Anatomy Of A Reciprocal Linking Campaign

Reciprocal linking means forming partnerships with other sites who place a link from their Web pages to yours. You then give them a similar link in return.

When you look for people to swap links with, make sure that you don't reduce the quality or content of your own site. You don't want users to click straight through without reading your content; you want them to take action on your own site rather than have them leave empty handed.

One way to stop them from running away too quickly is to create a "Webmasters Resource Page" and link to that page from your homepage. This doesn't take away from the content on your homepage and the links are just one click away rather than being buried deep within the site, giving value to your partners.

In any case, you want to be sure that your site is more than just a page full of links. If your site contains more links than content, it will look like a link farm and it will certainly not be attractive to webmasters, search engines or users.

Picking your partner

Your link partners should be sites your target market will visit. Think about your product and its subject area and brainstorm to determine where people interested in your product might be looking online.

For example, if you're trying to shift your book about blackjack strategy, it makes sense that the people visiting online casinos would make great customers. Online casinos then could be good partners. Identify top-ranked, high quality casino sites and find the email address, telephone number and snail mail address of their webmasters.

You can also identify your competitors and see where they trade links. After all why reinvent the wheel when you can use your competitors hard work!

Seven Top Tips For Requesting reciprocal Links...

1. Before you contact webmasters, place a link to their site on your resource page to assure them that you will actually provide a quality link.

2. Create a subject line that will encourage them to read your message rather than deleting it - you don't want them to think you're spamming them. (Something about their site or product is sure to capture their attention; they will open it, thinking you're a potential customer.) Hint - subscribe to their ezine and then reply using the ezine subject line as the subject of your reply.

3. Begin your message by talking about your visit to their site and what you found interesting about it. Detail your product or service in one line and ask them to exchange links with you.

4. Tell them in detail where you have placed their link, include the precise URL, tell them where to find their link on the page and emphasize that it is only one click away from your homepage.

5. Tell them that if you don't hear back from them in a specific number of days, you will consider that to a negative response and that you will remove their link from your site. Give them enough time to respond but don't leave it open ended.

6. Sending a reciprocal link request by email is becoming less and less effective due to Spam filters and the high volume of email traffic received by webmasters of busy sites. Try sending your request on a postcard or better still make a phone call.

7. Tell the webmaster how they will benefit from the reciprocal linking arrangement - explain what's in it for them and use your selling and persuasion skills!

Hackers And Hoaxes

Everyone who has an ISP, understands, or at least knows about how hackers use viruses, Trojans and other web nasties, to infect and mess up your computer. No headline news there. (Unfortunately, we still don't understand why they do it, or at least I don't.) But hackers don't have to write malicious code or hijack your browser to do some serious damage to your system. Oh no... A well written email with no attachments, can do the trick. They only have to start a rumor.
Hackers can easily manipulate you into trashing your own computer. All they have to do is begin a hoax.

What do I mean by that? Let me explain.

Have you ever gotten emails from people you know that say something like: Scan your hard drive for such and such a file! If you find it delete it immediately! Pass this on. Warn everyone you know!

These emails are originally generated by a hacker and spread throughout the Internet to get you to delete files you need, thus creating havoc for your system. They are hoaxes.

Hoaxes work incredibly well for getting average people to cause their own computers to malfunction. the hacker doesn't have to spend any time creating malicious code and a method of distribution, all they have to do is play on the human tendency for hysteria; send out a warning that something evil is spreading, and if you find it on your computer, get rid of it!

Recently I was tracking a thread on a forum, where the moderator warned everyone about a file that he found on his system that was a keylogger. (A keylogger is a malicious program designed to track your every move through monitoring your keystrokes.) He warned everyone to search for a file, ans2000.ini and, "delete the booger."

I scan my system every day, with several different virus/ spyware programs, and I never picked up this file with any of them, so I decided to do a Windows Explorer search for it. Sure enough, I found it on my hard drive. Oh My God!

Before hitting the delete key though, I looked it up on the web. I Googled the specific file and found quite a bit of information on it. The file ans2000.ini is used in the keylogger program known as ProBot SE. However, it is also used in many other legitimate programs as well. Ok, so now what do I do?

Well, I contacted my go-to guy, Jim Gray, owner of Quikonnex, and asked him what his thoughts were. He told me to open the ini file, in Notepad, and read it. Sure enough, this file did have an association to another program on my system. It is part of ActivEbook Compiler. It was right there in print, at the top of the file.

Now had I just freaked out when I found the file, and deleted the booger, I would've trashed my ebook compiler, making it useless to me. Two points for the hacker who started the hoax!

Hoaxes are just as dangerous as live viruses, because they inspire you to destroy your own programs. I am sure they are a particular kick for the one starting the hoax, as they are getting you to do bad things to your own system. Fear is a powerful motivator, and hoaxes, by design, are created to cause panic and fear in the less experienced Internet traveler.

So, before going and deleting files from your hard drive, go check them out. Do a search for them and read the information you find. Don't just go deleting things without learning about them first, or you just may end up cutting your own throat. And, NEVER forward these types of warning emails to others until you know for a fact that the information is correct, or you're likely to have your friends and family after you for misinforming them.

Resources for validating virus/ hoax information:

http://vil.mcafee.com/hoax.asp
http://www.vmyths.com/
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html
http://www.f-secure.com/virus-info/hoax/

The Key To Distributing Articles

So you have written a great article on your area of expertise, but how are you going to distribute it?

This is where many people fall-over in the article publishing business. If you create an article and put it on your site people aren’t just going to turn up and read it.

This reminds me of an old story I was told by a friend. When he was a child he decided to make chips and sell them to make some pocket money. He made the chips and set up the stall in his parent’s kitchen. Of course being young and naive, he didn’t tell anyone he just expected people to turn up! Of course they didn’t. The same goes for your article writing. In order to be successful, you must circulate the article.

The best way to circulate the article is to use one of the top distribution services and article directory services. For example:

• Articlesnet.co.uk
• Isnare.com
• Submityourarticle.com

These companies will either put your article up on their site, and due to the high traffic readerships of these sites you will gain extra readers. Alternatively if they are a distribution service they will email your article to lots of ezine and newsletter authors. They, in turn, will then email your article to all their readers. Obviously the article has to be of a high enough standard. Many of the distribution services have arrangements with other large article sites and will automatically submit your article to these sites.

One final tip to aid in circulating your article is to create an RSS feed. You can then distribute your article RSS feed and ping all the major RSS search engines. They will index your article and this again allows you to tap into many more readers.

I hope these tips help you in your article publishing.

10 Helpful Tips For Running A Profitable Web Site

1. Address your targeted audience on your business site. Example: "Welcome Internet Marketers". If you have more than one, address them all.

2. Make sure your content and graphics are relevant to your web site's theme. You wouldn't want to use a bird graphic on a business web site.

3. Alert visitors by email when you add new content to your web site. This will remind people to revisit your web site.

4. Offer a way for visitors to contact you on each web page. List your email address, fax number and phone number.

5. Give people the option of viewing your web site offline. Offer it by autoresponder or printer friendly version.

6. Make sure a least 50 f your content is original. The other option is to offer something else original other than content, like software or an online utility.

7. Offer your visitors incentives for revisiting your web site. You could give them new content, ebooks, software, ezine, etc.

8. Publish a FAQs for your business, product and web site. They could have questions about multiple parts of your business.

9. Make sure all links on the navigational bar are clickable. If people can't get to where they want to go, they will leave.

10. Organize you web site in logical and profitable sequence. You don't want to give a freebie before they learn about the product(s) you're selling.

Top 10 Ways To Protect Yourself From Online Identity Theft

Identity theft is becoming a bigger problem as more and more people are making the internet a bigger part of their lives. People who are new to the online medium often fall prey to ‘phishing’ or other internet identity theft schemes. In many cases the ‘phishing party’ uses your credit card to order goods for them selves, in other cases they will apply for credit cards, set up bank accounts, and take advantage of your good credit rating. Correcting these issues involves a lot of time energy and stress, so here are ten tips to help you from becoming a victim of identity theft.

Use a disposable email account. Keep your business or personal email account just for business or personal communication. If you are going to be making purchases online, joining newsgroups, or subscribing to mailing lists and ezines use a disposable email account. There are many online free accounts such as yahoo, hotmail or grail, and most of them can interface with popular email clients like outlook or outlook express. Use one of them for all of your shopping transactions.

Disguise your online identity. If your real name in Mary Smith try to avoid using email accounts with name like msmith@example.com when dealing with people you don’t know and trust. If you were born in 1972 don’t chose msmith1972@example.com as your email account.

Use different level passwords. Use one password for your personal information, use another for your business accounts and a third for your disposable email accounts or mailing lists you sign up for. Don’t use sequential passwords like password1 for personal use password2 for business, and password 3 for disposable accounts.

Use strong passwords. Don’t use your birthdates, year you were married, or your children’s birthdates. Avoid choosing passwords that consist entirely of letters or numbers. Also try to avoid using passwords that are actual words. The best passwords are mnemonic phrases like “my father ate three apples for breakfast”. Take the first letter of each word and convert the number into numbers and you end up with “mfa3a4b”.

Rotate your passwords. You should change your passwords every 6 to 12 months. If you suspect your passwords have been compromised change them as a safety precaution.

Use only one credit card for all of your online purchases. If any of your other credit cards have online transactions you know they are fraudulent. If you see offline purchases for your online credit card you also know they are fraudulent.

Use credit cards instead of debit cards. While many debit cards now offer online purchase protection it’s easier to dispute fraudulent charges than to recover debit card funds that have already been spent.

When you make purchases online make sure your transactions are secure. In the address bar you should see “https” and not “http”. There should also be small lock icon in your browser. If this is your first purchase from the company make sure the issuing company is someone you have heard of like Verisign, or Thawte.

Check a company’s privacy policy. When you make your first transaction make sure your check the privacy policy, look for logos from consumer groups like Trust-E and the better business bureau. Click the logos to make sure they are authentic.

Never open or fill out email requests for you to update you account or credit card settings via email. These are ‘phishing’ scams people use to try and secure your personal information. Many of them are growing increasingly sophisticated and go to great lengths to look exactly like the companies website using their exact logo