20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Web

November 19, 2010 by Leave a Comment

What’s a cookie? How do I protect myself on the web? And most importantly: What happens if a truck runs over my laptop?

In an attempt to teach the average person about the fundamental of browsers and the web, Google has released an interactive online book that explains concepts like, TCP/IP, HTML, browser extensions and malware.

The short book, 20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Web, is a step-by-step explanation of the web and how it works. It was created by the Google Chrome team using HTML5, but it also features a lot of clever illustrations by award-winning German illustrator and children’s author Christoph Niemann.

The focus of the book is on 19 different topics (plus a recap, making for 20 things). It starts with “What Is the Internet?” and then dives into cloud computing, web apps, web programming languages, browsers, privacy, security and open source.

Source: Mashable

In your quest to do business online, is there anything that you do not understand about the web? This is your chance to learn:

20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Web.

Filed Under: Cool Sites, Internet Culture, Small Business Tagged With:

PayPal Stops Working For Equity Account Holders

November 16, 2010 by 12 Comments

In what may be a bizzarre outcome following the rumours that PayPal and Equity have been working together for a more streamlined service, holders of Equity bank accounts can no longer pay via PayPal by using their Equity debit/credit cards.

We’re not sure why Equity Bank decided to block payments to PayPal but this probably means that PayPal account holders in Kenya will continue to suffer (by not being able to withdraw to a local bank) for the foreseeable future.

What do you think of this development?

Filed Under: Internet Culture

Getting Free Advertising Online

November 11, 2010 by 1 Comment

You. You are in business for yourself, hopefully in a field you know a little something about. And while you know something about it, chances are a lot of others don’t. That means you have something to share. And there’s your ticket to a little free advertising on the internet.

Blogging
First off, if you do not have a blog for your business, start one now. A little thing worth noting: Google LOVES blogs. They index blogs and their spiders are all over blogs. So, by starting a blog and writing effective and helpful content which targets your target market, you will get into the search engines. Do so effectively and often and you will be established as an authority in your field.

Blogging is a very effective means of free advertising for your business, but let’s take it the next level.

Article Hubs
Article hubs are sites which collect content written by a large collection of authors into one site. What makes a hub different is that the authors put their content up there for the specific purpose of being republished. An example of this is Ezine Articles. There a LOT of them out there.

Now, a TRULY lazy blogger would go to a site like this, grab some content for free, and republish it on their own blogs. That’s a way to go, but the real benefit comes in being on the author side of the equation. If you are running a blog site (and you should be), you are obviously writing some content. You are making the content public anyway. Why not put some of that stuff out onto the article hubs and allow other sites to republish it? One of the conditions of doing so is that the person republishing your article has to include your short bio and a link to you with the article. YOU write this bio and you can link it using your own keywords. When they republish your article, you get credit for it and, more importantly, a link to your website.

That’s free advertising, guys. Your articles can go viral, just like a video on Youtube.

It Takes Writing
Yes, this method of online promotion takes writing. I know we have some lazy website owners on this site, but all owners (lazy or not) would like to get free publicity on the internet. So, it’ll take some writing.

Happy marketing!

Filed Under: Internet Culture, Small Business

The Kenyan Spammer

November 10, 2010 by 3 Comments

I don’t know, sometimes I think everyone in Kenya is a spammer.

We work a lot on Internet marketing projects so we meet a lot of people and hear – or work with – lots of companies dicing into Internet marketing. One of the most popular forms of Internet marketing in Kenya is Email marketing. Rightly so!

However, it disturbs me greatly that almost no Kenyan company gives two hoots about where they get the email addresses that they market to. It is very common to hear “hey, si you give me your list of emails I do email marketing for my business“?

Spam is the use of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately.

Just for your information, spamming:

  • is actually illegal in some places
  • is morally questionable
  • almost always gives a bad impression of your company/product
  • does not work as well as you think it does
  • wastes millions of man-hours each year

Furthermore, the alternative to spamming is, in my opinion, infinitely better (in that it makes more business sense). If you market to an email list that you rightfully own, you will find that your goals are much much much easier to achieve.

Spamming is wrong. Don’t do it.

Filed Under: Internet Culture

Tastefully Use Social Media at Your Wedding

November 10, 2010 by 2 Comments

A few weeks back, we wrote about Event Management 2.0 whereby we suggested that it may be of great benefit for an event management company to integrate modern technology, and social media into managing their events.

Today, Mashable shares on how to tastefully integrate social media into your wedding. Here’s a snippet of what they say:

  1. Pre-wedding preparations – Introducing wedding attendees online before the big day can help you avoid any day-of awkwardness. This will give people the chance to break the ice and virtually get to know a little about everyone else.
  2. Stay offline during the ceremony – “Be polite. Don’t tweet when you should be participating and listening, specifically during the liturgy or the ceremony.”
  3. Appoint a chief Tweeter – If you want your wedding to be recorded for posterity in 140-character posts, then let people know and even encourage them to get involved by creating a hashtag. “Tell your bridal party it’s OK to tweet!” says Howard. “Create a hashtag for sharing your event. This will make all tweets from your day easy to find later on and helps to create a feeling of celebration for your guests.
  4. Set up a social media station – There’s a way to keep a traditional look and feel to a wedding celebration and still make room for social media. A “social media station” is a place where those who want to connect or comment online can do so, without forcing the issue onto the uninterested.
  5. Live stream for those who cant make it – Thanks to the wonders of modern tech, nowadays you can share your special moments with people who can’t make it in person. Ustream is one such site that can help you share your ceremony with those well-wishing from afar.
  6. Enjoy your day

So is there any event manager out there who thinks that there’s even a small chance of these methods succeeding?

Filed Under: Internet Culture, Lazyweb

The 9 Worst Ways to Use Facebook for Business

November 9, 2010 by Leave a Comment

HubSpot has a really interesting take on the 9 worst ways to use Facebook for business:

  1. Duplicate your Twitter Strategy on Facebook
  2. Post Only Plain-Text Status Updates
  3. Don’t Allow Fans to Share Content
  4. Don’t Comment on Your Fans’ Content
  5. Don’t Share Your Fans’ Content
  6. Don’t use Facebook Questions to Find More Fans
  7. Use a Profile Image That has a Poor Thumbnail
  8. Don’t Share Your Facebook Page on Your Website
  9. Don’t Develop a Personality

Do you like this list or find it interesting? Then click here to read the whole article (and get a free ebook on Facebook marketing).

Filed Under: Internet Culture

Earning Money From Niche Websites

November 6, 2010 by 2 Comments

Niche MarketingDoes the idea of continuous passive income from websites you can set-up and forget about sound good to you? Well that is what niche content websites are all about. Let’s take a look at this online income method.

Before we start, I’d like to let you know that you can purchase a product from the Chapaa Shop to learn all about niche websites: “How to Make Money Online Using Niche Websites“. Okay, moving on…

What is a Niche Website?
A “niche website” is one that is designed with a very specific and narrow target market in mind. The type of information that it contains is carefully produced to draw in viewers who are motivated by their interest in the subject to purchase a product or products related to the topic of the site.

Consider this example. A dog owner with a large piece of property wants to keep his dog from wandering too far from home. However, he doesn’t want to contain his entire property within a fence and likes the idea of his dog having lots of space to roam. He decides to investigate the idea of installing an invisible dog fence by doing an Internet search.

A web developer who wants to target this customer would create a website around the keywords “invisible dog fences”. He would fill it with articles about different types of invisible dog fences, how to install them, the advantages of them over a regular fence, etc.

He would choose an affiliate product or products related to this topic, most likely a specific invisible dog fence. Of course, visitors to the site are already motivated by their desire to purchase this particular item. If visitors find what they read on the site to be informative and trustworthy, they will be likely to purchase the advertised affiliate product. In turn, the website’s owner receives a commission for the sale.

The website owner can also make a profit by signing up to run web ads, such as Google AdSense. The ad program will automatically place ads on the site which are related to the content of the site. Whenever a visitor clicks on one of the links, the site owner makes money.

Identifying Niches
If you want to be sure you will enjoy the process, one of the first steps you should go through is identifying those things in which you have some interest. Create a list by brainstorming and trying to identify everything you like. You are likely to find at the end that this includes broad topics like reading along with very specific things like collecting Makmende jokes (for example). It doesn’t matter how broad or specific things on this list are because this is just the starting point.

Once you’ve compiled this list, you will want to identify which things are very broad and which are already very specific, and then use this to identify niche markets you could tackle. Our example of a specific item above shows a small niche that is the ‘Makmende collectors market. This is a topic for which you should be able to create or find a fair amount of content, making it suitable for this purpose.

Your broad items will need to be narrowed down into one or more niches you might be interested. To continue on with our examples, maybe you really enjoyed reading the Harry Potter books. In this case, since it is a series of books, movies and other merchandise, it could be considered its own niche market, and therefore be suitable. Popular authors or specific genres could also be suitable, but be careful about getting too specific and targeting a single book.

Creating The Site
To maximize the potential you have for profit, you may want to consider getting your own domain name and setting up a site in your own hosting account. However, neither of these is required in order to make some money or to create a website. Several places online allow you to sign up and create your own blog, web page, or even entire web site, for free. Many of these will even allow you to make money from advertising, or allow you to include affiliate links on your pages so you can make some money. You can also just simple hire us, we’re experts.

The most important aspect of your site is going to be the content. As mentioned above, your content should be focused primarily on the specific niche you identified. As far as this content goes, it is best if your content is unique. To get unique content, you will either need to create it yourself, or hire someone to create it for you (you can hire the awesome Crystal). Of course, these aren’t the only options you have for getting content.

Making Money
Once the site is created, you can begin monetizing it in whatever way you have chosen. If you are using a free blog or other free site to host, you may be somewhat restricted, so be sure to consider your options when choosing where to publish your content.

Two of the most popular ways to monetize a niche website include using an advertising network, such as Google’s AdWords, and affiliate marketing. These can be used separately or together. Placing advertising usually involves signing up for the program and then placing their code into your page. Affiliate marketing is similar in that you would sign up for the program and place a special link on your page, but you’ll usually want to be sure you’re linking to specific products or services relevant to your site’s topic.

Conclusion
Making money via niche websites is one of the easiest ways to make money online. However, do not expect to retire off it – a niche website can be considered to be successful if it makes $2 to $3 a day. The real power comes in when you have 5, 10, 50 or even 100 such websites all working for you. Then you can retire!

If you are interested in niche websites, how about purchasing “How to Make Money Online Using Niche Websites“? It is a nice little course that can help you greatly. Good luck!

What do you think of this method of making money online?

Filed Under: Internet Culture, Lazyweb, Make Money Tagged With: