for their lenses. Your new lenses at Squidoo are likely to start out as work-in-progress and at a low rank. Squidoo offers some advices in the health report to make your lens more polished. As you revise your lenses with more useful information and improve them with more interesting modules, their ranks improve. At one point, they will become featured lenses that Squidoo starts to promote and include in search results. So, it is important that you keep on working and revising your lenses, even long after you have created them.
A lens consists of a number of modules. There is a wide variety of modules including the most commonly used - introduction, text/write, and comments modules. The text/write module needs improvement, even though it accepts some basic HTML tags, such as for hyperlinks. The most interesting modules, however, are those related to merchants like Amazon, CafePress, and eBay. For example, the Amazon modules allow you to place Amazon products in your lens and bring in income as a result of affiliate sales. You can configure the Amazon modules to either let Amazon recommend the related products to your subject, or you pick the products best suited for your readers. You can also customize the product presentation.
Squidoo splits the profit of a lens evenly with the lensmaster, after excluding the operation costs.
#3 HubPages
HubPages works in a much similar way to Squidoo. An article is called a hub, while HubPages users are called hubbers. HubPages ask each individual author to sign up affiliate programs with their sponsored merchants (e.g. Amazon and eBay). HubPages states that the author gets 60% of the ad revenue from the hubs.
Although with a slightly different look, the HubPage editor works similarly to Squidoo's. Instead of modules, HubPages calls them "content capsules". At the moment, HubPages only has a small number of capsules available. The text capsule is the best among all three, which offers various fonts and formating capabilities. The support of rich text in the text capsule makes authoring much more productive compared to the others. I find the Amazon and eBay capsules a bit hard to use. For one, the search capability seems to be inflexible and very limited. I have had a hard time getting the list of the products I feel comfortable with. Although I am allowed to hand pick my favorite products, the capsules do not provide adequate look-up functionality.
HubPages assigns HubScore (1 - 100) to each hub upon publication based on a verity of factors. Among the three sites, HubPages sets out many rules to ensure high quality of the hubs. Violation of those rules results in either penalty to the HubScore or removal of the hub. Hubs with HubScore lower than 40 would have lower ranking by the search engine and other negative implications. In addition, HubPages also assign a score for every hub author. You should get yourself familiar with those rules collected in this hub, before joining HubPages. Below are perhaps the two most common violations many hubs have been flagged about:
- Overly promotional: A hub is considered overly promotional, when including more than two links in the same domain. Exceptions are made, if those links are not "commercial", such as Wikipedia or news sites of good reputation. The hub is also considered overly promotional and may be subjective to removal, if its content is copied from the other original site (e.g. your blog or web site) and the hub contains links to those sites.
- Duplicated: Copyright violation is definitely prohibited. Even if you have the rights of the content, a hub may still be considered duplicated, if its content is copied from the other original site and found at many other sites.
A few final words: set a realistic expectation
You may have heard people claim that they have made a significant income off these online publishing sites, which may have motivated you to jump right in. I would remind you that there are no quick bucks or short-cuts to success here. Treat it like a career, if you may. Your success requires both quantity and quality in your writing. Make writing a habit and learning a part of your life, if you wish.
Read this post on eHow (part 1, 2, and 3), HubPages, and Squidoo.
Labels:
online publishing
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
What Is Mash-up?
If you are familiar with web site development and do not mind getting your hands dirty, there are new tools for you - content mash-up. Mash-up is a technology that allows you to quickly blend existing contents together. The contents blended may come from different sources or your own. The content can be in various forms from raw data, presentational graphics, to pictures. Some of the mash-up tools are sold as traditional packaged software that has to be installed on your computer; others are on-demand and run within your web browser without manual installation. The first and most popular content used for mash-up is perhaps Google Maps. In addition to traditional development tool kits, Google has introduced Mash-up Editor (beta) that does not require much of programming skills. I expect more vendors to follow this trend.
One can use mash-up to target any specific audience or niche market. Real-estate sites, such as, Trulia, mash up Google Maps with lots of valuable features that allow users to quickly locate and view summarized information of a property marked on the map. The other example is Yelp, which is a yellow page that allows users to comment on all kinds of businesses (e.g. restaurants, doctors, and so on). It mashes up both Google Map and directory data together. Clearly, it takes some thought and effort to provide additional value to their customers and make profits either via the incurred transactions or advertisement.
Mash-up can also strengthen your existing sites and bring in traffic at your door step. Do not forget that the site you build has value in itself. If your site attracts lot of traffic, someone may be interested in a partnership or some sort of affiliation, or even purchase the entire site from you. So, the key here is what values you can provide to drive up the traffic.
Do not worry about how you would put together computers and host your web site. There are many companies out there who have done this for their own business and are now eager to share with you the infrastructure they have built. They are willing to do so to improve utilization of their facilities, which in turn brings in a new revenue. This is commonly referred to as cloud. The leaders in this emerging industry include Amazon and Google. They will do all the dirty work for you at a reasonable price. Despite different pricing methodologies, be aware that each of them may impose certain technology limitation. You have to really know what you need and do some serious research, because, once the decision is made, you are likely stuck with it for a long time.
Read this post on HubPages.
One can use mash-up to target any specific audience or niche market. Real-estate sites, such as, Trulia, mash up Google Maps with lots of valuable features that allow users to quickly locate and view summarized information of a property marked on the map. The other example is Yelp, which is a yellow page that allows users to comment on all kinds of businesses (e.g. restaurants, doctors, and so on). It mashes up both Google Map and directory data together. Clearly, it takes some thought and effort to provide additional value to their customers and make profits either via the incurred transactions or advertisement.
Mash-up can also strengthen your existing sites and bring in traffic at your door step. Do not forget that the site you build has value in itself. If your site attracts lot of traffic, someone may be interested in a partnership or some sort of affiliation, or even purchase the entire site from you. So, the key here is what values you can provide to drive up the traffic.
Do not worry about how you would put together computers and host your web site. There are many companies out there who have done this for their own business and are now eager to share with you the infrastructure they have built. They are willing to do so to improve utilization of their facilities, which in turn brings in a new revenue. This is commonly referred to as cloud. The leaders in this emerging industry include Amazon and Google. They will do all the dirty work for you at a reasonable price. Despite different pricing methodologies, be aware that each of them may impose certain technology limitation. You have to really know what you need and do some serious research, because, once the decision is made, you are likely stuck with it for a long time.
Read this post on HubPages.
Labels:
online publishing,
technology
Friday, October 24, 2008
Writing for Profit: Squidoo and eHow
[Updated 11/25/08: Please read my recent post w.r.t. eHow, Squidoo, and HubPages.]
As I discussed information content in my previous post, two of the most popular sites in this market came out: Squidoo and eHow. Both sites provide a free platform that inspires writers to contribute articles and rewards them for doing so. eHow starts with how-to or do-it-yourself (DIY) types of information, while Squidoo appears to be wide open for all kinds of discussion. Consequently, the tools they provide to the writers are different in comparison.
You do not have to be a professional writer to make a contribution. All you need is the information and the passion to share with others. Of course, your success in this marketplace depends on the quality and the value of the information you provide. And, more success means better rewards.
I have had some first-hand experience with both eHow and Squidoo. Here is how I compare them.
eHow
Once you have a specific topic in mind, composing an eHow article is easy. The difficult parts are actually the idea and the preparation for it. When it comes to the idea, the good news is that there are virtually unlimited categories you can consider. The bad news is that you should really know your subject well. It does not mean that you must be an expert in the area. My recommendation is that you at least try out the instructions you are going to write and make sure they work. "Getting your hands dirty" actually has several benefits. For one, you know whether the instructions or tools are correct and/or complete. During this exercise, you may find out additional tips to help others avoid potential failures. Secondly, you can take pictures along the way to illustrate how things are done. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words. Here is a good example posted by my daughter.
Once you have done the preparation, it is time to just enter the information on eHow. The tool they provide is simple and user-friendly. For many cases, that appears good enough. I have seen others customize the page layout to make the article more appealing and effective, though. In addition to how-to articles, eHow now accepts articles about subjects of your choice. You will author articles using the same tool in writing a how-to.
Squidoo
As I mentioned before, Squidoo does not necessarily focused on how-to or DIY. You can write about anything you want, as long as you believe there is value in your article. An article at Squidoo is called a lens, and the author of a lens is called a lensmaster. Squidoo has a ranking system, LensRank, that inspires the lensmaster to do better and more or their lenses. Your new lenses at Squidoo are likely to start out in the low ranks. As you revise your lenses with more useful information and improve them with more interesting modules, their ranks improve. As ranks improve, they can become featured lenses that Squidoo starts to promote and place in search results. So, it is important that you keep improving and working on your lenses, even long after you have created them.
One interesting feature of Squidoo is the authoring tool; Workshop is the variety of modules that can be used to compose a lens. They include the popular text/write, RSS feed, and Google Search modules. The most interesting modules, however, are those related to merchants like Amazon, CafePress, and eBay. For example, the Amazon modules allow you to become an Amazon affiliate and bring in income as a result of affiliate sales. You can configure the Amazon modules to let Amazon recommend related products to your subject or to promote the products you think best suit your readers. The Amazon products can be presented whether in thumbnail or with some key information like prices.
Summary
You may have heard people claim that they have made significant income off eHow or Squidoo, which may have motivated you to jump right in. I should remind you though, that there are no quick-bucks or shortcuts to success. Treat this like a career. Your success with eHow or Squidoo career requires both quantity and quality in your writing. Make writing a habit if you wish. Lastly, I would recommend you to read some of the books listed on this page to prepare yourself, and to learn how to make your writing more effective.
As I discussed information content in my previous post, two of the most popular sites in this market came out: Squidoo and eHow. Both sites provide a free platform that inspires writers to contribute articles and rewards them for doing so. eHow starts with how-to or do-it-yourself (DIY) types of information, while Squidoo appears to be wide open for all kinds of discussion. Consequently, the tools they provide to the writers are different in comparison.
You do not have to be a professional writer to make a contribution. All you need is the information and the passion to share with others. Of course, your success in this marketplace depends on the quality and the value of the information you provide. And, more success means better rewards.
I have had some first-hand experience with both eHow and Squidoo. Here is how I compare them.
eHow
Once you have a specific topic in mind, composing an eHow article is easy. The difficult parts are actually the idea and the preparation for it. When it comes to the idea, the good news is that there are virtually unlimited categories you can consider. The bad news is that you should really know your subject well. It does not mean that you must be an expert in the area. My recommendation is that you at least try out the instructions you are going to write and make sure they work. "Getting your hands dirty" actually has several benefits. For one, you know whether the instructions or tools are correct and/or complete. During this exercise, you may find out additional tips to help others avoid potential failures. Secondly, you can take pictures along the way to illustrate how things are done. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words. Here is a good example posted by my daughter.
Once you have done the preparation, it is time to just enter the information on eHow. The tool they provide is simple and user-friendly. For many cases, that appears good enough. I have seen others customize the page layout to make the article more appealing and effective, though. In addition to how-to articles, eHow now accepts articles about subjects of your choice. You will author articles using the same tool in writing a how-to.
Squidoo
As I mentioned before, Squidoo does not necessarily focused on how-to or DIY. You can write about anything you want, as long as you believe there is value in your article. An article at Squidoo is called a lens, and the author of a lens is called a lensmaster. Squidoo has a ranking system, LensRank, that inspires the lensmaster to do better and more or their lenses. Your new lenses at Squidoo are likely to start out in the low ranks. As you revise your lenses with more useful information and improve them with more interesting modules, their ranks improve. As ranks improve, they can become featured lenses that Squidoo starts to promote and place in search results. So, it is important that you keep improving and working on your lenses, even long after you have created them.
One interesting feature of Squidoo is the authoring tool; Workshop is the variety of modules that can be used to compose a lens. They include the popular text/write, RSS feed, and Google Search modules. The most interesting modules, however, are those related to merchants like Amazon, CafePress, and eBay. For example, the Amazon modules allow you to become an Amazon affiliate and bring in income as a result of affiliate sales. You can configure the Amazon modules to let Amazon recommend related products to your subject or to promote the products you think best suit your readers. The Amazon products can be presented whether in thumbnail or with some key information like prices.
Summary
You may have heard people claim that they have made significant income off eHow or Squidoo, which may have motivated you to jump right in. I should remind you though, that there are no quick-bucks or shortcuts to success. Treat this like a career. Your success with eHow or Squidoo career requires both quantity and quality in your writing. Make writing a habit if you wish. Lastly, I would recommend you to read some of the books listed on this page to prepare yourself, and to learn how to make your writing more effective.
Labels:
online publishing
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
How to Generate Passive Income Over the Internet [Updated]
[Updated 12/2/2008.]
The first phase of my Internet business adventure is to explore potential opportunities, such as knowing what marketplaces are out there and what tools are at my disposal. Since my primary interest is to produce passive income, I have excluded ideas like selling on eBay or Amazon. My goal is to continue my income streams, even when I am not at it actively.
As discussed in this post, there are several ways to generate passive income over the Internet. Although the ways vary, the bottom line of all this is content - the King of the Internet. Income is generated by traffic to your sites, and traffic is generated by the content you produce. Knowing this, my job is to keep producing content, the kind of content that produces passive incomes. I discuss a few types as an overview.
1. Royalty-Based Content
There are many types of royalty-based content; for example, books, photos, articles, paintings, images, video clips, etc. You can protect your content via copyright or trademarks. You then claim royalties when people use them or make a copy of them. To produce passive income, though, you want to avoid handling orders from customers and shipping the products yourself.
There are many content sites that can store your content, but not all of them enable you to profit from them. For example, you can place video clips to YouTube, but you do not make a profit when people view it. Luckily, some content sites have done all the hard work and all you have to do is to produce the content for them, which is what you are good at. Advantages of this approach are that the sites handle orders, production, and shipping for you, and that there are already crowds looking for you.
Here are some examples of these sites: Istockphotos is a popular market place where people look and shop for the pictures others have produced. CafePress and Zazzle are marketplaces where people shop for T-shirts, mugs, gifts, and many other things with pictures or graphics designed by artists a.k.a yourself. Lulu.com is a marketplace for self-published books, music, and videos, while Etsy.com is for things that are hand-made.
2. Informational Content
Many Internet surfers are looking for insightful information to help them make a wise decision for their next purchase or how-to for doing certain things. If you are an expert in doing certain things or domains, this is an opportunity for you to publish your knowledge or share your ideas. Surfers typically do not directly pay for informational content, but indirectly via clicking on the searching or affiliate ads at your site.
The easiest way to set up your site(s) for the information content you produce is perhaps blogging. A blog is like a journal in which you publish informational content. You can start your own blog immediately, after opening an account with popular blog sites, such as, Blogger, TypePad, or WordPress. You will have to do affiliates and place ads on your blog(s) as well as conduct promotions to get traffic to your blogs. For more information on blogs, read my post that compares Blogger and WordPress.
Luckily, there are also content sites that have already attracted huge crowds looking for your new content; such as, eHow, Squidoo, and HubPages. All these sites provide cash-back incentives to the authors, based on various factors such as, the number of readers and the usefulness of what you wrote. You can read my other post for details on this subject.
3. Applications on the Cloud
I consider software application a special kind of content. Traditionally, application developers build the application off-line and deploy it to public on their production web server. Thanks to Web 2.0, the paradigm is now shifting towards on-line development. The most successful vendor in this frontier is salesforce.com. Through its subsidiary, force.com, the company provides not only the tools (as well as the infrastructure to host the application) to build the business applications, but also the market place, namely, AppExchange. Application developers use the tool for development and testing and publish their application to the marketplace when it is ready. Customers of salesforce.com can browse or look up the available applications in the marketplace and install those that suit their needs and demands. Application vendors can either make their applications free or charge certain subscription fees based on the number of licenses and duration. The profit is split between the application maker and salesforce.com who makes this all possible.
Be aware that the customers of these types of applications are not regular consumers who browse and shop on the Internet. The customers of salesforce.com are enterprises or businesses of various sizes that demand both complexity and quality of the application. It is therefore not surprising that developers of this category must clearly understand the business needs of their customers and be equipped with a certain level of programming skills. Though, it is considered easier and less time-consuming compared to traditional application development using C, C++, C#, or Java.
Finding the Right Marketplaces and Tools that Suit You
Having seen such a wide variety of marketplaces, you may feel lost, and start wondering where to start. By now, you should understand that each category discussed above requires different skill sets. It is important that you understand your talents as well as your passions. Here are some questions to help you figure them out:
The first phase of my Internet business adventure is to explore potential opportunities, such as knowing what marketplaces are out there and what tools are at my disposal. Since my primary interest is to produce passive income, I have excluded ideas like selling on eBay or Amazon. My goal is to continue my income streams, even when I am not at it actively.
As discussed in this post, there are several ways to generate passive income over the Internet. Although the ways vary, the bottom line of all this is content - the King of the Internet. Income is generated by traffic to your sites, and traffic is generated by the content you produce. Knowing this, my job is to keep producing content, the kind of content that produces passive incomes. I discuss a few types as an overview.
1. Royalty-Based Content
There are many types of royalty-based content; for example, books, photos, articles, paintings, images, video clips, etc. You can protect your content via copyright or trademarks. You then claim royalties when people use them or make a copy of them. To produce passive income, though, you want to avoid handling orders from customers and shipping the products yourself.
There are many content sites that can store your content, but not all of them enable you to profit from them. For example, you can place video clips to YouTube, but you do not make a profit when people view it. Luckily, some content sites have done all the hard work and all you have to do is to produce the content for them, which is what you are good at. Advantages of this approach are that the sites handle orders, production, and shipping for you, and that there are already crowds looking for you.
Here are some examples of these sites: Istockphotos is a popular market place where people look and shop for the pictures others have produced. CafePress and Zazzle are marketplaces where people shop for T-shirts, mugs, gifts, and many other things with pictures or graphics designed by artists a.k.a yourself. Lulu.com is a marketplace for self-published books, music, and videos, while Etsy.com is for things that are hand-made.
2. Informational Content
Many Internet surfers are looking for insightful information to help them make a wise decision for their next purchase or how-to for doing certain things. If you are an expert in doing certain things or domains, this is an opportunity for you to publish your knowledge or share your ideas. Surfers typically do not directly pay for informational content, but indirectly via clicking on the searching or affiliate ads at your site.
The easiest way to set up your site(s) for the information content you produce is perhaps blogging. A blog is like a journal in which you publish informational content. You can start your own blog immediately, after opening an account with popular blog sites, such as, Blogger, TypePad, or WordPress. You will have to do affiliates and place ads on your blog(s) as well as conduct promotions to get traffic to your blogs. For more information on blogs, read my post that compares Blogger and WordPress.
Luckily, there are also content sites that have already attracted huge crowds looking for your new content; such as, eHow, Squidoo, and HubPages. All these sites provide cash-back incentives to the authors, based on various factors such as, the number of readers and the usefulness of what you wrote. You can read my other post for details on this subject.
3. Applications on the Cloud
I consider software application a special kind of content. Traditionally, application developers build the application off-line and deploy it to public on their production web server. Thanks to Web 2.0, the paradigm is now shifting towards on-line development. The most successful vendor in this frontier is salesforce.com. Through its subsidiary, force.com, the company provides not only the tools (as well as the infrastructure to host the application) to build the business applications, but also the market place, namely, AppExchange. Application developers use the tool for development and testing and publish their application to the marketplace when it is ready. Customers of salesforce.com can browse or look up the available applications in the marketplace and install those that suit their needs and demands. Application vendors can either make their applications free or charge certain subscription fees based on the number of licenses and duration. The profit is split between the application maker and salesforce.com who makes this all possible.
Be aware that the customers of these types of applications are not regular consumers who browse and shop on the Internet. The customers of salesforce.com are enterprises or businesses of various sizes that demand both complexity and quality of the application. It is therefore not surprising that developers of this category must clearly understand the business needs of their customers and be equipped with a certain level of programming skills. Though, it is considered easier and less time-consuming compared to traditional application development using C, C++, C#, or Java.
Finding the Right Marketplaces and Tools that Suit You
Having seen such a wide variety of marketplaces, you may feel lost, and start wondering where to start. By now, you should understand that each category discussed above requires different skill sets. It is important that you understand your talents as well as your passions. Here are some questions to help you figure them out:
- What are you talents?
- What are your passions?
- What are your skill sets? Or, can you afford to hire someone to do it?
- Which market sectors or domains do you know the best?
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