100 Ways to Increase Your Website Traffic

Traffic is the currency of the web. The more traffic your website has, the easier it will be to achieve your objective, be it to make money, to spread your ideas, to connect with other people or anything else.
That is why we decided to create a compilation with 100 ways you can use to increase your website traffic.



Apply some (or most) of them and we are sure your numbers will go up!

Blogs

1. Add a blog to your website. If your website is static (e.g., a corporate site or an online store), consider adding a blog to it, where you'll write new content regularly. This will give your visitors a reason to come back, and your search engine traffic will increase too. If you need a blog software, check out WordPress (it is free and easy to use).

2. Leave comments on other blogs. Develop the habit of visiting blogs inside your niche and leaving comments on them. You can include a link to your website on each comment, and some visitors will certainly come through those links. You can use Alltop to find blogs in any niche.

3. Write guest posts. Most blogs accept guest posts. That is, they allow you to write a post for them, and usually the post carries an author byline with a link to your website. Simply send your article to the blog owner and ask whether or not he wants to publish it as a guest post.

4. Sponsor blog contests. Another common practice around the blogosphere are contests. You can sponsor one by donating products or money, and the blogger will link to your website from the contest page.

5. Join a blog carnival. Blog carnivals are online events where bloggers get together to write about one specific topic. The host of the carnival will them write a round-up post linking to all the participant entries, and participants usually link to each others' entries as well. You can organize one with your friends, or browse for existing ones at BlogCarnival.com.


6. Network, network, network. Ever heard the saying "it is not about what you know, but who you know"? It applies to promoting a website as well. If you become a friend with a blogger or website owner, he will be much more likely to link to your website and send traffic your way. A good way to achieve this is to link to other bloggers first and to establish a relationship via email.

Subscribers

7. Publish an RSS feed. Once you publish an RSS feed your visitors will be able to subscribe to your website using an RSS reader. After that whenever you publish new content they will receive it automatically, which is a great way to keep these visitors engaged with your content and visiting your website regularly.

8. Use Feedburner. If you want to get the most out of your RSS feed you should sign-up for a Feedburner account. It is completely free, and you'll get a wide range of features, including statistics about your subscribers, customization options and so on. Feedburner will also make your RSS feed compatible with most browsers and RSS readers, so you won't lose any subscribers due to technical problems.

9. Offer email subscriptions. Many Internet users still don't use RSS, so offering an email subscription to your content is a must. Fortunately it is very easy to do this once you have a Feedburner account. You just need to activate this feature under "Publicize," and then copy and paste the subscription link on your website.


10. Create an email newsletter. You can take your email subscription option one step further and create an email newsletter. This will give you more control regarding the messages you send to your subscribers. For example, you could create an auto-responder sequence, sending specific messages at specific time intervals to your new subscribers. You'll need an email marketing software to manage your newsletter, and you can use Aweber for that (it is a paid solution).

Content is King

11. Break a news story. If your website is the first to talk about a news story it will receive many links from other sites who will cover it as well, and your traffic will increase as a result.

12. Write a controversial article. If you manage to write something controversial, people will talk about and link to your article, either because they agree with you or, most likely, because they disagree. The result will be a lot of traffic.

13. Write a "Top 10″ list. Internet users love "Top 10″ lists, because they are easy to digest and contain useful stuff (i.e., 10 resources, 10 tips, and so on).

14. Write a "Top 100″ list. If "Top 10″ lists are good for traffic generation, "Top 100″ ones are great. This article is an example. People will bookmark and share your "Top 100″ list naturally because of the value it packs together.

15. Write a "Definitive guide" to something. People love to learn new things, especially if such things will solve some of their problems. Make sure to make your guide as complete as possible, and visitors will flock to read it.

16. Publish an interview. This strategy works even better if the interviewee has a blog or website, as he might link to the interview and send his readers to your site.

17. Leverage holidays and seasonal events. You can drastically increase your traffic if you publish content related to big holidays and seasonal events. Examples include Christmas, elections, Olympic games, the World Cup and so on.

Linkbaits

19. Create a quiz. People love quizzes, and if you create an interesting one your traffic might increase as visitors both take the quiz and share the results with their friends. You can use ProProfs.com to create your quiz.

19. Create a ranking of people. For example, publish a ranking with the "50 Hottest Female Entrepreneurs." Such rankings tend to get a lot of traffic because it plays with people's ego.

20. Create a ranking of websites. A similar strategy is to create a ranking of websites, say the "25 Best Weight Loss Blogs." The owners of the sites mentioned are likely to link to your article (especially if you contact them to let them know about it, thus sending your traffic.

21. Publish a funny image. At the end of the day, people just want to have a good laugh. Publishing a funny image is a good way to help them with that, and it might increase your traffic at the same time. Want some inspiration?

Check the Pics section on Reddit.


22. Create an infographic. If you are creative and like to research, then you should try creating infographics, as they tend to attract many links and traffic. Here is a tutorial that will help you to create one.

Freebies

23. Release an eBook. This is one of the most efficient ways to generate traffic. Simply write a compelling eBook, and then release it on your website. Include a direct download link, and email bloggers and webmasters in your niche to let them know about it. The better the information in your eBook, the more people will share and recommend it, and the more traffic you'll gain.

24. Create a free CSS template. CSS templates are very popular around the web, and if you submit yours to CSS directories many people will end up using it. Include a footer link to your website and you'll surely get some traffic.

25. Create a free WordPress theme. You can also transform your CSS template into a WordPress theme (or create a new theme from scratch). WordPress is used by millions of users, and many people will download your theme if you submit it to directories (including the Official Themes Directory).

26. Release a cheat sheet. Cheat sheets are very popular on the web, and if you create one you'll certainly see a bump in the number of website visits. If you want to see some examples, check this article listing 25 useful cheat sheets for web developers.

27. Create web design resources. The web design community is one of the most active online, and creating resources for them is a good way to increase your traffic. Examples include icon sets, fonts, textures, Photoshop brushes and the like.

Contests

28. Launch a retweet contest. You can launch a contest where people need to retweet the contest page in order to get an entry to the random draw. The prize can be either money or products and services from your sponsors. Depending on the size of your prize the retweets could go viral after a while.

29. Launch a comment contest. An alternative contest format is to ask people to leave a comment on your contest post in order to get an entry. This will increase your traffic because your RSS and email subscribers will need to visit your website to leave a comment, and it will stimulate them to comment on your posts more often.

30. Launch a review contest. If you want to increase your search rankings you could launch a contest where people need to write about the content in order to get an entry. The links you'll get will send you both Google juice and new visitors. Keep in mind that you need a good prize to motivate people to write about your contest though.

31. Launch a voting contest. You basically need to create a contest where the winner will be picked with a voting session. Suppose you have a fitness website. You could invite your readers to submit their best fitness tip, and then a voting session would decide which tip gets the prize. This would motivate participants to link to the voting session and to encourage their friends to visit your website and vote.


32. Launch a traffic contest. If traffic is what you want, why not be direct about it? You can launch a contest where people need to send traffic to one particular page inside your website. It could be the contest page (for a viral effect) or a resource page (e.g., a page where you give away an ebook). After the established time frame (e.g., 2 weeks, 1 month or anything else), you'll simply need to check your web analytics to see which websites sent you more visitors, and then award the prizes.

Multimedia

33 Experiment with video. As you probably heard, video is huge on the web right now. If you are not experimenting with it yet, you should. If you want to do something simple, just record yourself talking in front of the web cam (obviously what you are talking about should be interesting to your visitors, as opposed to some general rambling).

34. Create screencasts. A very efficient way to create compelling videos is to record your computer screen while you perform some task. For instance, you could use it teach other people how to use the computer or how to do things on the Internet. You can use a free software called CamStudio to create your screencasts.

35. Submit your videos to multiple sites. Once you have your videos ready to go, you should spread them on as many video websites as possible, and not just on YouTube. Luckily there is a site that can help you do that without spending too much time at it. It is called TubeMogul.com, and it automates much of the submission process for you.

36. Launch a podcast. This could be a good traffic generator for one main reason: there isn't much competition out there as far as podcasts go. In other words, as long as you put some effort into it, your podcast could become the leader inside your niche quite fast. All you need is a USB microphone to start recording.


37. Release audio interviews. We already mentioned that interviews are good for traffic. Apart from text interviews, however, you can also release audio interviews. Skype makes it really easy to record one. You'll just need to use a software to record your Skype conversation. PowerGramo has a free version that works well.

Social Bookmarking Sites

38. Get people to stumble your articles. If you have friends using Stumble Upon, ask them to stumble your best articles. This should get the ball rolling, and if other Stumble Upon users like your content it might receive a lot of traffic from it.

39. Try to reach Digg's front page. Reaching Digg's front page is quite difficult, but it is worth a try, because once you manage it you'll receive tens of thousands of visitors. You should start by becoming an active Digg user, trying to make as many friends as possible and to understand the kind of content that works there. Once you have these two things, get a friend to submit one of your best stories, and get your network of contacts to vote on it.

40. Submit your content to Reddit. If you fail to get success with Digg, try Reddit. It works in a similar way, but it is smaller and has a more friendly community, so your content might do better there. Funny stuff, technology and politics are topics particularly suitable for the site.

41. Get your visitors to bookmark your articles on Delicious. If you publish many how-to articles and tutorials, Delicious could be a good traffic generator for your website. Simply add a Delicious icon below your articles, try to get some friends to bookmark your articles as soon as they get published. If you get enough bookmarks in a short period of time your article might get promoted to Delicious front page.

42. Include social bookmarking icons on your site. You can increase the number of votes and bookmarks you'll get by including social bookmarking icons on your site. You can use this generator to create the icons automatically and paste the code on your website.

43. Try niche social bookmarking sites. The four social bookmarking sites mentioned above are the largest ones on the web, but there is also a wide range of smaller, niche focused bookmarking sites that can send you some traffic. Here is a list with 83 of them. Simply join the ones related to your niche and check how much traffic they can send you.

Social Networks

44. Create a profile on most social networks. When you create a profile on a social network, you are usually able to include the URL of your website. Guess what? This is a link building opportunity, and it might increase your traffic (both because of the visitors you'll get and because of the link juice). Mashable has a list with over 350 social networks, so use that to get started.

45. Start using Facebook. If you want to generate social media traffic, you must have a presence on Facebook. The very least you should do is to create an account there and network with as many people as possible. After you'll be able to generate traffic by posting links to your website on your Facebook stream.

46. Create a Facebook fan page. Another great way to leverage Facebook is to create a Fan page. This is basically a page dedicated to your website, where your visitors can become fans, leave comments and so on. Here is a tutorial to help you create your first Fan page.

47. Include a Facebook "Like" button on your site. Facebook recently introduced the "Like" button, which you can embed on your site to let your users share your content through their Facebook accounts. Getting the button is just a matter of copying and pasting some lines of code. Here is the page where you can get it.

48. Start using Twitter. Another must have social network is Twitter. You can create an account for yourself, or one for your website directly, where you'll post updates with links to your recent posts and related content from around the web.

 49. Include a Tweetmeme button on your site. By including a Tweetmeme button on your website you'll allow your visitors to retweet your posts and pages with a single click, which can increase the traffic you'll receive from Twitter.


50. Explore niche social networks. You problably won't get as much traffic from niche social networks as you will from Facebook and Twitter. But you should still give them a shot, because the traffic will be much more targeted. Here is a list with 233 social networks divided by niche.

Website Optimization

51. Customize your 404 error page. Whether you like it or not people will get 404 errors on your website. Maybe they will misspell your URLs, maybe someone will link to an inexistent page inside your website, and so on. If you use a normal 404 error page, visitors will simply move on to another website. If you customize your 404 error page to include some useful links, however, you'll channel these visitors to other parts of your site, thus increasing your traffic.

52. Interlink your pages. This strategy will increase your traffic in two ways. First of all it will allow your visitors to explore your website more easily, increasing the number of pages views per visit. Secondly, it will also improve your search rankings because your link juice will be distributed among all pages of your website.

53. Highlight your most popular content. People like to know "what is hot" when they are visiting a website. You can increase the number of page views you'll get per visitor if you highlight your popular content and encourage them to read it. The easiest way to achieve this is to create a "Popular Articles" section on your sidebar.

54. Test your website in different browsers. If web users can't visualize your website properly they'll just move on to another site. That is why you need to make sure that your site works fine on the most popular browsers. There is an online service called Browsershots.org that can help you with that, and it is completely free.

55. Speed up your website. There are many research papers confirming that most Internet users will only wait a couple of seconds for a web page to load. If it doesn't, they will close it and move to another website. On top of that search engines also use the loading speed as a ranking factor, so the faster your site loads, the higher your search rankings. The first thing you should do to improve your loading speed is to remove unnecessary elements from your site and to reduce the size of your images. You can use the Firebug extension for Firefox to perform a more detailed analysis of your loading speed.

 56. Serve cached pages. A very efficient way to improve the loading speed of your pages is to serve cached versions to your visitors. This will also reduce the load on your web server, and make your site more responsive. WordPress users can install a plugin called WP Super Cache to achieve this.

57. Get a decent hosting plan. No matter how much your optimize your website, however, it will still load slowly if your hosting plan is mediocre to begin with. That is why you should stay away from free and cheap web hosts. Investment $10 per month to get a quality hosting plan is a must.

Search Engine Optimization

58. Create unique content. If you want to receive search engine traffic and only had time to work on one thing, you should work on creating unique content for your website. This is what Google and company values most. The more unique content you have, and the more frequently you publish new stuff, the better.

59. Build backlinks. The second most important thing you can do to improve your search rankings and receive organic traffic is to build backlinks. That is, you need to have as many websites linking to you as possible. The higher the quality and relevancy of these links, the better. If you have a tech blog, for example, getting a link from TechCrunch or some other authoritative tech site would do wonders to your SEO.

60. Perform keyword research. Search engines work around keywords, and if you understand the keywords that people use you can tailor your content to match that. For example, the term "funny pictures" is 15 times more searched than the term "funny images," so you probably should use that in a post title . You can use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to discover the search volume of any keyword.

61. Optimize your title tags. The title tag is the title of your pages. It goes inside the <title></title> tags in the header of your HTML code, and it is displayed on top of the browser when visiting your page. This is a very important on-page SEO factor. You should make sure that you have a unique title tag on each page of your site, and that your main keywords are present there. WordPress users can install the All in One SEO Pack plugin to achieve this automatically.

62. Build an HTML sitemap. An HTML sitemap is basically a page inside your website linking to all other pages (and preferably being linked from all other pages too). The HTML sitemap helps search engines to crawl and index your website, thus increasing your search rankings.

63 Use images. Most webmasters forget that Google has a feature called "Image search," which is quite popular. This means that by using images inside your pages you can increase the amount of search engine traffic you get. Just make sure to optimize the name of your images with relevant keywords, and always include an ALT and a TITLE attribute in your image tags. You can use the sxc.hu website to find thousands of royalty free images to use on your website.

 64. Translate your content. Depending on the topic of your website, translating your pages into other languages could multiply your search engine traffic. In order to achieve this you need a plugin that will get your translated pages indexed by search engines. WordPress users can use one called Global Translator.

 

Mobile

65. Create a mobile version of your website. As more and more users start accessing the web through mobile devices, it becomes important to have a version of your website that works perfectly these new platforms. If you are using WordPress you can install a plugin called WPTouch to create a mobile version automatically.


66. Create an iPhone app for your website. iPhone is arguable the most popular smartphone around, and most of its users rely heavily on apps to consume their content. If you create an iPhone app to display the content of your website you could both get new readers and allow your current ones to read your stuff on their iPhones. There is an open source project that will help you do this for free.

67. Create an Android app for your website. Google's mobile operating system, called Android, is quickly catching up, so you could create a website app for it as well. You'll need some coding knowledge for this though.

Online Forums

68. Join online forums and put a link to your website in your signature. Regardless of the topic of your website, you'll certainly find dozens of related online forums to join. Most of them allow you to put a link in your signature, and you can use that to send visitors to your own website. If you need help to find online forums, check Big-Boards.com, as they have a database of thousands of forums divided by categories.

69. Link to your articles from post threads. Apart from putting a link to your website in your signature, you can also link to your articles when writing forum posts. For example, if you just wrote a post that is useful to other forum members, you could start a thread letting them know about it, and asking for feedback. Just make sure to do this when your article is relevant, else you might get flagged as a spammer.

70. Join the Craigslist forums. If you browse on Craigslist (the most popular classifieds site on the web) you'll notice that inside each city there is a "Discussion forums" section. You can write posts there, and include links to your website whenever relevant to the discussion.

71. Consider adding a Forum to your site. Once your website reach a critical mass of users (i.e., 5,000 daily unique visitors or more) you could consider adding a Forum to it. This will give your visitors a place to ask questions and contribute content, while increasing your traffic. phpBB is a reliable and free Forum software you can use.

Content Hubs

72. Create "lenses" on Squidoo. Each "lens" on Squidoo is an overview page about a specific topic. Creating lenses is free, and you can include any kind of information on them, including links to your own website.

73. Create a "hub" on HubPages. A very similar site is called HubPages. You can create "hubs" about specific topics, and include links to your website there. Just make sure to read the site guidelines, to make sure your hubs will be published.

74. Answer to questions on Yahoo! Answers. Spend some time browsing the questions on Yahoo! Answers, and whenever you come across one related to the topic of your site, answer it. You can include a link to your website as an additional resource, or to a specific article inside your site that answers the question too.

75. Answer to questions on LinkedIn. LinkedIn Answers is another platform where you can answer to questions from other users and include a link to your own website or articles. Keep in mind that topics gravitate around career and business here.

Old School

76. Submit your site to web directories. The amount of traffic you'll get from this tactic depends on the quality of the web directories that will accept you. If you submit to hundreds of them, however, the traffic might build up. Here is a list with hundreds of web directories, organized by Google PageRank.

77. Submit your blog to blog directories. If you have a blog, you can also submit to blog directories (i.e., web directories that only list blogs). This article lists 50 of them to get you started.

78. Submit content to article directories. Article marketing is a very common and effective way to increase your traffic. You basically need to submit your articles to article directories. Virtually all of them allow you to include a link back to your site, and that is how your traffic will increase.

Here is a list with the 50 most popular article directories on the web.

79. Exchange links. The practice of exchanging links is as old as the web, but that is so because it works. You just need to be careful to only exchange links with sites that have unique content and are relevant to your visitors (else Google might get upset).

80. Use ad swaps. A similar strategy is to use ad swaps. That is, you use your unused ad space to promote the website of your partner, and he does the same with his unused ad space. The ad itself could be anything, from a banner spot to an email message to your newsletter.

81. Distribute a press release. Creating and distributing a press release can still send some traffic to your website, especially if you have something new in your segment. You can pay companies like PRWeb to do most of the work for you, or you can submit the press release manually (here is a list with 50 sites you can submit to).


82. Include your website's URL in your email signature. Email is the most used communication channel these days, and as such you should use it to let your contacts know about your website.

Paid Methods

83. Google AdWords. Pay-per-click advertising is one of the most efficient ways to buy traffic for your website, and Google AdWords is the largest ad network for that on the web. Creating an account is free, and then you'll need to bid on keywords. Depending on your niche it is possible to buy clicks for as low as some pennies.

84. Facebook ads. The best alternative to Google AdWords is the Facebook Ads platform. You'll be able to pay both per click and per 1,000 impressions, and you can also target very specific demographics, to make sure the visitors will be interested in your content.

85. StumbleUpon ads. If your content performs well on social media you could try StumbleUpon ads. Your website (or a specific page inside it) will basically be displayed to StumbleUpon users, with a cost of $0.05 per view. If many users vote positively on your content you'll also receive some free traffic.

86. Reddit sponsored links. Another social bookmarking site where you can buy ads on is Reddit. You'll basically create a sponsored link that will be featured on the homepage, and Reddit users will be able to vote it up or down.

87. Purchase banner ads directly. Virtually any website owner is willing to sell banner ads. If you find a website that is closely related to yours, therefore, you could contacts the owner asking how much he would charge for a banner ad. The return on the investment might be high here, because the visitors that will come will be likely to stick around and become loyal readers of your site.

88. Purchase banner ads through networks. There are ad networks that might also help you purchase banner ads, paying a flat monthly fee. BuySellAds.com is a large one with a really big inventory of websites.

89. Purchase sponsored reviews. Sometimes sponsored reviews work better for traffic generation, because your website will be featured inside a post (i.e., it will be exposed directly to the readers of the other site). If you want to buy a sponsored review you could either contact the website owner directly, or browse through the marketplace of sites like SponsoredReviews.com (make sure the sponsored links will have the nofollow attribute, else Google might get pissed).

Offline Methods

90. Tell your friends and family about your website. These folks are certainly going to be interested in checking your website out, and if you put new content there frequently, they might keep coming back.

91. Tell your co-workers about your website. This is another group of people that will be interested in visiting your website at least one. If the content of your website is somewhat related to your work this strategy will work even better.

92. Include your website's URL in your business card. If you give business cards away frequently, consider including your website's URL there. Professional contacts might be interested in visiting it after all.

93. Print your website's URL in some T-shirts. It is very easy and cheap to get custom T-shirts these days (just Google it), so getting some with your website's URL could be a nice way to spread the word about it.

94. Create stickers with your website's URL and spread them around. If you really want to go guerilla, get some stickers with your website's URL and spread them around. Cars, windows, computers, you name it!

95. Put an ad at a local newspaper. Depending on the niche of your website, getting an ad on a local newspaper could be a good investment. For example, if you have a blog about local news or events an ad on the local newspaper could definitely bring you some new readers.

Out of the box Methods

96. Come up with an April Fools' prank. The first of April is a very lively day on the Internet, where many companies and webmasters come up with funny pranks. If you come up with a funny or interesting one other website owners might link to your, sending you traffic. You can check TechCrunch's summary of the 2010 pranks for inspiration.

97. Set your website as the homepage on any computer you use. If you apply this tactic consistently it might actually bring good results. For instance, you could set your website as the homepage of all computers in your school, work, libraries and so on.

98. Navigate to your website on computer stores. This might not bring you a lot of traffic, but it sure is a funny tactic. Whenever you go to a store with computers being showcased, open the web browser and navigate to your website, so that people passing by will see it.


99. List your website for sale. Even if you are not planning to sell it, that is. The interested buyers will visit your website to check it out, and that is how you'll increase your traffic. If you list your site on popular marketplaces, like Flippa.com, you might actually get thousand of visitors (and possible some good offers!).





 100. Fake a hacker attack. The community of bloggers and webmasters gets in turmoil every time a website or blog gets hacked. If you fake such an attack (i.e., by putting a weird message in your homepage) you'll certainly receive many backlinks and a bump in traffic. People might get pissed if they find out it was a prank, though.

Read More

20 ideas to make money online

A cash cow for the enterprising, the Internet is littered with opportunities to make a fast buck. While it rarely qualifies as a solitary source of income, the Net can easily help you supplement it. However, the amount you earn depends on the time and effort invested. Go through these 20 options and find out which ones work for you.

 Blogging

If you're a passionate closet writer who wants to be published but can't find a way to do so, make each keystroke your way to wealth by penning your own blog. Starting a blog doesn't require extensive technical skills but it's important that you have expertise in the field you are writing on. This will attract visitors to your site. Building a large following will enable you to earn profit by luring advertisers, writing paid reviews or getting commissions for promoting other people's products.


Paid Writing

If maintaining a blog is difficult for you but you still want to indulge your passion for writing, you can jot down articles for other blogs or sites such as Weblogs, Helium or PayPerPost. Writing an e-book can also be a good option. E-books are investment free, with no cost for printing and shipping. If you have a strong command over languages, you can become a copy editor, where Webmasters will pay you to read articles and correct grammatical errors, sentence fragments, etc.

e-tuitions/Webinars

The demand for tutors is high and growing. So, if you like helping others learn, e-teaching could be the earning ticket for you. All you need to become an online tutor is expertise in your subject and a few spare hours per week. TutorVista, e-tutor, SmartThinking and Tutor.com are some of the sites you can enroll with. If you gain a good reputation as a coach, you could even conduct Webinars-lectures or seminars transmitted over the Net. College and university students are willing to pay to gain entry to a well-respected Webinar.

Affilliate/Reseller

For those who have the knack of selling, one of the best ways to make money online is to become an affiliate/reseller. An affiliate is a person who gets a commission for selling every product that he promotes, whether on his Website or through any other avenue such as eBay. You don't have to own the product. You only need to sign up for an affiliate program with a company and start selling its products under your referral link. Firms such as Commission Junction or Click Bank have a large pool of products.

Buying/Selling domains

Buying and selling domain names is another way to make money from home and requires very little investment or time. You can buy domains at their registration prices or even cheaper and trade them at a profit. However, always research on sites such as sedo.co.uk, afternic.com, ebay.com or other domain auction sites to get an estimate of the hottest selling names. The best way to find good ones is to use terminated domain lists, which contain several expired names that are back in the pool.

Freelancing for Professionals

Freelancing is a great option for professionals who are experts in their respective trades and know how to ensure customer satisfaction. Various freelancing and project-oriented sites allow companies that need help to describe their projects. Freelancers and small businesses offer bids, ideas or proposals, from which the buyers can choose what they find most suitable. Websites such as Elance cover everything from programming and writing to data entry and design, while RentACoder focuses on software programming.


Advertising

You can sell space on your Website or blog for advertisements and you earn when these ads are clicked by visitors to your site. The sorting and placing of ads is free. The profitability of pay-per-click advertising depends on the traffic level of the Website and, most importantly, on the clickthrough rate and cost per click. Google AdSense is the most popular option, while others are BidVertiser, Text Link Ads and Blogads. Direct banner and RSS feed are some other forms of online advertising.

GPT Programme

GPT or Get-paid-to sites are becoming increasingly popular among teens. You get paid for signing up for free Websites, newsletters, playing games and filling out online surveys. These are suitable for people who don't have a skill set but want to earn extra money. Taking online surveys is simple- register with a few legitimate, paid survey sites and answer questions. The topics range from shopping to politics. This might not help you make a living, but you can earn good pocket money. Contests2win is one of the trusted GPT Websites.

Online Marketing

Once a Website is created and optimised for search engine (SEO), the SEM or Search Engine Marketing begins. A treasure trove lies hidden here. An SEO/SEM expert, who is responsible for marketing a Website, can promote it in various ways. These include article marketing, writing press releases, forum posting, blog posting, submitting your site to directories and search engines, social bookmarking, etc. Most companies don't do this in-house and pay you to conduct the SEM for them.

Making themes

As more and more people seek an online presence, the demand for Website templates and WordPress (Blog) themes will keep increasing. If you are good at Web designing and coding, you can earn a lot from designing Web themes. In this segment, there are mainstream Websites, such as TemplateMonster and ThemeForest, which act as a marketplace where you can sell your themes. Templates are sold and priced depending on the rights and features that are bundled with them.

Selling photos

If you enjoy photography and are good with a camera, you could be sitting on a huge reserve of revenue. There are people who will be interested in your collection of images. Nowadays, it's easy to take your photos to the public, providing a convenient way to build a secondary income stream. Many stock photo agencies, such as Fotolia, Dreamstime and Shutterstock, offer incentives for people to earn from their photos.

Support & service

Providing coding or fixing other Webmasters' issues is another great way to earn extra bucks. There are simple jobs ranging from adding a script to setting up sites, but knowledge of Web coding is essential. One can offer support for Web CMS (content management systems) like Drupal or Joomla. After you are comfortable with your own installation, you can help other people to set these up and configure them.


Stock/forex trading

Joining the stock/forex market may seem a bit risky. However, you can start small and continue researching till you gain experience in this area. Once you do, it will be easy to earn from exchanging foreign currencies and/or stocks. Their rates fluctuate depending on supply and demand, and economic and political influences in the world. The aim of any trader is to spot which currency/stock is likely to rise or fall in value against another. The more time you put in, the more you will earn.


Selling your own brand

If you have a flair for designing cool images, don't bother about creating your own inventory. As long as your design can be printed on a product, you can pocket some money. You can upload designs on various Websites such as CafePress, and if somebody orders these designs, the company will print them and distribute the products. It could be designs for T-shirts, hats, bags, books, posters, calendars, greeting cards, etc. You will receive a commission for each sale. Other such sites include Lulu and Zazzle.

Virtual Assistant

Small businesses always need help in running their processes, but may not be willing to hire a full-time employee. As a virtual assistant, you are expected to perform practically any administrative task that a traditional secretary or assistant would, such as make travel reservations, handle expense reimbursements or pay bills. You can do it from the comfort of your home, interacting with clients either online or by phone. Your expertise will decide how much moolah you rake in.

Inbound call centre

Many companies, who are facing space constraints, especially those in metro cities, prefer to hire workers outside their offices or outsource certain processes. You can set up an inbound call centre at home to handle such jobs. Research different companies that are outsourcing their work as they may have opportunities for inbound call centre agents. You can work for more than one company. This can be either a part-time or fulltime engagement, depending on your need.

You Tube

If there's a dramatic performer hidden inside you who craves applause and adulation, upload yourself on YouTube. You can be a filmmaker, musician or comedian who wants a wider audience. Your earnings will come from ads displayed on your video page. This process is similar to the pay-per-click advertising program common to other Websites and blogs. Sites such as Flixya and Mediaflix can be helpful in this regard.

Researching for others

Don't be morose if you can't write, design or code. Lack of talent cannot stop you from making money online. If you're willing to work hard for a few hours a week, you can take up simple research jobs for other people who don't have the time to do it themselves. You could search for opportunities in organisations that provide funding for research and offer to assist them through online investigation.

Building Applications

With smartphones gaining popularity, the demand for their applications, or apps as they are popularly known, has also shot up. There are over 3 million apps for the iPhone and over a million apps in Google's Android market. Most of these are selling like hot cakes. Developing and selling your own smartphone app is becoming a lucrative way to make money on the Internet. Apps cost virtually nothing to develop and entail no storage or shipping costs. So they enjoy the best profit margins.

Transcription

Medical transcription involves making written copies of oral material dictated by doctors or other medical experts. These may include history and physical reports, clinical notes, consultation notes, reports, letters, psychiatric evaluation and so on. The dictated material needs to be transcribed swiftly and accurately, which is the most challenging aspect of the job. To become a medical transcriptionist, you need to have a good knowledge of medical terminology and a high typing speed along with accuracy.

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A Tool To Check Your Search Rankings

Searching on Google for your keywords is indeed the simplest way to check your rankings, but it is not an effective one, because the search results you get on Google might not be the same that other people are getting.

Let's suppose that you have a blog about celebrities, and that the main keyword you are targeting is "photos of celebrities."
You could go to Google and search for "photos of celebrities", and then check the position where your blog will appear. The problem is that the rankings you'll see there are influenced by factors like your IP address, the language of your computer, your past search history and so on. This is part of an innovation Google introduced a while ago called "Personalized Search."
  For example, your blog might appear in the 5th position when you search for "photos of celebrities", but this is so because you

often click on your own website, so Google is artificially increasing the rankings of your blog when you search for it.



For all other people, however, your blog might be appearing in the 20th or 30th position.

So how do you find your real search rankings? There is a tool called Scroogle that you can use for this purpose. Here is the
link: http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm

It is basically a Google scraper that will get the search results from Google with an anonymous IP address, without storing cookies, without storing search-term records and so on.

When you run a search query on Scroogle, therefore, Google won't have any past data about it, so the results will be the ones seen by the average Internet user.

You can make Scroogle show 100 results at a time, and after that you'll just need to find where your website is positioned.

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How To Find Broken Links on Your Site?

Broken links are nothing more than links inside your website that point to pages that don't exist. Maybe you deleted the page because it was not relevant anymore, or maybe your simply used a wrong URL when creating the link. Fact is that when a user clicks on one of those links he will see a frustrating 404 error page. 

It is easy to see how broken links can negatively affect the user experience inside your site. Apart from annoying your human visitors, though, broken links also upset search engine bots, and if your site has too many of them your search rankings might suffer.

For these reasons I recommend that you check for broken links on your site at least twice a year.

Now if you have a large blog or website it would be impossible to check all the links manually right? Luckily there is a great tool that you can use for this purpose, called Xenu's Link Sleuth, or simply Xenu.

Don't worry you won't need to pay anything, just download it and install on your computer (it only runs on Windows).

Here is the official site: http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

The design of the site is horrible, I know, but it is a legitimate project.

Once you have the tool running, just type the URL of your website and it will start crawling all the links. Link verification is done on "normal" links, images, frames, plug-ins, backgrounds, and so on.

You will be able to follow the process, and in the end you will see a report with all the broken links, redirects, valid URLs and more.

It is really a nifty piece of software, and a must have on the tool-belt of any webmaster.

Make sure to visit again at http://www.anilkmishra.blogspot.com, for latest trends and techniques in ICT.

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National Seminar on Contemporary Issues for the Information Professionals in the Digital Age (NASCIP-2011)

NASCIP 2011 was organised by INMANTEC and MANLIBNET on 22 January 2011. Many contemporary issues faced by the information professionals in this digital age were discussed by the eminent professionals. Dr. Kalpana Das of National Knowledge Commission (NKC), Govt. of India, the Chief Guest, told the professionals to focus more on the content of the services which they are giving to their patron. Dr. P. R. Goswami, the Librarian Central Secretariat and the guest of Honour, emphasises on delivering good quality services to users. He urged the young LIS professionals to come forward and deliver the best to the Profession.

I also presented my paper entltled: "Development and Analysis of Child Health Repository in India"in this seminar and highlight the procedure for developing repository.

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5 Free PC-Cleaning Downloads

Is your PC slowing you down? Try these to fasten and smarten up your comp, and live with your laptop happily forever…

    From the huge number of free downloads and tools available to tweak your PC to make it boot up faster, here are five featured free downloads which are really easy to use. Web search each title in the list and see carefully as to which tool suits your needs the best. 

   Also note that none of these are Mac-compatible.

Soluto

Soluto is a freeware programme for the operating systems of PCs. Although no system requirements are specified on the website’s page,the program has been tested on a 32 bit machine and it ran flawlessly. It’s main function is to speed up you boot time – and that it does.


Smart Defrag
This is a tiny PC-compatible utility sized at only 1.8 MB. When you run the program, you can view all your hard drive partitions. Click on the partition you feel is responding slowly, and perform an analysis to see if any files require defragmentation.

 
Fontfrenzy

Your computer comes loaded with a huge number of fonts you will probably never use. To clean up these redundant fonts, you could employ any one of countless font managers available on the web. The suggested one, however, would be Font-Frenzy – a font manager with some extra font cleaning features. FontFrenzy is a freeware sized at only 490 KB and is compatible with your PC. When you load it, the programme shows all fonts installed on your computer. 



 USB Write Protect
A flash drive virus works by writing itself onto your flash drive. If you could somehow temporarily disable the writing permissions on your drive, your flash drive would be more secure. At the same time, you will be unable to accidentally delete or modify the flash drive’s contents. USB Write Protect is a tiny utility sized at only 11KB. You download the archive, extract it, and run the .exe file in it.



Bvckup




 Bvckup is a programme currently in its beta that works with Windows Operating Systems. The programme has a number of interfaces and functionality features which set it apart from applications that perform the same auto-syncing tasks. 
   

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13 Most Important Blog Post Checklist: Use Before Hitting “Publish”

How many times have you published a post, only to find out you forgot to proofread and that many typos slipped through? What about when the links you included are broken, when you used the wrong keywords, or when you forgot to optimize the post title?




As you can see, there are many things one should check before hitting the “Publish” button, and most of us forget about them. That is why I decided to create “The Blog Post Checklist,” with a list of things you should check before publishing your post. You’ll find it useful especially for those long, linkbait type articles you publish once in a while.

Below you’ll find a description of all the checks, but you can also download a PDF version to print and fix above your computer.

1. Did I read the post after writing it?

Common sense as it sounds, most people don’t read what they just wrote before publishing it. This is a mistake, because unless you read your article as an integral piece you won’t be able to tell if the whole thing makes sense, if the paragraphs and sentences are in the right order, if the arguments are solid and so on.

Before anything else, therefore, read what you just wrote from top to bottom.


2. Is the post as complete as it could be?

If you want to generate as much traffic as possible and to get as many backlinks as possible, you need to make sure that your post is as complete as it could be. If you completed the previous check you should also be able to evaluate whether or not you could add more sections and explanations.

For example, you might be writing a software review, and your post is focused on the features of the software. What about the installation process? What about the compatibility of the software with other programs? These are all aspects you could include, making the post more valuable to potential readers. If you want to read more on this topic check these 10 tips to write popular posts.


3. Did I research the related keywords?

Keywords rule search engines (and the web, as a consequence). If you want to maximize your traffic you need to use the same keywords that most people use. First of all because this will make your post easier to understand. Second because it will help with the search engine optimization.

For instance, you might be writing a post about gaming notebooks. But should you call it “gaming notebooks” or “game laptops”? After using the Google AdWords Keyword Tool you would discover that the term “game notebooks” is searched by 8,000 people every month, while “gaming laptops” is searched by over 60,000 people. This means that the latter is much more widespread, and you probably should go with it.

4. Did I craft the title carefully?

The title of your post is the most important part. Even more important than the body of the post itself, because unless the title grabs the attention of visitors, they won’t read the post.

First of all make sure your title has an emotional hook. For example, you could get the reader excited by offering something of great value (e.g., “100 Photoshop Tutorials to Become a PSD Ninja”), or you could get the reader curious by making an unusual statement (e.g., “5 Things Chuck Norris Can Teach You About Marketing”).

Second, remember to use the main keywords of your post in the title, as this will help with the search engine optimization.


5. Did I proofread it?

I know you have already read your post once to make sure the ideas make sense and the paragraphs are in the right order. However, you’ll need to read it once more, to proofread it.

This time focus on spotting grammar and spelling mistakes. Here are a couple of tricks you can use for this purpose: read your article backwards or read it out loud. Both of these methods will allow you to focus on the single words, making it easier to spot the mistakes.


6. Did I link to one or more of my older posts?

Linking to older posts inside your blog is a practice that helps both human visitors and search bots. It helps human visitors because it lets them explore your archives, possibly complementing or expanding on the information they have just read. It helps search bots because it lets them crawl your site more efficiently, and it also helps them to understand your content (through the link anchor text).

Before publishing the post, take some time to find older posts you can link to.


7. Did I link to external resources when appropriate?

Do not be afraid of linking to external websites. You’ll not lose PageRank, and you’ll not lose readers.

If your content is solid, you’ll only be enriching it by linking to relevant external resources. If you mention a particular tool in your post, for instance, link to it. If you mention a term that readers might not be familiar with, link to the respective Wikipedia entry.


8. Did I make sure all links are working?

All it takes to break a link is to omit a letter, a dot, or to add an extra http:// heading. For example, if you write http://www.siteyouwannalinkto.co the link is not going to work. Similarly, if you write http://http://www.siteyouwannalinkto.com the link is not going to work either. The impact on the user experience, however, is quite significant. If your visitors can’t click on a link you mentioned and find the website they’ll get frustrated.

Before publishing the post use the “Preview” feature of your blogging software and click on all the links to make sure they are working and pointing to the correct URL.


9. Did I credit any sources I might have used?

If your post was inspired by something you read somewhere else, credit it. Similarly, if you used information that came from a particular website or blog, make sure to mention and link to it. This will be fair with the original author, and it will also be useful to your readers, as they will be able to track where everything is coming from.

One post that inspired me to write this one was 13 Questions to Ask Before Publishing a Post On Your Blog, by Darren Rowse. Even though I had read it back in 2008, the idea probably kept wandering in my head, until I finally decided to write my own take on the issue.


10. Did I include an enticing image?

If an image is worth a thousands words, why not use one in your post? Images are a great way to entice people to read the rest of your post. They can also help with the search engine optimization, and bring some traffic from Google image search.

Check out the post Where to Find Images for Your Blog to discover the image sources I use.


11. Did I optimize the permalink?

Most publishing platforms and software allow you to edit the permalink of each post you publish. You should use this feature to make sure your permalinks are concise, and that they contain your main keywords.

Apart from making the permalink look cleaner, this will also help with your search engine optimization and possibly increase the amount of traffic you’ll get from Google and company.


12. Did I add one or more elements to engage readers?

Every blog owner should be trying to build a community around his blog, and engaging readers with your content is one of the best strategies to achieve this.

Practically speaking you could ask them a question at the end of the post, include a poll, make a call to action, use their feedback directly in your post and so on.


13. Is this a good day for traffic?

Even if you have written a masterpiece, you’ll not get the best possible result if you publish it on a Sunday. The best days for traffic are usually Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. But make sure to track your traffic numbers, so you can be sure of the best day for your blog.


Over to the readers: Would you add anything to this checklist?

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Cast your net wide the best 20 web apps

Everyone likes creating lists—be it the top 50 movies or the 100 greatest songs of all time. We decided to come up with a best-of-Web apps list. You may not agree with some of the apps on our list, but then who said making lists also means pleasing everyone?

1. Zoho Docs
Zoho is an online full-function office suite that lets you create and edit word documents, spreadsheets and presentations, among other things. But wait a minute, why not Google Docs? It was a tough call between our numero uno Web app and the old favourite Google Docs. The reason we chose Zoho is because frankly we're tired of the minor irritants Google Docs keeps throwing up and we value its adherence to its desktop roots in terms of UI.


2. Dropbox
Without a doubt the best file-syncing Web app out there. It's a cross platform and allows you to sync your files across multiple systems, be it Linux-, Mac- or Windows-based. The best part is that apart from syncing folders seamlessly, it also keeps a copy of your files on the cloud.

3. Last.fm
Last.fm is by far the ultimate music discovery app out there. Apart from playing similar artistes on call, this service has a social feel to it—allowing you to connect with people with similar music tastes.

4. ScreenToaster
ScreenToaster is a free Web-based screen capture tool. Registration is not compulsory. All you need to do is visit the site and click Record. This one is a clear-cut replacement of desktop applications such as CamStudio. The only trouble is the app suffers a lot of downtime.

5. Evernote
An online note-taking-cum-clipboard application is something most people have come to need. The Web app allows you to save/organize notes, pictures and reminders from anywhere on the Web. iClippy and SpringPad were contenders, but Evernote nudged them out ever so slightly.

6. Grooveshark
Online music is the only category in which we have two Web apps instead of featuring just one. Grooveshark is the best place on the Web for playing music instantly. Sure, you can make playlists and blah, but if you need a song, and need it now, this is the app!

7. Ge.tt
With Ge.tt you can share files instantly with anyone. Simply upload the file and share the link. What's unique is that there's no size limit and people can start downloading your shared files while you're uploading from your end. If you choose to register, you get stats and analytics too.

8. Pixlr
No Web apps list can be complete without a powerful image-editing application. The Web offers many choices—from basic ones such as Fotoflexer, Lunapic, Picnik and Adobe Photoshop's online version Photoshop Express to an advanced class of editors such as Pixlr, Aviary Phoenix, Splashup and Sumo Paint. After pushing at all of them till they broke, we arrived at Pixlr. If you want to get some serious photoediting done online, Pixlr is the app that truly delivers.

9. Penzu
Penzu is an online personal diary app with special emphasis on privacy and security. The UI is like an old school writing pad or journal where you can pen down your thoughts at the end of a long tiring day.

10. Bitlet.org
This is a cross platform Bit Torrent program that lets you enable your very own Bit Torrent client in the cloud. The Java-based app can load torrent files from a URL or from a local drive. You can set the incoming port and upload limit. It even supports resuming as long as you save in the same location. You can also stream audio as MP3 or Ogg Vorbis format.

11. JotForm
Need to create a feedback or survey form, but don't know Web programming? Sure there's Google Docs Forms, or paid options such as Wufoo and FormStack, but this one is just as powerful and easier to use with its drag and drop functionality. Simply make a form, embed anywhere and receive responses via email.

12. KeepVid
KeepVid is a Web app that allows you to instantly download any video you're currently streaming. It supports sites such as YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe, Putfile and more. Simply paste the URL in the Web UI or use the bookmarklet.

13. DropMocks
Sure you have Picasa and Flikr to create image galleries but what if you want to create a gallery instantaneously? DropMocks is the easiest way to create and share nice-looking image galleries online. All you need to do is drag your image files on to the DropMocks page, and the app will do the rest. Copy link to share your image gallery.

14. PDFmyUrl
Have URL, will convert! Can't get simpler than that. And the PDFs come out in good quality with minimal file size. 5,237,544 PDFs served at the time of writing this.

15. Imo.im
Web-based messengers were perhaps the first Web apps ever to exist. People used them to get around their office IT policy. There's a lot of 'em around, but Imo.im in our opinion is the simplest, most easy to use and fairly reliable.

16. PDFescape
Speaking of PDFs, isn't it difficult to manipulate them even with desktop applications? Here's a Web tool that allows you to fill in PDF forms and generally annotate and manipulate PDFs however you want—be it rearranging pages, typing text, adding links, even erasing and highlighting. The app won a place in this list by a whisker compared with FillanyPDF—another similar Web app that even lets you collect data via PDF forms.

17. Prezi
When you think "presentations", you think "slides", right? Well here's an online presentation tool that's going to redefine how we give presentations. It uses a huge canvas and zooms on important content contextually. On a side note, you will most definitely also want to check out SlideRocket for adding regular spice to conventionality.

18. Online.movavi.com
Transcoding video can be a resource-intensive task. With this app you get to transfer the load to the cloud. The app supports several input/output formats and even presets for popular mobile devices.

19. Torrent2exe
Wouldn't it be nice if you could package a torrent as an executable file that launches with its own inbuilt Bit Torrent client? This Web app does just that. Simply share the file on your blog post (or wherever) and users can download your content in a hassle-free manner.

20. Vuvox
Vuvox is a cutting-edge Web app that allows you to transform simple pictures into an interactive, motion-driven collage. It's a great tool for photobloggers, students or just about anyone who wants to showcase a subject in a fun way.

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Cool Presentation: 100 Things To Watch In 2011

Whenever I come across “predictions,” “trends” or “things to watch” I make sure to read or at least scan through the material, as it might contain information about stuff I don’t know yet but should. In other words, it’s way to keep my radar on for upcoming opportunities.
That is why I went to flip through the slides of a presentation titled “100 Things to Watch in 2011″ a couple of days ago, and I found it pretty interesting, so much that I decided to blog about it. You’ll find the presentation below (click on “Menu” and “View full screen” to be able to read it easily).

JWT: 100 Things to Watch in 2011

View more presentations from JWTIntelligence.

Keep in mind that the topics covered are very general, ranging from countries that growing fast to food that is spreading in different regions of the world. That being said there are many websites and technology trends listed. For example, have you ever thought about ads inside CAPTCHA forms?

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Top 10 Ways to Get More Followers on Twitter

There are actual tactics you can use to become more popular in Twitterland, and your friends here at Anil's Information Portal (http://anilkmishra.blogspot.com) are here to help you out.
Read on to find out 10 ways you can stop twittering into the abyss.

1: Create a Good Avatar

This suggestion is for aesthetic purposes, but having an avatar that looks unprofessional will only serve to make you appear unprofessional, and that's no way to increase the number of people following you. Since the avatar is simply a small picture to represent you, work within those means. In other words, don't try and squeeze in a picture of you and Mount Rushmore in the background or you in a room with your 14 cats. The point is for someone to see your face, so stick to that for best results. Make sure you crop the photo because it will end up being about the size of a quarter. Here's another tip -- upload a large image (450 by 450 pixels) to send to Twitter and let them shrink it for you. This way, if someone wants to zoom in and enlarge your image, it won't be a pixilated mess. Now that you have a nice, professional looking avatar, people will never be confused again about who you are or what you look like.
2: Tweets During Peak Hours

How can you expect anyone to follow you if they're asleep? Sending messages, or twittering, during peak hours gives you the best opportunity to be seen, or, rather, read. And that gives you better odds of someone enjoying whatever messages you're sending out and signing up as a follower. So what are the peak hours? There haven't been any studies performed yet, but the Washington, D.C.-based Internet marketing firm Abraham & Harrison have performed some Webinars along with Twitter and confirmed that 9 a.m., noon, 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. see heavy use. It's also an opportunity for you to experiment with your tweets and see when you're getting the best response. If you do find that between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. in the United States, either East or West Coast time, gets you a lot of traffic and you live elsewhere in the world, structure you tweets around this schedule. It may not be the most convenient time for you, but if you're interested in gaining followers, you need to be around when the bulk of Twitter users are around.
3: Create an Effective Profile Bio

Unless you're already famous (and even if you are), creating an effective bio entry is a great way to attract followers. Nobody wants to follow someone whose bio reads, "I'm just a couch potato with a lot to say" or "I heart 'Dancing with the Stars' and that says it all." Because no, it doesn't say it all. Be creative, clever and intelligent when writing your bio. You want to sum up who you are in a short space, too, so don't go overboard with the prose. This is also a good place to plant URLs to any other sites you're looking to promote, such as your Facebook page or a blog landing page. But don't only include those links. A good mix of clever self-description mixed with your other links is a good bet to get people interested in what you have to say. If you feel like you can't sum up who you are, find a famous quote that does it for you. Someone might just be intrigued by your Timothy Leary or Ben Franklin quotation and give your account a second look.
4: Send "@Messages" to Top Users

One good way to get noticed is to send something called an "@message" to top Twitter users. Here's how it works. If you and your friend both have Twitter accounts and you both follow each other, you can send direct messages to each other that aren't for public consumption. But you can also send "@messages" to anyone you want, whether you follow them or not, or they follow you or not. Got that? Here's where it gets good -- an "@message" is posted on your profile page for all to see. So if you wanted to send an "@message" to top Twitter user actor Ashton Kutcher, anybody visiting your profile would see it. Good luck getting Mr. Kutcher to send a tweet back to you, but that's not the point. But if he does feel the urge to re-tweet your message -- or broadcast it to all his followers -- 2.9 million people will see it (as of July 30, 2009).


5: Ask Questions

One great way to add followers is to get people engaged so they'll send you a tweet back. There's no better way to get people to respond than to pose questions. Facebook quizzes have shown that people are willing to respond to even the silliest of public opinion polls. So throw some questions on your Twitter and see if you can get people talking. Ask what people's favorite TV show is or who should win American Idol. If there's a hot news item, poll your followers. For instance, in May 2009 the swine flu grabbed headlines all over the world. Simply asking "Are you worried about swine flu?" on your Twitter could generate hundreds of responses from your followers. Each response is then seen by anyone who is following the responder, and that's a great way to increase your Twitter traffic.


6: Link to Interesting Sites

It's easy to get mired down with mundane posts when you're using Twitter. Detailing what you had for breakfast may be fun for your family and close friends, but it's not a good way to get or retain followers. But linking to interesting articles or Web sites is. Many Web sites and blogs are nothing more than a collection of links to the most fascinating, unusual or ground breaking information on the Internet. The Web site stumbledupon.com is just one example of sites that are simply large collections of Web recommendations. If you spend some time scouring these sites and others like it, and you make a habit of twittering about the cool stuff you find, you'll become a reliable source of information about the latest and greatest the Web has to offer -- a great way to gain followers.
7: Develop a Niche

One sure way to get some followers is to get specific about what you want to accomplish with your tweets. Random tweets about everything under the sun can get you some followers, but having a more targeted audience in mind and playing to those followers is a better approach. If you have a lot of knowledge about something, anything, then go with that. Take knitting, for example. If you're a whiz with the yarn, make that your focus, call yourself an expert in the craft of knitting and run with it. It may be a smaller subset you're going after, but if you can become the foremost Twitterer on knitting, then you're bound to get some followers. Go to knitting Web sites and message boards and post answers to some of the most frequently posted questions. Respond to each and every inquiry you get, and before you know it, you'll be a Twitter expert and have more followers than you can shake a knitting needle at.
8: Repeat Yourself

This one may surprise you. You'd think that posting something more than once would only aggravate your followers. But if you're an avid tweeter, then chances are, your followers may not be reading each and every tweet you send out -- especially if you've disobeyed tip number nine and posted outside of peak hours. Repeat your best and most informative tweets several times during the day and see if you get an increase in followers. Who is reading your posts at the time can make all the difference in the world. Let's say you posted about a cool new iPhone application, and nobody said much. Twitter it again eight hours later and your luck may change. Don't overuse this method though. You don't want to become known for posting nothing but repeat messages
9: Post Pictures

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but in this case it just needs to be worth 140 characters. Everyone likes to look at pictures, and Twitter users are no different. Take the image of the US Airways flight 1549 that famously crashed into the Hudson River in January 2009. That image was posted and reposted on Twitter more than 350,000 times. If you were one of the early posters, then you had a good chance of picking up a lot of followers. If you're on the go and you have an iPhone, use applications like Tweetie and Twitterific to upload pictures wherever you are.
10: Link Your Account

If you're connected enough to have a Twitter account, then chances are you use all kinds of other Internet outlets. You need to use every one of these to help promote your Twitter account. Post your Twitter information on your Facebook page. Post it on your blog. If you have accounts with Digg or a resume profile on LinkedIn, use those as well. You should even include your Twitter information as part of your e-mail signature. These are all essentially free ways to advertise whatever you bring to the Twitter table. Combine this method with some or all of the other nine tricks and you'll be one step ahead in trying to lure followers to your account.

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