6 Tips on Image SEO

Images as an asset for organic search results and search engine optimization are often overlooked. Images can drive traffic through image search as well as inclusion in universal search results.

There are actually several dimensions to image optimization that involves better placement in search results, optimization for user experience and in some cases, optimization for easier sharing of images on the social web.

For image SEO, it can be helpful to think of optimizing images like optimizing a tiny webpage within your page. Things like url structure, anchor text and descriptive tagging are factors for optimizing images for search engines, just like regular webpages.

Here are a few tips for optimizing your images to improve their performance on the page and in search.

1. Find the right images

Finding the right kind of image is incredibly important. Great images can add another dimension to an article or page that can encourage people to share the page and create some great backlinks. Research shows that while text is still the first thing seen on the page, the image is what sells the page.
Here are some of the best places to actually find images:

• Flickr – Probably the de facto service for finding free images. They have a really useful creative commons search as well. Skellie has an excellent article on how to find Flickr images.
• stock.xchng – Weird name, but a ton of royalty-free stock images.
• iStockPhoto – Large selection of stock photos that you can buy.

You can also use Google Images to find images for your site, as long as you search with the proper licensing. (They allow you to search Creative Commons and other public licenses.) But you have to be very careful when using images, as if you don’t have the permission to reuse it, companies and sites can take legal action against you.
The general rule of thumb is this: if the image isn’t Creative Common licensed or you didn’t buy or create it, don’t post it.

2. Use the keyword(s) in the file name

Just like keywords in post urls are important for pages, the same is true for images. Using keyword-rich words in your image filename is important for helping search engines determine relevancy. For example, the image above was originally named “iStock_000004221245XSmall.jpg” which doesn’t add much information about this web page. It has been renamed to “image-optimization.jpg”. Of course, most images that are not simply decorative like the one above are literal and connected to the content of the page such as a photo of a product. If the above image were used in an article about eye color, then the file name should reflect that.
Google suggests that you should place your images in one folder on your site, mydomain.com/images versus placing them in random folders throughout the site. Another suggestion from Google related to file names or URLs of images is to make sure you use common image filetypes such as JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP.

3. Create descriptive alt text

Alt text or tags are another way that search engines help determine what your image is about. Unlike traditional web content, search engines can’t determine the text content of an image. (Search spiders are pretty smart, but as far as I know they haven’t developed eyes yet.) As a result, search engines need to rely on captions around the image, alt text, file names and other surrounding text. Adding descriptive text in the alt tag helps the search engines determine what the content of the image is.
If an image is used as navigation, ie as a link to another page, be sure to use alt text that is meaningful to the content of the page being linked to.

4. The right anchor text

Anchor text is another important factor in image SEO. If you decide to link to images with text, your anchor text can play a role in how your image is ranked for keywords. Use descriptive anchor text that describes the image. For example, linking to an image using a generic term like “image” or “photo” or a file name that doesn’t use keywords doesn’t give search engines much meaningful information on what the image is about. Linking to an image with keywords is helpful to search engines as well as people visiting your site.

5. Make sure the image matches the content

The content surrounding the image should be related to all of the things that you’ve optimized thus far: anchor tags, image url, alt tags. When these things align, it helps search engines confirm that you’re not spamming and that the image is of higher quality and relevant.

6. Don’t stuff

This goes for all kinds of SEO, but we’ll say it again just for clarity: don’t keyword stuff when filling out things like image alt text. Your alt text, captions and file names should be short and descriptive, not a long list of keywords. Remember to optimize images for your website visitors. Image SEO is as much about user experience as it is about achieving better search engine rankings.

5 Things that are In Store for SEO in 2013 and Beyond

2011 and 2012 have been incredibly important years in the world of search engine optimization and for search design trends in general. In an effort to make the web closer to something

semantic and highly responsive to the real needs of human readers, Google has performed some major overhauls to the way it ranks the websites it has indexed by its web crawlers.

These overhauls will be ongoing and will continue to develop further in 2013; creating a web popularity landscape that depends not just on classical SEO tactics but also numerous other factors involving social media, website design and friendliness to the latest browsing systems such as mobile web viewing.

Let’s go over some of these key trends that will almost certainly be really big in this new year.

1. Humanized Ranking Metrics

With Google’s repeated massively damaging blows to black hat SEO during all of 2011 and 2012, the days of effective link farming, content stuffing, keyword stuffing and other “nefarious” optimization tactics that don’t actually reflect site popularity are over. This trend will only continue and whatever black hat optimization tricks that are still working for some sites will only continue to deteriorate in their effectiveness.

Instead, Google is steadily working its way towards creating a more humanized ranking index that, in addition to reflecting other metrics which we’ll soon get to, also takes a lot of its value analysis from real time social media and human user metrics of actual popularity amongst readers.

The end result is expected to be a more “real time” search results profile for queries and an increasing amount of weight given to data collected from Twitter, Facebook, other social platforms and, of course, Google’s own array of social media tools. An important aspect of this will involve site owners connecting their content to each of these social platforms and also integrating themselves more with Google’s own network of content tracking. (despite the obvious bias in Google’s favor here)

2. Quality over Quantity

This almost certain 2013 trend is great news for a lot of content weary bloggers and site owners. Instead of giving heavy emphasis to massively content stuffed websites, Google and other search engines will continue to focus more on ensuring that their best ranked content is judged more by its quality, relevancy and freshness.

Updates like some of Panda’s iterations were a particularly good demonstration of this and played a part in giving precedence to sites whose content was most relevant and valuable for a given search, even if the sites themselves were not major content producers like some competitors might have been.

Based on this trend, site administrators should work towards really filling information needs with high quality posts without rushing to fill out as much new content as they can as quickly as possible.

3. Mobile Search

The mobile browsing landscape is only continuing to grow and soon it will completely overtake conventional web search. This means that adapting to the technical and practical details of this changing environment is a crucial step for SEO conscious site owners in 2013.

Speaking on a purely technical level, more emphasis has to be given to making websites more mobile friendly and designing them so that they are fully responsive not only to different PC browsers and screen sizes but also to thousands of different mobile platforms, from tablets to a whole array of smart phone types and operating systems.

Additionally, from other optimization standpoints, work to get your sites and their content more oriented towards mobile friendly content delivery. This could mean post design, text layout and presentation media such as video or audio

Another interesting feature of this emerging mobile search trend is the fact that a lot more of it takes place through a complex series of social network connections, bringing us to our next point.

4. Increasing Social Media Importance

We already partly covered the incredible importance of social media weight in our first major trend point, but it bears mentioning in more detail.

In 2013, you will absolutely need to develop your website’s social platform presence and integration as much as possible.

As more and more of the data about what’s trending on their platforms gets collected by social media sites, more of it will also become available for review by Google. This in turn will make such metrics more important in deciding search rank value. Ultimately Google is working to provide the most human relevant search experience possible to its users and the fundamentally human guided nature of social media popularity makes it a vital base of information for Google to achieve its goal.

Help this process along as much as possible by developing your popularity in the social media platforms and building up a base of dedicated fans that keep coming back to and repeatedly sharing what you have to offer further down the social chain. Not only will this eventually improve your essential human ranking value in the new search landscape, it will also achieve the vital site popularity building step of making you less dependent on search rank and SEO for the long run.

In essence, by developing a fan base at least partly through your social presence, you’ll be forcing the search engines to pay attention to you. Another way of looking at this is that building a deep human popularity amongst many fans and other influential websites will create a domain authority for your pages that no search engine can ignore.

Additionally, bear in mind practical technical steps that will improve your social media friendliness; things like creating multiple profiles across several popular media platforms, connecting them fully to your website through social media buttons and making it easy for people to log on through their Facebook or other social networking accounts.

5. Conversion Rate Optimization

However Google works, it has to also pay attention to reality on the digital ground. In terms of CRO, this has an enormous potential importance for 2013 because it means that a major factor in higher ranking may soon be how well sites get visitors to perform useful actions.

In essence, while many sites may have numerous visitors, the ones that optimize their pages for the best human engagement are those that actually get the readers not only to visit but also do things like buy products, click more links or opt in to a mailing list with their email addresses.

Since successfully doing all this is an obvious indicator that people are getting real personal value from a website, it’s very likely that Google will pay more attention to it in 2013.

For your own site, focus as much as possible on delivering high quality and getting maximal action or purchase conversion rates from whatever visitors you do have. Doing this is even more important than focusing on raw visitor numbers.

What new SEO action items can you do in 2013 to take your SEO to the next level?

1. Revisit your keyword research.

I usually tell my clients they should consider revamping their website (new design, new content, etc.) every two years or so (if it makes sense). You want to clean up your website—weed out underperforming pages, tighten up your internal linking and navigation and consider revisiting your keyword research as part of your new SEO campaign. How has user search behavior changed since the last time you optimized your website? What new industry keywords are popping up? What terminology is going out of style? The keywords you target are the cornerstone of your SEO campaign and it’s important to make sure they are still on track. Sometimes you might only have to swap out a few keywords (maybe none). Other times a whole new world of keywords will have cropped up in the last few years and you’re missing valuable visitors by not targeting them on your website.

2. Ramp up your content marketing.

It’s hard to have a good guest blogging program when you can’t get your own blog under control. Now that you’ve had a year or two to fine tune your blogging skills on your own company blog it’s time to ramp up your content marketing efforts for your new SEO campaign and look into getting real guest blogging opportunities on respected industry sites. I worry that guest blogging will become the new link exchange and Google will start treating them as such, so it’s important that you don’t publish content on any old site that will have you. Take the time to find quality blogs that reach your target audience and routinely produce great content—these are the blogs you want to be writing for.
You could also ramp up the content creation on your own blog by accepting a few guests posts of your own (maybe 2 or so a month) or start interviewing industry experts and publishing those interviews as blog posts. A guest blogger or expert is going to want to promote content with their name attached to it, but it’s your blog that reaps the link building and traffic driving benefits! But remember, just like you don’t want to publish on any old blog, you don’t want any old blogger publishing on your site. Pick and choose carefully!

3. Start going after those hard-to-get links.

A new SEO campaign is the perfect opportunity to push your white hat link building to greater heights. Start going after that hard to win links that you might have avoided in the past and make your link profile that much stronger! I know it can be frustrating to feel like you’re spending hours building links and only having a handful of published links to show for it but those hard to get links are going to be much more valuable in the long run than a dozen easy wins.

Easy Search Engine Optimization Guide

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a particular discipline within web design, intended to increase the site's rankings on a search engine. Since many users who search for a topic will select a site from the first page of results, or may stop after only a few pages, most web masters want their content to be displayed at the top of the page rankings. 

There are a number of techniques that can be used to promote your web site within the search engine page rankings, and a number of pitfalls to avoid. Since the field has grown and evolved over the years, there is a body of knowledge and professional debate about it, as well as some long-standing myths and hold-overs from previous techniques that no longer work. 

Pitfalls include: 

- “Magic formulas” for keyword density 
- Dictionary-like lists of keywords in page headers 
- Filling tags and headers with irrelevant content 
- Using invisible tags or keywords to “trick” the web crawler 
- Using link exchanges or farms 

Time-tested techniques include: 

- Offering high-quality, unique content 
- Becoming or utilizing recognized authorities 
- Carefully soliciting links from high quality, professional contacts 
- Structuring your site to be easy to crawl 

Getting into SEO means sifting through all of the information available on how to optimize, determining which information is relevant and current, and then applying the best of it to your own project. Doing so cost effectively is critical. 

You can choose to do your own SEO on your web site, or contract the work out to professional SEO services. Whether you do the work yourself or hire it out should be a careful business decision, based on the current size and completion level of your site, the amount of user traffic it can handle, the amount of time and skill you can dedicate to the SEO project, and of course your budget. 

If you choose to contract the service, do your research on firms that are professional and well respected. As with any other web-based service, caveat emptor. There are good firms and scam artists, clear terms and fine print. Be sure to check the SEO provider's references, and ensure that you're paying for site architecture and content changes, rather than simply for pay-per-click contracts. Avoid any that guarantee you a particular page ranking or sound too good to be true. 

By far the best technique for increasing your search engine page ranking (SEPR) is simply offering high quality content that users find valuable. The more people value and respect your site, the more respected bloggers and sites will link to you, thus increasing your rankings. 

Remember that the point of SEO is to drive users to your site. You should never find yourself sacrificing a user-friendly experience or the quality of your content for the sake of the search engine bots. Search engines are themselves web sites that must offer a high quality experience to their users, so they will heavily penalize sites that use technical “tricks” that degrade their own user experience. More importantly, a high page ranking is irrelevant without a good web site that keeps users coming back.

10 Twitter Tips To Drive Traffic To Your Site

Most people that use Twitter tend to tweet meaningless nonsense, such as what they ate for lunch! That is great for people that use it purely for social reasons, however if you are planning to use Twitter to help you market your business, then you need to be using it in a more productive way.

The best thing about Twitter is that the people using it are so diverse! It doesn’t matter what your business is about, you will be able to find people almost instantly who are interested in your niche. This allows you to quickly find people who are part of your targeted audience.

The following are some tips that you can use to improve your Twitter account and increase traffic to your website.

 

Driving Traffic From Twitter To Your Blog

Lets get to the point! You want to use Twitter to drive traffic to your blog/website. Twitter is one of the best social media tools for driving traffic to your blog. I use it to update all of my followers about what’s new on my websites and what I’m doing (@matt_oit). It is such an amazing feeling when you tweet about a new post on your site and people start to re-tweet it, spreading the word.

Using Twitter and Blogging Together

To get the most out of Twitter, you need to promote Twitter on your website and there are a few ways to do this. The most obvious way to do this is to display a Twitter button on your homepage, or better yet within your sidebar so that it displays on all of your website pages. This button links directly to your Twitter account, allowing people to sign-up and follow you.
Another great way to promote Twitter on your site is to display sharing links on your posts. As you can see, at the top of all of my blog posts I display ‘AddThis‘ share buttons. This allows anyone to share my posts on any of the social media sites online, including Twitter. Counters can help show how popular your posts are to new visitors.
Also, consider placing a ‘Recent Tweets’ box on your site. This will display your newest tweets that your visitors may be interested in. Ultimately, this is just another way to encourage people to ‘follow‘ you.

Promote Yourself

You need to make sure that you promote yourself and your blog on Twitter. If you can do this well, then you will be able to build a strong brand identity that will be beneficial in the long run.
One of the key parts of your Twitter profile is your bio. Write a bio that clearly states what your blog is about and add a link to your site. This sounds really easy, but take some time to think about this. You only have a limited amount of characters, so make them count. If after reading your bio, people don’t get what you are about, they won’t stick around.
The best way to promote your site is to tweet about it! Tweet about all of your new posts a couple of times a day and keep everyone up to date about everything that is happening with your site. Surprisingly, a lot of people think that if they promote themselves on Twitter, then that makes them a spammer. That is just not true! It is fine to promote yourself, as long as you do it the right way. Tweeting every 5 minutes about your new post or an affiliate link would be classed as spam. Mix it up a bit and you will be fine. Tweet about your new post, but then tweet about other things that might be related.
If you can get the right balance and learn to promote your site in the best way, then you will begin to see results.

Make Friends

Twitter is a social site, so be social! There is a whole community related to your niche out there, so get involved. Chat to people, make friends, share ideas, ask question, re-tweet, etc.
I am always amazed when I get followed by someone that doesn’t tweet. When I check their profile, they are following x thousand people, but have never tweeted a single thing. You can’t expect to make friends and build your brand without tweeting.
Blogging is a community, so find similar people that blog within your field and interact with them. The more blogging friends that you can connect with, the better your blog will be as you will be able to share ideas with each other.

Listen To Your Twitter Followers

One of the best things about Twitter is that you can get almost instant reaction to your tweets from your followers. It is important that you listen to your followers as they can tell you what is working and what isn’t. A particular post that you tweet may be particularly popular, so you might want to do a follow up post on the same subject. Similarly, if you don’t get much reaction from one of your tweets, it may be because there isn’t much interest for it.
You can just ask your followers what they like and what they don’t and why. This way you are almost treating Twitter as a tool for market research that can help you with your business.

Have Conversations

Twitter is full of people having great conversations with one another. The best ones are full of useful information that can be very helpful to you. Don’t be shy, jump into conversations, ask questions and contribute to the discussion, or better yet start your own. People are very helpful when you are nice to them, you can learn a lot from many different people and build a useful network of people.

Honesty Is The Best Policy

I think that this is important for every aspect of your business and life in general. It is very easy to tell when someone is clearly talking a load of rubbish about something. Doing that only results in loosing business. Just be honest about who you are and what you are talking about. Trust is such an important part in any relationship, whether that be a romantic relationship or simply a business relationship. People are much more likely to listen to you and do business with you if they trust you.
Be honest on Twitter. If you come across something that you really like, or that you think your followers will like, then tell them about it. If you find something that you don’t like, then also tell them about it and why you don’t like it. You may find that not all of your followers agree with everything that you say, but ultimately they will value your honest opinion, which is far more important!

Straight To The Point

I am a big fan of writing informative posts that people can read. On Twitter, this is not possible because you have a limited 140 characters to use. This means that you need to get to the point with your Tweets!
This can be a bit of an art form, but the more you Tweet, the better you will get at doing it. You need to provide maximum information with minimum characters. Keep your titles, questions, comments, etc. short and concise, whilst still being easy to read.
Any links that you want to include should be shortened. This is easy to achieve with the many online URL shortener websites that are available online. I myself use bitly.com to shorten all of my links. This is such a great tool that dramatically reduces the amount of space that your links take up in your tweets.

Twitter Backgrounds

Twitter allows you to customise your Twitter account, so you can change all of the colours and you can upload your own background image. Why is this important? Well, by customising your own account, you make yourself stand out from the rest of the crowd. You can make all of your account colours match your website colours. Check out our Twitter account to see how we did this to match our website.
The background image is the most important part of this process. You can include a lot of important information on your background image that your followers might find useful. The most obvious would be to display your website address, but you could also show social network addresses, any products that you are promoting, company logo, etc.

7 Great Tips upon Driving Targeted Traffic to Your Website

1. Offline promotion = Online profits

Whatever you're perplexing to sell online will most expected couple to a relevant or befitting media territory offline. For example, if you're offered bicycles from your website, there will positively be a befitting offline magazine, in which we can place an ad. The role of a ad is not to sell your products, though to get prospects to revisit your website. So your ad need customarily include of a couple of lines, which should work out to be utterly inexpensive.

Your bicycle ad could review similar to this: Looking for a brand brand brand brand brand new bicycle? We batch a outrageous operation during bonus prices as good as can broach inside of 48 hours. To sense some-more revisit a website. www. bicycles4u.com - Your ad could be placed in cycle mags, sports magazines or even inhabitant as good as internal newspapers. Wherever we consider your most expected prospects will demeanour for your products or services offline is a equates to to removing them to go online.

2. Press releases for a interrogation minds

Some people only have to know what's new, what's in as good as what's out. To stay forward in this report age, online as good as offline press releases can suggest newsworthy titbits which could even be picked up by a inhabitant press. If you're only starting out in your online business, rising a brand brand brand brand brand new product or formulating a brand brand brand brand brand new service, people will wish to know about it.

If this is something we haven't finished before, take a demeanour during a small existent press releases by starting to Google as good as typing 'press releases' in to a poke field. Once we get a idea, write out your press release, together with your strike total as good as website URL, afterwards go behind to Google as good as sort in 'press agencies'. Most will assign we for this make use of though your press recover could get limit coverage upon as good as off a internet.

3. Opt-in mailing lists

Opt-in mailing lists can yield a singular of a most in outcome equates to of generating repeat commercial operation from your existent patron base. If your commercial operation have paid for from we once as good as which shopping knowledge was satisfactory, there's a really great possibility they will buy from we again since they certitude you. Capture emails by enlivening your commercial operation to pointer up for your newsletter or alternative promotional information. Alternatively, we could lease an opt-in email list. A delicately worded e-mail summary to people who have voiced an seductiveness in reception serve report about your products or services could lead to additional sales, though be rebuilt to compensate a elegant sum.

4. Getting your summary delivered approach to your customers

For as prolonged as any a singular can remember, approach mail has been a singular of a most in outcome as good as essential forms of offered ever. Many people have done millions from approach mail as good as it's still as successful currently as it was 50 years ago. It's additionally comparatively easy as good as inexpensive. First, emanate a singular page rudimentary sales minute or brochure, detailing we products or services as good as all a benefits. For limit effect, suggest your brand brand brand brand brand new commercial operation a bonus or something for free, when they initial squeeze from your website.

Don't forget, we wish them to revisit your website, so give them some-more than a great reason to do so. Next, lease a targeted mailing list from a creditable list broker. There have been lists available, which cover any fathomable geographic as good as demographic statistic, so whatever commercial operation you're in, there will be a singular that's befitting for you. Send out your 'invitations' as good as wait for for your strike opposite to melt.

5. Referral marketing

This is a elementary plan of referring your own commercial operation to a associated though non-competitive website in lapse for them we do a same for you. Let's contend we have been offered printers. Find a small peculiarity sites which sell printer inks as good as strike a webmaster. Ask them if they would be peaceful to send their trade to we in lapse for we we do a same for them. Most will agree. Between you, we will have to confirm either to arrangement an ad upon any other's site or go for a created recommendation. Either way, it will enlarge a chances of we removing some-more trade to your site since we have been recommended. You could find out most associated websites as good as have countless streams of trade entrance without delay to you.

6. Traffic merchants

Paying a association to send trade to your website is an easy option, so prolonged as a trade is targeted. There have been most companies who specialize in offered traffic. You could contend they have been trade traffickers. They make use of all forms of online promotion to get people to revisit your website as good as customarily pledge a numbers. At around $20 for 10,000 visitors, it positively looks tempting.

Although there have been most merchants to select from, beware a scamsters handling in this market. Some will take your income as good as put your ad upon a Free For All (FFA) website, withdrawal we to understanding with hundreds or thousands of spam emails from everybody as good as their dog perplexing to sell we their products. A great place to begin would be SafePartner.com. They suggest a accumulation of packages as good as have been really affordable. TrafficCircuit.com is an additional association charity this make use of though assign a small more. However, they suggest tracking services, so we can see where a trade comes from. If you're in to stats, we might find this make use of really useful.

7. Affiliate programs

You only can't means to omit associate programs. Getting alternative people to sell your products for a elect is a attempted as good as tested, successful as good as really rewarding exercise. It doesn't work really good if you're offered a service, though it's overwhelmingly overwhelming for changeable your product range. The most befitting partial is, once set up it functions upon involuntary pilot. All we have to do afterwards is guard a success, since affiliates do all a work for you. They publicize your products as good as send a trade to your website to buy them.

Another thing is we do not have to compensate your affiliates until you've been paid. Plus we save upon promotion costs, as good as a increasing wake up to your website helps your poke engine ranking. There's an form of associate module tracking program accessible to lane your sales as good as elect payouts or if we prefer, we can sinecure a association to demeanour after all which side of a commercial operation for you.

Looking for a new way to market your website? You may want to consider creating an account on StumbleUpon. Founded in 2001, this popular website can be used for everything from procrastinating on homework to educating oneself on a variety of topics. In the last few years, business owners have discovered just how helpful the site can be in driving traffic.

Driving Traffic with StumbleUpon:

Looking for a new way to market your website? You may want to consider creating an account on StumbleUpon. Founded in 2001, this popular website can be used for everything from procrastinating on homework to educating oneself on a variety of topics. In the last few years, business owners have discovered just how helpful the site can be in driving traffic. According to analytics firm Statcounter, StumbleUpon recently surpassed Facebook to become the top source of social media traffic in the United States. It is a powerful tool that has wormed its way into the content marketing vernacular.
StumbleUpon takes the form of a search engine, except that, unlike traditional search engines, StumbleUpon provides users with completely random results. The site is purposefully set up this way so that users can discover new websites that they might not ordinarily come across. StumbleUpon alone will not ensure success in content marketing, but it does help to round out a company's social marketing strategy.
Long Shelf Life
One of the main benefits of using StumbleUpon is its ability to drive traffic over a long period of time. While StumbleUpon may not always provide the immediate traffic boost of a well-timed tweet or Facebook status, it does offer valuable leads over time. Months and even years after you've posted a link, other users will continue "stumbling" to your website. This consistent trickling in of StumbleUpon users can provide content with an exceptionally long shelf life.
Engaged Audience
Increased traffic is never a bad thing, but without an enthusiastic audience, all the traffic in the world won't get your business off the ground. StumbleUpon boasts a highly engaged audience, averaging over a billion hits (also known as stumbles) every month. What's more, the site's 20 million users are truly interested in exploring a variety of websites and learning about new opportunities. This translates into a huge pool of readers eager to hear what you have to say.

Small businesses can also take advantage of targeted areas on StumbleUpon. While users do have the option to stumble across any and every topic imaginable, many choose to focus their searches in narrower niche areas. Examples of StumbleUpon categories include accounting, music, homeschooling, P2P, agriculture and vintage cars, to name a few. The users who choose to search within these niches are highly engaged, and thus, more likely to spend extra time at your website.

The Importance of Compelling Content
As great as StumbleUpon can be for small business owners, there is one distinct disadvantage: if your content lacks a compelling message, users may only give it a passing glance before stumbling on to the next page. It takes truly well-written content to convince an audience to spend any length of time at your website. If your page is poorly written, stuffed with keywords or simply boring, you will not end up getting very much traffic from StumbleUpon users. On the other hand, if your content is interesting and informative, users just might decide to pass it on to friends. This word-of-mouth can do wonders for your online presence.

Build a Following
In addition to following certain niche areas, StumbleUpon users also enjoy following other users with interesting website recommendations. To build a following, simply create an account and begin suggesting links that you believe will help other users access valuable information. You can throw the link to your own website in as well, although it is best to avoid spamming users with excessive personal links. If you work at building up an online community centered around your niche, you'll quickly be rewarded with impressive gains in website traffic. Remember, StumbleUpon is a tool, so your success depends on how you decide to use that tool.

Website Traffic Metrics You Need to Know

Small businesses may benefit greatly from online marketing, but being great at your business and understanding online marketing are two entirely different things. Whether you are using a website, a blog, or online store, understanding these traffic metrics will enable you to improve your online presence and increase sales.

Sessions / Visits
This is the number of times that a browser or user accesses your website and looks around. A single user could result in multiple visits, so do not confuse this with “unique visitors.” The continuous activity of a user for a single session constitutes a visit. However the industry standard is that when a user stops their activity on a site for longer than 30 minutes, then a new session or visit is created. For this reason, keeping track of visits isn’t necessary the best metric to fall in love with. Theoretically, five visitors could be responsible for 500 visits to any site.
Unique Visitors
A unique visitor is one user, person, or IP address (browser). Unique visitors are absolute, meaning no matter how many times that same user or visitor visits a website, they will be counted as one unique visitor.
Visitors are also referred to as "New" and "Returning." New visitors are the users that visited your site for the very first time. Returning visitors are users that have visited your site before and are simply returning for more information or activity. Both types of visitors are good for business because one is your customer base and the other brings in fresh new eyes on your site.
Page Views
Page views are the number of times that a webpage is viewed by a visitor. During one session, one visitor may read three different pages on your website. This will count as three page views on the site.
You may track how many page views each specific page gets. This is valuable information. If you have five pages in addition to your home page, and one gets substantially more page views, you will want to analyze why it is so popular. Perhaps it has a catchy title. Then, incorporate that information into additional pages.
Time on Page
This refers to how much me a visitor spends on a page. One page view could result in five seconds or five minutes on the page. The more time people spend on a page, the more engaged and interested they are, in general.
Keep in mind how long it will take an average visitor to read your page. If it should take a minute, and people are leaving after twenty seconds, you should improve the content on that page. On the other hand, if people are spending a minute or more on that page, it likely offers good quality as is.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rates measure the rate in which a visitor lands on one of your pages, and then decide to leave. Common sense says if a visitor isn’t engaged enough to stay on your website, it usually means that your site would have a high overall bounce rate. The higher the bounce rate, the less engaging or interesting your website is. Of course, having a high bounce rate doesn’t always mean that your site lacks a good user experience. It could also mean that you have a high number of links that are sending visitors away from your site.
Referrers
Referrers send people to your website. Perhaps a blogger linked to you in a post; this may show up in your website's analytics. The blogger's web address will show, and you may click back to the blog post in which you were mentioned.
A referrer is anybody or anything that sends people to your website. It is beneficial to make contact or return the favor if somebody is sending you traffic. If you website includes a blog, you may mention them in it. If they have blog, you may read some posts and comment, if appropriate. At least, you may wish to send them a note saying, "thank you." Networking and making contact with people who like your business will never hurt.

5 SEO Tips for Your Online Store

Setting up and running an eCommerce site is hard enough, but getting traffic to it and making sales is even harder. Here are some SEO tips to help maximize the search engine traffic to your online store.

1. Optimize your meta tags.

Label each of your pages with a unique title and description – the search engines love it. You can find the meta tags in the <head> section of your HTML code. Most eCommerce software come with built-in meta tag generators, and some allow you to customize each page. The title tag is still a major factor in search engine optimization, but Google and Bing have both acknowledged that meta descriptions and keywords are no longer a part of their ranking algorithm.
Example: <title>Search Engine Submission & Optimization – AddMe.com</title>
Keep in mind though - Google sometimes displays the description within their search results. Having a good, enticing description could potentially attract more clicks to your listing.

2. Optimize your URLs.

URL structure is still a factor of SEO, so be sure to set them up properly. Use a few descriptive keywords in your URLs, but avoid URLs that are too long. Use hyphens to separate keywords, and avoid underscores and symbols.
Example: http://www.addme.com/content-writing-service.htm
You’ll need some technical knowledge to implement URL rewriting as most CMS software do not do this by default. However, most current CMS and eCommerce software offer this feature as an option when setting up a website.

3. Add some “meat” to your pages.

Unless you’re the only one on the Internet selling what you sell, you have competition. You need to stand out from the crowd by offering some unique images and textual content. By adding some text to your category and product pages, you’re not only giving the search engines more content to index, but providing more information to visitors.
In addition to adding a bit of “meat” to your product pages, you should also consider adding a blog to your eCommerce site. As you already know, content is king, and a blog is a smart way to add more relevant content to your site.

4. Make sure your website loads quickly.

A slow website is one of the quickest ways to lose a customer. No one wants to wait for a page to load, especially with the connection speeds we have available today. Make sure your website server is fast enough to handle all the traffic and resources. Page load times not only affect user experience, but also plays a role in search engine optimization.

5. Make use of internal links.

External links are great, but internal links also matter for SEO. Whenever you get a chance to link to a product page, you should do it. Of course, internal linking should be done in moderation. Use common sense and don’t go overboard with linking to every keyword you come across. Diversify your anchor text to various pages and make it look natural. Your blog is a good way to create new links by making announcements of new products, promoting popular items, or showcasing your seasonal products.

How to Make Money with Facebook or Twitter

Social networking giant Facebook has now become a new noun in the modern lexicon, along with the verbs Tweet and Google. Zuckerberg’s monster site, which has transformed the global culture with its sprawling social network, has taken aspects of MySpace, Twitter and Google along the way and united them in a single system which has become a new standard of Web 2.0. Although Facebook is well known for its photo and video sharing functions, status updates, social games, smartphone check-ins, and chat and messaging features, few have tapped into the social networking site’s ability to make money.

The difference between Facebook and Twitter is that the former is a closed system, whereas the latter is an open one. In other words, Facebook users can access and follow their friends’ profiles, while Twitter users can search the entire network freely and follow anyone they choose. This makes the money making strategies associated with Facebook very different from those of businesses based in Twitter. Here are some ideas that can help you monetize your Facebook account.

UTILIZE THE FACEBOOK LIKE BUTTON

First and foremost, the “Like” button is central to Facebook’s network. Ever since Facebook began littering the Internet with these buttons, it has become the easiest way to quickly share sites with your friends, far more convenient than the older, more cumbersome method of copying and pasting a link to your status update box. Businesses have caught wind of the popularity of the Like button, and have used it everywhere – on product pages and promotions, in an effort to tap into its viral marketing potential. If you have a company website, put this button everywhere – once a single user clicks it, you get free exposure to all of that user’s friends, who may then spread it to others, much like Twitter’s “re-tweet” function.

CREATE A FACEBOOK BUSINESS PAGE

Next, set up a Business Page. These pages can be accessed by Facebook users either through Facebook search or through a link from your company website. Business Pages can mirror your company website, in a more streamlined, social manner. Basic company and product information should be on your business page, but the page’s main purpose is to provide a constant stream of information and product updates to followers. Update the page frequently, and with limited-time discounts not offered on your company website, to give users an incentive to “Like” and follow your page. Games such as raffles, after a certain amount of users have started following your page, can also be fun – award a single random follower a prize each month.

SELL ON FACEBOOK MARKETPLACE

Facebook’s often overlooked Marketplace, which functions like a socially connected version of eBay, can also be connected to your business page. If you want to open a small online store, this can be a good option – especially if you want to take advantage of the viral marketing that social networking sites can provide. Users can search Marketplace for all sorts of products, but priority is given first to the users’ friends and mutual friends, who are more trusted than anonymous sellers and buyers. Results are also arranged geographically, giving it far more coverage than eBay or Amazon. In addition, Facebook’s convenient messaging system is far faster than conventional online retailers, and small businesses can use PayPal instead of more expensive credit and debit card processors.

These are just some ideas to help you get started. If you’re thinking of starting an online business of getting your existing one connected to the “social network”, then Facebook is an excellent place to begin.

Save and Make Money in 2013 a Few Tips

 

A new year will soon be upon us and for the shrewder minds amongst us this means making financial preparations. Considering Great Britain has only just recently been gripped by recession and economic instability, ensuring we’re financially prepared for the upcoming year is more important than ever. This is especially so as financial analysts have predicted a continuation – and even perhaps worsening – of the Eurozone crisis in 2013, the effects of which will no doubt make its way to the United Kingdom.

 

Start Planning

The first and most obvious choice is to actually start planning financially for the upcoming year. Many of us live in the present and even past so much that we forget to prepare for the future, and when we do prepare for the future, it isn’t financial preparations that are made.

Start saving if your job isn’t too secure and work on clearing out debts while you have the money. The last thing you want to be doing is starting the New Year in an uncomfortable financial situation.

 

Seek Tax Refunds!

2012 brought news with it that thousands of us were ignoring the most beneficial element of our taxes: tax refunds. It emerged that large numbers of businessmen and women were losing out on significant bits of money through a failure to claim back money owed to them by the HMRC.

In cases where the liability for tax is less than the amount in taxes paid you should be owed money back by the HMRC. For example, if you work in construction and have to travel to temporary sites using your own vehicle you will probably be owed a tax refund of around a staggering £2500. Another example is if you own a commercial property, you can offset some of your expenditure for tax purposes. Alterations, extensions and upgrades made to the building can be claimed as tax purposes and included in refunds.

This may seem a tad confusing but there are specialist companies out there, such as RIFT Tax Refund that work out if you’re owed any money through tax refunds.

 

Keep a Pension

Of the most important aspects of financial planning is organising your pension to ensure you get the most out of it for when you retire. A pension obviously holds major tax benefits as it is exempt from capital gains tax.

It is thus the most convenient and financially shrewd way of keeping money to one side and if you haven’t already been keeping one, now’s the time to do so.

 

Invest

Although the economy might not be the most fluid at the moment it is never a bad time to invest; so long as it is done wisely and intelligently.

Do a vigorous amount of research before throwing your money around anywhere, for starters.

A good avenue to invest in is silver, with prices having shot up to over £20 an ounce.

Google to scan Chrome extensions, bans auto-install

Google has taken two steps to prevent its Chrome browser becoming an attack vector for malware that runs as extensions to the browser.

 

Like many other browsers, Chrome allows users to install “extensions”, apps that add functionality. Google even runs the “Chrome Web Store” to promote extensions.

 

Security outfit Webroot recently pointed out that some of the extensions in the store are illegitimate, data-sucking privacy invaders that trick users with offers to do things like change the colour of Facebook and then suck out all their data.

How to make money trading

How to make money trading? I guess all of us who got fascinated by the fact that one can live trading securities asked ourselves and others the question. It sometimes seems that making profits in financial markets has become a phenomenon of ‘Loch Ness monster’ – everybody has heard about it, but who has really seen it. In the same fashion you have heard that it is possible to make money trading, but have not heard who has done it. There are quite a few people who live on the money they make trading stocks, futures and Forex. Read the series of ‘Market Wizards’ by Jack Schwager to learn about the people and how they did it. Although, I have had mixed results in my trading career I can say that I have made more than I lost trading Forex. In the post I want to share with you some key elements that you should deal with before you can become profitable. Let me start.

Have an edge

What does that mean? You should notice some tendencies in the market you trade that happen regularly and they help you to make more money than to lose. There are some tendencies that happen from time to time and you can sometimes make money trading them, but in the long run you will lose more. Take time to find and test those ones that give you more profits than losses. Then form strict rules for trading them and start to trade. An edge can be trading multi months range breakouts, or trading chart patterns or simply selling at resistance and buying at support. It is important though that you test the tendency that seems to be working and see if it works long term.

Have your own investing philosophy

Various investors see markets from different angles and they are still able to make money having different perspectives on what moves this or that specific financial market. You might be long term, short term investor or even day trader with a unique approach towards markets and be very successful. What type of investor you are going to be depends on your personality, needs, risk tolerance and available capital. The more risk averse you are the longer your time frames for investing will be. If you are willing to take significant risks you will probably be a short term trader (even a day trader).

Have a plan and follow it

By having a plan I mean knowing what triggers a tradable situation, entry levels (and ways to implement it), trade size, stop loss and take profit orders. Having no plan means you do not know or understand what you are doing. When you sit down to look at your charts or analyze securities searching for possible trading opportunities you have to know what you are looking for. Is it a breakout, bounce off support or resistance level, touch of a moving average, overbought/oversold situation or market’s reaction to some fundamental news. You have to know what you do in each situation: trade, wait or do nothing at all.

Wait for the best opportunities

A lot of traders lose money, because they trade too much by taking average opportunities that’s why they have too many bad or average trades. Waiting for those excellent opportunities provides you with an edge against the crowd. You should learn to skip mediocre trades till you start noticing the best ones. Impatience is one of the top enemies that a trader may have. It causes him to overtrade and miss golden opportunities. When those do finally come most trades are short of capital and cannot take advantage of them. You have to ask yourself whether you are in this business for thrilling emotions or for making money. If it is thrills you are after then better go to casinos. If it is money you are after learn to be patient and analytic while searching for patterns that do work.

Understand what moves securities you are trading

Why does a stock go up dramatically or plunges down? Why does Euro rise against US dollar or falls? What causes gold to rise sharply and then collapse? Some of these are fundamental questions and you can find clear answers to them. In case of stocks most probable cause would be earnings, in case of currencies it would be monetary policies of Central banks, in case of gold it would probably be inflation. These could be main ones, but not the only ones. In each situation you will have to dig to find the underlying conditions pushing this or that market up or down. If you look at a recent collapse in Google stock (18^th of October, 2012) you will find out that it was caused by worse than expected earnings. The stock plunged around 80 bucks in 10 minutes. In the same fashion ECB president Mario Draghi announced that he was going to do whatever it takes to save Euro (on the 25^th of July, 2012) and Euro bounced off its yearly lows and downward trend changed to upward one. I could go and on, but it is better that you do your own analysis and find what market conditions causes securities to move sharply.

 

 

Respect market but do not be afraid of it

Respect and fear are the opposites and they produce absolutely different results in trading. Fear blinds you and takes away your ability to make intelligent decisions. Respecting market enables you to always be on alert and protective, but also in the attacking mode when opportunities arise. Although you know that in this game you can never relax you can never base your decisions on fear. If you are afraid to execute trades when your system gives you a signal you will never be successful. Optimism and faith in what you do is an absolute must in any activity, especially in trading. Nobody pays you a stable salary here. Everything you make in the markets you do it by taking risks. You have to be fearless in following your system. It does not mean careless. No, fearless!

Use opportunities to the fullest when you are right and cut losses when you are wrong

When you are patient and finally opportunities do come you have to take full advantage of them. Take much bigger positions then, than you usually do in average opportunities. It maybe a trade that fulfills all possible requirements with both technical and fundamental data in place or some other criteria that you follow. When the best opportunities arise you can increase your account by fifty or even one hundred percent if you use those situations to the fullest. It often happens when some tendency becomes clear. I have already mentioned a few of those. When markets go sideways it is very difficult to make money. Therefore, you should not risk much in those kind of situations. However, when you see a clear tendency developing take advantage of that and take a bigger position. What happens if you find out that you were wrong? You have your insurance – stop loss orders. That’s what you should always have. When you see that you are wrong cut your losses and get out of the market. If you are able to fully use one or two of those best opportunities per year you will be a very, very, very successful trader.

Have an open mind

Markets change. Some strategies that used to work no longer do now. However, people remain the same and they are still controlled by their emotions of fear and greed in trading. Breakouts may not be working as well as they used to, but they are other ways and strategies that you can apply and be very successful. Be ready to change something that used to work, but no longer works. Learn, change, adapt! Always ask why happens what happens. Search for reasons behind any move. In this way you will develop your unique approach towards markets. And this will enable you to make consistent money trading.

Mixing Genres and Mediums To Make More Money

 

What do you think of when you think of comic books? Do you think of it as good writing, or good artwork? The truth of the matter is that (depending on the comic of course!) it's both. On rare occasions a comic creator is both the artist and the writer but in most cases you have different people doing the writing and the artwork--they are pooling their talents together to make something better than either one could make on their own. Some people have called this the 1 plus 1 equals 3 concept--I call it good teamwork, smart business and an overall good idea.

It's true that the creative process and the business process are very different things, but I never understood why people can't be creative when it comes to business--so long as it proves fruitful and delivers something of value. Some people appreciate writing, others appreciate art. Others appreciate poetry, others music. I've worked with a lot of poets in my line of work and one in particular comes to mind. I'll call him Mike. Sally was a musician who never wrote lyrics. She was very instrumental and could make some very catchy tunes. What happens when you mix poetry with instrumentals? You get songs. And that's what these two did. They put up a website that both of their already established fan bases could go to and the partnership did very well as both sides of the coin gained momentum from a fan base that they otherwise wouldn't have had exposure to.

Of course this isn't the only example that comes to mind. I knew a young lady who wrote science fiction stories who had a brother who was a very good science fiction artist. They toyed with the idea of creating a graphic novel series but found that they couldn't work together properly on a joint creative effort--but they did find a great middle ground--her brother started to illustrate her short stories. A few science fiction pictures inside the text can make a world of difference for the more visually inclined--and how many times do you hear that people would like to know the story behind a piece of art? The combination did very well.

In marketing it is very important to be specific in what you are offering--like we've talked about previously--if your market is everyone, your market is no one. You have to have what you are doing very clearly defined. But it is also a very good strategy to mix fan bases of different kinds by creating a product that several different groups could appreciate.
There is always something to be gained with a good partnership. People are finding out now perhaps more than ever that we can all go much farther forward together than separately. And good team work means that everyone brings something valuable to the table. When trying to add value to the lives of your readers by putting out a good product--exploring different means of giving them content is very important. And mixing genres of delivery has the potential to yield rewards that might be impossible to achieve through a single medium.

In the early 1900's the ice cream man and the waffle man at a fair mixed their products together to create the ice cream cone--think of how working together benefited all of us in that situation.

In the world of the 21st century, the equilibrium is much easier to attain. With the right combination everyone benefits--the audience, and the creators. And when done properly, there is no downside at all.

The Writer's Reputation More Valuable Than Money

Unless you have lived under a rock, you probably have known some people who have said some things that they were intending to do that they didn't do. Some people might have promised things they never delivered, and some might have made committments that they never upheld. I'm sure that if you knew those people over a long period of time, after awhile, you stopped listening to what they said they were going to do and eventually their words or promises became meaningless.

At the same time, there are probably people in your life that who say they are going to do things...and then actually do them. People who keep their promises, people whose words are often or always backed up with actions to go with them. Odds are, these are the people in your life that you depend on, rely on, keep going back to and trust.

The simple word for both of these concepts is reputation. Reputation is probably the single most important thing when it comes to someone making their way through the world--and a writer's reputation is VERY essential to his or her success and it is a point that is far too often overlooked.

There is an old beleif that creative types and business don't coexist very well. There is a reason for that--a large number of creative types have proven to hold erratic schedules, show up late for appointments and back out of things last minute. Couple this in a world of the instant gratification culture and it becomes epidemic. I'm sure all of you have seen writers who were talking about a book they were going to write for 5 years that never got written. Writers who started blogs they only posted on once, websites they never updated, went to only one open-mic reading and never went back, started untold numbers of projects that never got finished...but then wondered why it was so hard to "make" it as a writer.

In the fast paced world it makes a great deal of sense that people do not want to spend a lot of time on what they consider to be a project that is dead in the water. Afterall, most people have very busy schedules with the average work-week being well over 40 hours plus family committments, and more. But an unfortunate side effect of starting things that are given up on quickly is that the writer does the exact opposite of what they should be doing while cultivating a reputation. Instead of making a reputatoin for being consistent and reliable with their writing--they inadvertantly give themselves a reptuation for being flakey, inconsistent and all talk with no walk. This can be DEVESTATING to a potential writer's career.

Rule number 1 that all writers should follow: (truthfully everyone should follow this) never announce or say you are going to do something you don't actually do. Actions should always back up your words. It's that simple--words are our greatest resource--our greatest tool. And those tools become rusty when we don't take care with them.

Rule number 2 that all writers should follow: be patient. Nothing yeilds results immediatly (or almost nothing does) and anything worth having is worth fighting for. If things came easy we wouldn't celebrate the hard earned success.

Rule number 3 that all writers should follow: be consistent. Write a lot about your topic, write a lot of poetry, write a lot of essays or stories. Whatever it is you do, do it consitently, and let your audience get used to seeing and expecting a lot from you. (That is what keeps them coming back.

Thousands and thousands of new publicatins, magazines, anthologies open up for submissions ever year. Close to 90% of the announced projects never see publication. So it's no wonder that it takes people a little bit of time to start to trust new blogs, websites, authors to be reliable and as something worth their time to keep coming back to. But once you have broken through the trust barrier and proven to be something they can keep coming back to--then you have build up a good reputation in the eyes of your readers. And once the reputation is established, selling products, books, eBooks, CD's and more becomes much, much easier. People will book you for interviews, performances, readings and more if they know they can depend on you. No one wants to shell out money to what they can't depend on--but they will give money for something they can trust.

A reputation is more valuable than money--because a good reputation can LEAD to money. Sometimes, a great deal of it.

So Where Does The Money Come From

It's very obvious that the biggest question on most writer's minds is how can they turn their writing into more money. But one thing I am constantly surprised at is how authors tend to not be aware of all the different ways that they can manipulate their writing to be able to monetize it. So many tend to rely heavily on one method--and if that method doesn't produce the results they like, they get discourage--or worse, give up.

There is of course, no reason to give up because the possibilities are literally endless. So, where does the money come from? I'll get right to the point. Quite simply put, here are 6 primary ways that authors of all kinds and all genres make money from their writing.

Sales:

Everyone knows this one. You put your writing into some kind of product--most famously a book, a booklet, a novella, a chapbook, or even audio files, CD's, comic books or more. But the idea is some physical medium (or even a digital equivalent) that can be actively sold.

Donations:

In some cases one of the best things an author can do is give away their writing for free. It's a lot harder to sell something people have no idea of than to get people to buy things that they are already familiar with. There are plenty of people out there who have quarterly e-mags, publications, serializations of novels and post writing on blogs and free websites. It's a good way to build up a large audience. However, some of these authors also put a paypal donation button the website--and people donate. They like the free material and want to support the authors who are generous enough to give their work away for free. They also feel less pressure.

Fundraisers:

Being creative can cost money. People know this--in fact it is common knowledge that creative types are always broke. But creative types still produce so much worthwhile material that people like. And sometimes, if you have a reputation for good work, people are willing to help you out with your expenses. Thanks to platforms like indiegogo, authors can entice money for projects by offering incentives in return.

Affiliate Marketing:

This is another way to make money while making all your content to your readers absolutely free. If web traffic is high enough, or your following is large--you can become an affiliate to product producers related to your topics. I have seen travel writers become affiliates with airlines selling tickets through their blog or website. They get a cut of all sales--the airlines are happy, the customers are happy and the author is happy. This also works for book reviewers, dvd and cd reviewers, and much, much more.

Events:

So many writers overlook the lucrative value of live events. Think of music concerts and how much they can pull in for bands. Authors of all kinds can set up events that result in monetary gain either from sales of books and products or ticket prices to hear readings--or both! (Especially if one offers food at the events!) There are ways to get spots for events for free or set up deals with local businesses who are aiming to fatten their clientele by bringing in interesting events. Coffee shops to local books stores, to restaurants to bars. (Ive even seen poetry readings at Tattoo Parlors!)

Advertising:

Like affiliate marketing this works well when your following is large. People pay you advertising money for you to talk bout their products or put banner ads on your website, in your book/magazine, etc etc. Instead of your share being based on sales like with affiliate marketing--this is based simply on the sale of advertising space to individuals or companies.

Not all of these methods will work well for every author type--as there are some such as affiliate marketing that work better for how-to authors and ticket sales tend to work better for entertainment authors/poets/songwriters/etc. But the best authors in the 21st century (by best I mean those who have the most business savvy, not necessarily the best in quality) tend to use a combination of these six methods to produce maximum value for their work. I have found in my experience that once authors tend to see these six ways clearly, their creative energies take a giant boost and they come up with all sorts of ideas never thought of before. Writers are typically creative, right? Well then take solace in the fact that making money in the 21st century with writing is all about being creative.