Great list of DVD films available. You just click on the ‘more’ button to make a purchase or ‘next’ to see what else is available.
This list updates automatically so you always know you are seeing the latest and greatest films available.
Bookmark this page for future reference and when you want to look and see what is current in films.
Boy that was a quick posting, just for reference if you are interested in car accessories you can check out my latest lens on squidoo.
Top Ten Music CD’s
I have posted a managed list of the most popular music CD’s, this list updates automatically so as a CD falls down the rating it will be replaced by a higher rated one so that you will always be accessing the latest and up to date list of popular music.
Internet Marketing & SEO
Links Exchange
Lots going on this week, I have been reviewing what the Link Exchange does for me, having added a new links.cgi page to my curtains and cushions website which is automatically formatted by the Link Exchange program when you follow their instructions for creating code and implementing it on your website.
There are 4 options for adding code to create the links page but beware your host needs to support the option you choose. For me it was Perl as that was the only format my host supports (I mentioned this in an earlier post), it was a bit tricky but it’s done now.
As for a verdict I am still out to court, I was hoping to find lots of websites which were looking for links and that had a synergy with curtains and cushions i.e. if the sites you link to are not relevant to your content then you are probably doing more damage than good. Anyway to cut a long story short, of all the categories available I had to rule out probably 80%, then on the categories which were relevant I could only find about 15 sites I was prepared to link to.
The process is manual, you have to apply to link and wait for approval, likewise when people request to link to you then you also approve manually or not as the case may be. So you need to check fairly regularly for requests, doesn’t take long but you still need to do it.
Anyway of the 15 I applied to, only 2 have approved so far and 1 declined (guess that’s the way of the world) so I am still waiting on the other 12. I guess I need to give it a bit more time, there are a lot of busy people out there and they may not have been able to get back to the exchange to review their requests or they may have given up on it, only time will tell. I will keep you posted, but you have the link above if you want to take a look yourself, you never know what you are up to might suit a lot better than what I am doing.
Sitemaps
I finally managed to get my sitemaps sorted out and successfully submitted to google. Whats he talking about I here you asking. Well to improve the way google spiders your website you can create a site map for your website in .xml format, then you upload it to your host and you use the webmaster tools in google to tell them its there. They check it and tell you if it is good to go , unfortunately mine wasn’t and as .xml is new to me I wasn’t too sure why.
Ended up downloading a dedicated .xml writer called XmlStudio which is published by Liquid Technologies Ltd. when you load the file into their program you can validate the code against the format of the required schema and it tells you where all the errors are, cool eh. Well once I had done that it was just a question of correcting the highlighted errors and re-submitting and hey presto google told me all was well in my life, so now I can be spidered more easily and they can find all my content better, sounds a bit painful but believe me this is good.
More Traffic to your Site
Nearly finished (sigh of relief) but I have to tell you about Firestorm, I gave you the link in my previous blog broadcast.
This is well worth checking out if you want traffic, basically you use the social book marking tools like Stumble, Digg, Reddit, Technorati and more to advertise your websites to the world wide web, with a bit of help from some friends and putting a bit of effort in yourself you can create a decent amount of traffic to your websites.
Now if your websites are worth visiting you will find that people come back and recommend to their friends using the social book marking tools, on the other hand if you are asking people to look at a load of rubbish it is unlikely you will ever see them or any of their friends again. So it is still about good content that is relevant, that means make sure you are very clear and tell people what they are about to look at.
Gathering info for a new Hub
Just to let you know, we had a day out in Toulouse last week, had a good old tour around and I am putting a day out article on HubPages to let people know what we got up to. I plan to finish it after I have posted this so you may need to check back before you can see it – good to go now I have finished it.
Anyway that’s it for now, I need to get on with my day in Toulouse so I am off. You may see a few changes coming soon, I think I am beginning to understand this blogging thing now I have been at it for a few weeks so I am probably going to re-organize and split the earning a crust into some distinct categories so people can find what they are interested in more easily. I will explain it all when I do so you know where to go for the stuff you are interested in.
If you need more detail or a clearer explanation on any of the things I have talked about, just subscribe to my blog and drop me a line and I will see what I can do. I realize I am talking about a lot of stuff but not saying exactly how to do it (well I can’t give all my secrets away, well not yet anyway) so if you are interested and have a specific need let me know.
For all you budding internet marketers out there, you may want to check out this forum where like minded people all work together to promote their websites. I have only had a little bit of a trial run with it so far, but it certainly seems to work in getting a bit of traffic to your websites.
Firestorm Forum – View topic – Firestorm Banners
Well its been another busy few days, I have now discovered HubPages which is a free internet site that is similar to Squidoo. You can write an article or 2 post it through HubPages and earn income from the ads they place on your article.
Obviously for the benefit of using their format and search engine power they charge you through pinching part of the commission you get through adsense.
Trick is to get as high a ranking as you can so you get lots of traffic and lots of clicks on your adsense ads. Thing about HubPages is that there is a little share button at the bottom of the page and you can click on it and get all sorts of ways of sharing the fact that you have created a new hub. Thats what I used to post the last blog , effectively I just clicked on post to blogger and it did it for me, cool eh.
So HubPages is definitely tied in a bit closer to Google than Squidoo, although to be fair you can do similar things with Squidoo.
Oh by the way I have just released another lens for World Wide Vehicle Registration Plates that is pure selling, plus a little bit of information on the world of number plates. But as you can see I am having to put it in blogger manually, that said all the other links that Squidoo use are the same as HubPages.
Anyway if you like number plates for collection or you need some new ones for your car it is probably worth a visit.
The other thing I have been doing this week is sorting out some new software on my website that creates a reciprocal linking page. The theory is that once you have got this set up , you can access a huge list of other sites looking for reciprocal links and if your websites have something in common you can agree to link to each others sites using the reciprocal link software. What it does is categorize and list all your links on the page they created on your behalf.
I have to say this took a bit of sorting out for 2 reasons, my host only supports one of the options they offer and that is Perl which I have never used before, so fun and games there. Secondly I use Dream weaver to upload my websites and guess what they don’t support Perl, so it was cut and paste in Notepad to get it done.
It’s all working now though so I am out to court, we will see how things go and whether it was worth all the trouble of getting it loaded onto my website. A note of caution, its not worth sticking any old link on, search engines are big on relevancy and if they think you are linking to non-relevant sites then they will penalize you, which isn’t exactly the point of the exercise.
Got to go now, my new lens just got promoted to being featured from being work in progress, that means I can go and publicize it and join groups etc to give the lens an even higher ranking.
So better do it quick before they change their minds also lets you off to go and look at some of the new stuff I have done.
Well I said I would test the RSS feed theory on my websites French Holidays Aude and Curtains and Cushions, trouble is my host website doesn’t support php.
So what does that mean exactly, well it means I can put java script feeds to my website so I can get constantly updating data, which is good for visitors to the website because they have something topical and interesting to read that updates without me doing anything, a facit that search engines really like.
Not that the contents that I do update aren’t interesting because they most certainly are.
The bad news is that the search engines ignore java script and only take notice of php, so from an SEO perspective I have wasted my time (well not on curtains and cushions, because I haven’t put any feeds to that site yet).
I can upgrade to a web hosting package that does support php and ultimately that is what I may have to do to get that SEO option working for me.
Makes you think though doesn’t it, if I had known that when I bought my hosting package would I have spent the extra money to have that extra facility. Something you may want to consider if you are about to buy hosting.
On another subject we managed to sell a picture from our gallery last week, I have to say I can’t claim it was my picture because my wife actually took the shot all I did was put the camera on the right setting for her.
You can see the picture gallery on French Holidays Aude for all the photographs we have as potential canvas prints, but the picture in question is the one at the top, I thought it was a pretty good shot when we first saw it and when we got it printed on a canvas frame it looked even better.
Anyway that’s me until the next installment, for anyone reading this if you want to give me some feedback just go ahead and post a comment, I promise I will read it and if you need an answer I’ll try and do that as well.
Also don’t forget if you go to my squidoo lenses you can star rate them right at the top of the page, let me know what you think of those as well. The star rating should do that nicely.
