Working at Home on the Internet

Mahai’s Work at Home Story

A couple of weeks ago, I invited readers to Share Their Work at Home Stories*. This one is from Mahai a Freelancer from Romania. He has started his own Work at Home Website Web2earn.com** and has a Blog of the Same Name*** I’ll let him tell you his own story, but visit his site for a better insight into what he is trying to accomplish.

At 5:02 AM, Web2earn said…

Regards,
Michelle R.

I appreciate Mahai’s story and wish him luck in his new endeavor.

My only suggestion to him would be to utilize his Blog more for promotion of his website. Write articles on upcoming ventures. Put content relevant to what he is trying to do with the website and use the various blog promotion tools to help get exposure for the Blog. That in turn should help drive traffic to his website through his blog.

Mahi’s Sites:
** Web2earn Website
*** Web2earn Blog

Related Posts:
* Share Your Work at Home Story
Blog Submission Sites

Oh, and Mahai, consider yourself infected with the Link-Leak Virus… Pass it on.
J.

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May 8th, 2006 at 11:54am | Posted by Joe | Guest Writer's Articles | reader remarks | Print This Post

Jesse Skinner, Special Guest Writer

Jesse Skinner is a Canadian web developer who moved to Berlin, Germany in April 2005. His strongest skills and interests lay in the gap between web design and server-side programming. He is experienced in working with XHTML, JavaScript, CSS and Flash in the browser, and Java, PHP, and ColdFusion on the server.

He has also done database programming and design with Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL and Oracle. He a Certified Java Programmer, Certified Flash MX Developer, and Advanced Certified ColdFusion MX Developer.

And now, here’s Jesse…

Working at home on the Internet

In the 80s, you could certainly start your own business. You’d have to save up some money or get a loan from the bank. Then you’d need to pay for an office or store, fill it with furniture, get business cards and stationary, hire some staff, and of course you’d have to advertise your business. You’d just have to pay to make a TV, Radio, Magazine or Newspaper ad, and then pay to have it shown for a few seconds. And hopefully 1% of the people who saw it would call your phone number.

And then in walked the Internet

Now, everything has changed. To start a business, all you need is a computer, the Internet, and probably a web site (costs starting at $0). Now, you can advertise to a specific group of people spread out from across the world. You can also work to make your web site show up on certain search results without paying a cent. You certainly don’t need an office. You don’t even need to wear pants. And if you need help from other people, you can search the web for the right specialists (who are also probably working from home).

I realise that everybody reading this already knows all this. The whole world already knows all this. But for some insane reason, hardly anybody seems to be reacting! There are still millions of people working in offices. Companies are still paying big money to advertise in traditional media.

This is the time for us-in-the-know to take advantage of what we know and go kick some ass! While the big companies are wasting millions by paying their employees to surf the web, chat around the water cooler, have long boring meetings and fill out time sheets, we can come along and seriously compete.

We can build up our Microbrands, mastering niches we not only excel in but love to do. We can wake up every morning and decide what to do with our companies. Not just our companies, our lives. The possibilities are endless, and the risks are relatively low.

In the 80s, we had to hope our neighbours would be interested in our services. Now, we can service the whole world. And this doesn’t just mean we have 6 billion potential customers. This means that we can run a business by focusing on just 1000 people spread across the world with a very specific need.

This isn’t just about telecommuting or entrepreneurship. It’s a major change in the opportunities available to everyone. It’s a major change in the way we can choose to live our lives. And since we’re the first ones to have this opportunity, we’re going to have to make up a lot of it on our own. But that’s not the hard part, that’s the exciting part!

I agree with Jesse, that’s the exciting part. I hope you enjoyed the article as much as I did, and make sure you visit Jesse, he always has something interesting to read on his site.

Jesse’s Blog:
The Future of the Internet

April 22nd, 2006 at 09:52am | Posted by Joe | Guest Writer's Articles, Work at Home | 1 reader remark | Print This Post

Vishal P. Rao, Special Guest Writer

Vishal P. Rao is the owner of the Work at Home Forum* and the Home Based Business Opportunities** Webpage He is an expert on SEO applications for the novice and seasoned user alike. Vishal has been kind enough to write an article that should help in our Optimization of Search Engines. I have substituted [ ] enclosures for functions for demostration purposes only.

So, without further adeau…

SEO for Dummies

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of designing your website in such a way that it is easily found and ranked well by search engines. In other words, make it search engine friendly.

Contrary to popular myth, you don’t need a PHD to get create a search engine friendly website. Even a novice with little HTML knowledge can make their site search engine friendly. Here are some basic techniques to create a search engine friendly website.

Remember, you are not aiming to get a doctorate in search engine optimization. Leave that to the professionals. Your goal is only to follow some basic guideines when creating a website or adding new pages. That’s it. Any more obsession with it and you are going to ruin your precious time which must be largely devoted to *creating content*. Don’t forget the golden saying - Content is the king.

Now the details…

1) Title Text

This is the text that you see in your browser title bar and is embedded inside the [title]…[/title] tags of your HTML page. This is one of the most deciding factors search engines use to rank your web pages. Don’t waste precious space of this tag to fill non-relevant words. Use keywords that reflect the theme of your webpage here. So if your particular webpage is about “vegetarian dog foods”, you might want to use - “Vegetarian Dog Food Information” as title text.

2) Meta Tags

The two most important tags that search engines use to rank web pages are Description and Keywords Meta tags. Though keywords tags appear to have lost importance, you must not ignore them altogether.

Again, in the description tag, describe your page as briefly as possible, including keywords you used in your title tags. You don’t want to run the text in decription more than 20-25 words. The idea is that if you use more non-relevant text, keyword density or concentration decreases. Just make the sentence look normal and not like it’s written purely for search engines. Now for the above example, the text in you description tag might be something like - This article covers information and resources on vegetarian dog foods.

Coming to the keyword tag, do not fill them endlessly with keywords like you find in most web pages. Just laser target to 2 or 3 keywords related to the *page* itself and not your entire site. So using above example, your keyword tag might contain words - vegetarian dog food, dog foods

3) Alt (Alternate) Texts

Alt texts are the text used to describe images on your web page. They are displayed in place of the images if the images could not be loaded for some reasons or the visitor has turned off display of images. Search engines also use these texts to determine the theme of the web page.
As a result, it makes sense to include your targeted keywords here too.

Here’s an example:

[img src=”/images/vegetarian-dog-food.gif” mce_src=”/images/vegetarian-dog-food.gif” alt=”Vegetarian Dog Food”]

4) Sitemaps

Not only sitemaps provide easy accessibility to visitors of your website, they are also a great tool to help search engines find all the pages of your site efficiently. It’s like giving a detailed road map of your site to search engines.

5) Link texts and Interlinking

This is another big factor search engines use to rank pages of your website. Link texts are texts that you use to link to pages of your website. Considering the above example, when linking to that page, don’t use texts like “Click here” or “Read more”. Instead use “Vegetarian Dog Food” to link to the page. This confirms the search engine’s views that the web page is indeed about Vegetarian Dog Food.

6) Keyword density

Keyword density refers to the concentration of keywords on your web page. Generally they should be around 3-4 times spread evenly across your entire page. Once in beginning and the end and 2-3 times in between, assuming your page is of 800 words. If less, then reduce density correspondingly and vice versa. Don’t overdo this.

Like I said earlier, you should follow this guidelines when creating a new page but do not make an obsession of it, tweaking your pages every now and then. Just do it and forget it!

I visit Vishal’s forum daily, and have learned many things each time I stop by. Be sure to drop in for some interesting conversation and information. I’m sure you will appreciate being there as much as I have.

Vishal’s Sites:
Home Based Business Opportunities
The Work at Home Forum

April 21st, 2006 at 09:39am | Posted by Joe | Guest Writer's Articles, SEO | reader remarks | Print This Post