It has been about three weeks since the directory contest was officially announced. Our Romow directory entered the contest with the DirectoryContest.com listing a few days later, and it has ranked among the top-five consistently since then. As of this posting, it even outranks the official contest site, and show up first at Google for keyword “directorycontest.com.” :)

As the contest hoster described in the announcement, “the goal of this contest is to find the strongest directories which benefit the submitters the most.” If executed right (which I think is quite a challenge), the outcome of such a contest would be extremely useful to all the webmasters out there who are constantly looking to boost their search engine ranking. However, the original goal of this contest can be tarnished by the fact that the contest allows external link building or site-wide linking specifically targeting a contest listing, and by the possibility that such “unnatural” backlink building efforts by directory owners may end up deciding the winners after all. Well, in that sense, I wouldn’t be too proud of our contest ranking if you know what I mean. :) According to directorycontest.com, the reason why they allow link building to contest listings is because they cannot control it. People may build backlinks to their competitor’s listing to make them disqualified. That’s valid concern on their part.

At this point, it is not clear which is the dominant factor in determining the contest rankings: overall strength of a directory, or link building/SEO tricks for a particular contest entry. If the latter is what matters, then who knows? Some aspiring directory owner may buy up PR7/PR8 links to their listing a week before the contest is over, and instantly boost their ranking to the top just in time. Well, snatching $1500 contest prize with $xxx investment in link building is quite good ROI.

The reason we are participating in this contest even with all these concerns and self-criticism is not for cach prize, but simply for the targeted exposure the contest can bring to us. The Romow directory has been heavily promoted and gained significant directory strength. However, it is still a relatively new entrant in directory market, and thus needs a good amount of exposure to targeted audience. DirectoryContest.com is the very first (as far as I know) online contest devoted to ranking directories, and so it is an excellent opportunity to draw webmasters’ attention to our directory (thanks to Mike for hosting the contest!). Even if our directory does not remain on top at the end of contest, we will still be enjoying good exposure while we are seen in the Google’s 1st page until February, and that’s quite an effective marketing campaign that doesn’t need much investment. I will see if there’s any interesting development along the way.

Webmasters have keen interest in web sites such as Digg and others as those web sites can be of great use to them as far as gaining exposure and growing traffic are concerned. A perfect example of this is John Chow’s Blog. John Chow is a self proclaimed “Dot Com Mogul” and his blog has benefited greatly from the power of Digg and other similar web sites. A few months ago he made a post about the Top Google AdSense earners and once that post showed up at Digg.com, his blog grew at a rapid pace. Now, just two months later, the blog gets over 300,000 page views each month. Although he reported that his blog earned only $1,361.64 in October, after making some tweaks and writing a story about the World’s Most Hi-Tech Urinal, he made over $400 on one day alone and should significantly surpass his October total this month.

So, where is this long introduction heading? The value of SlashDot. In a post that was made recently, Chow talks about where his traffic came from. Although Digg may be larger than SlashDot, it actually drives less traffic to one’s web site. SlashDot is a tech news site just like Digg; however, unalike Digg, all news stories on SlashDot are posted by the many editors and the posts stay on the front page longer. While making the Digg homepage will only last a few hours, stories on SlashDot tend to be on the home page for 24 hours or more, which leads to more traffic. Obviously, it is much harder for a story to get on SlashDot, but you should still submit to the site as many webmasters are completely neglecting it due to the popularity of Digg. In Chow’s case, Digg only drove about 15% of the traffic or over 8000 uniques, while SlashDot drove about 33% of the traffic or 18,000 uniques.

Snap has just launched a new service that allows webmasters to use their image preview technology. This new service, known as Snap Preview Anywhere allows visitors to get an image preview of the web site a link goes to when they hover their mouse over the link. The service is completely free and Snap has over 300 million stored web site images, so unless the page is brand new, they will have an image preview of it. These previews only appear for links that direct to other web sites, and webmasters can choose if they want the preview to appear for any external links.

This new service could be of great use to many webmasters; however, there are many potential problems. First of all, the image preview feature may annoy users if a site contains many links, and having preview images popping up frequently may cause them to leave. Hence, Snap Preview Anywhere should only be used on web sites with few links. Another potential problem is that there is no way to monetize this toy, so you need to see how your visitors respond to image previews. Another turn-off for webmasters is that in each Snap page preview box is a Snap search box that directs your visitor to Snap.com if used.

The service was just released and has already been generating a lot of buzz. In my opinion, this new service would work great with blogs. Someone has already created a Wordpress plug-in that makes installing and using Snap Preview Anywhere on a Wordpress blog very easy.

You can get a preview and download the program here and be sure to leave a comment and tell us what you think.

• Crystal clear phpLD template with white color tone and unique category design.
• phpLD version: 3.0.6
• Owner: Romow Directory
• Live demo: Travel-directory.us
• Download info: Crystal Box template
• Description: This template contains statistics mod in the header, and a contact page mod.
• Free to use as long as the footer link remains intact

A few weeks ago, I made a post about PayPerPost type sites such as ReviewMe that were in their “prelaunch phases.” Well, ReviewMe recently launched and after having some time to look through the features, I have to say that I am impressed. The web site is a more “professional version of PayPerPost.com.” Unlike PayPerPost where anyone can submit an entry on their blog (provided that it meets their very low standards) and get paid, ReviewMe allows advertisers to pick and choose what blogs they want to advertise on so that they get the most out of their advertising dollar.

ReviewMe says that prices will vary from $40 to $1000+ per post and prices for a post are set by an algorithm that takes into account various rankings including Alexa ranking and then sets a cost for each blog. Hence, the service does not allow individual bloggers to set their own prices.

From my personal testing, everything appeared good and working well. There were a number of blogs already listed and I completed one opportunity on one of my blogs and made $20. The entire “blogger dashboard” is very nicely organized so it is very easy to keep track of all my information.

The only downside of ReviewMe is that they take 50% so if they set the price of a post on your blog to $40, you only earn $20. But I cannot complain that not all the money comes to my pocket. :)

Overall, if you are looking to create a random blog and be paid $5-$15 for a post, then you are better off using PayPerPost; however, if you have a blog with traffic and a high page rank and think that advertisers would genuinely pay $40+ for a blog post, than ReviewMe is the way to go.

One of the major problems of running any type of web site, especially a blog or a similar style web site, is getting content for your web site. Here we will discuss how you can break away from the traditional content you see on web sites such as plain text and pictures, and utilize newly emerging forms of content such as audio and video.

Most web sites will need some written content and try as you might, there is no way to get around this. You will either have to write it yourself, or find a writer to write it for you. We all know that search engines and readers love to see new content on a frequent basis. Although search engines may look for text, your visitors will also be interested in other forms of content such as video or audio: an increasingly popular trends supported by today’s high speed residential networks.

Prior to web sites such as YouTube and MetaCafe, adding video or audio content to your web site required you to create a video/audio file, or purchase rights to it and then host it on your own servers, which was not only difficult and time consuming, but it also took up a lot of space and was quite costly. With the growth of web sites such as YouTube, bloggers can simply use the embed code and paste it into the code of the web site where they want the video to appear. The video is hosted on the web site where you got the embed code so you do not have to worry about wasting server space. Adding a video to a site using YouTube, Yahoo! Video, MetaCafe, Google Video, or hundreds of other similar web sites only takes a few minutes. Similarly, audio content can be added using web sites such as Imeem.com that works the same way. Some online arcade sites, such as MiniClip.com, are even allowing you to embed flash games into your web site.

When creating content for a web site, you cannot completely ignore the writing, which is required to provide information to visitors and to increase search engine rankings; however, using video and audio content can help you catch the attention of your visitors so they become return visitors. Try this, and see if you get more visitors coming your way.

There have been a lot of recent web startup acquisition deals over the past few years. Now, Digg.com, the San Francisco based news syndicate, may be acquired by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in the coming weeks. The web site’s founders Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson, who report that their web site gets over 20 million unique monthly visitors, are looking for at least $150 million.

$150 Million seems like a high figure for a web site that only makes around $3 Million annually, but they reportedly have “multiple groups” interested. Rose and Adelson are not desperate to sell. If Digg is not acquired in the coming days, chances are they will start another round of financing. They raised well over $2.5 million in Series A financing with investors including the Omidyar Network, founded by eBay founder Omidyar Pierre, and others.

After about three months’ link building efforts, the current status of our Romow Directory is as follows (as of 11/12/06).

• Number of Google-indexed pages: 1,870
  
• Number of backlinks*: 115,179
  
• Number of .edu TLDs backlinks*: 27
  
• SEOmoz’s Page Strength: 4.5 to 5.0 (fluctuate during the day)
• iwebtool’s PageRank Prediction: 7 (6.5) with 66.2% accuracy

* The backlink counts are reported by Yahoo.

Our link building efforts are on-going process. Please stay tuned.

One of the major fears with people who want to become webmasters is that they will have to learn how to code in different languages and learn the technical side of running a web site. However, with new free online web creation services, such as Google Pages, the process of getting web sites up and running has become very easy and a new service, Weebly, (that was just featured on popular web startup blog, Tech Crunch) is a great new tool for webmasters. I just got a chance to test it out after being invited for their beta testing program and I must say, the designers did a great job.

Everything is very nicely laid out and easy to use and they have some very nice looking templates. As far as site construction is concerned, its pretty much “drag and drop” so you can easily build content rich web sites which usually rank well in search engines and do well with programs such as AdSense and YPN.

Due to the rapid growth in interest of the site, new users can apply, but their accounts will not be activated as Weebly is currently short on servers and by curtailing registration, they keep the site up and running for current users. However, you should definitely apply quickly as they only allow new users to have access to the site on a “first come first serve” basis.

Post your comments on Weebly, or any other online web site creator here.

One of the most generally accepted facts in the webmastering community is that forums are very hard to monetize and that there are better online industries to go into. This fact holds some truth, as forums generally do not perform will in terms of AdSense and other PPC click through advertising programs; however, forums are a goldmine for CPM advertising revenue. CPM means cost per thousand page views and with forums, each user who views just three or four threads usually registers 10 or more page views. Hence, if you have a forum with a few members who visit and read through it on a frequent basis, you can easily get 5000 page views or more daily.

The amount you get per 1000 impressions from programs such as AdSense is miniscule; however, if you can attract sponsors by yourself and sell advertising, a forum can easily earn $5-$10 CPM with very little work with just 2 or 3 ads and then as you attract more advertisers, many “big time” forum owners can earn $20+ CPM with 8-10 site wide advertisements in the forum of links and banners of all sizes. With just 5000 page views daily, forum owners with a $20 CPM rater can earn an income of $100 a day and over time as your forum grows, your page views will skyrocket and you can easily earn upwards of $200-$300 a day from advertising.

However, it can be very difficult to find advertisers and there are few web site owners on webmaster forums that will be willing to pay even $2 or $3 CPM for any form of online advertising. That is why you need to network and get advertisers who are willing to pay decent amounts for advertising to visit your web site. The only way to do this is to contact them directly or find a network that will contact them for you. This is not a get rich quick tip, but if you stick with a forum and let it grow, you can earn six figures with a forum, and many forum owners who have realized this do.