Interactive features-pools, feedback,discussion groups, forms, chat

Posted on 11:21 | | In

     This is one of the most popular types of sites for kids, teens, and young adults because they get to give their opinions (which many kids don't get to do enough of at home, according to them) and they get to talk to others.
     So, if you want to run this kind of site, bear your target market in mind. It's worth paying a few bucks to a freelance writer or graphic artist to come up with fun games that are constantly changing, or new pools, since people will come back time and again to give their opinions. And don't forget surveys-people love to take surveys.

Interviews

Posted on 11:13 | | In

     This is a category you might want to get a freelance writer for. Go to Elance.com and browse the profiles of service providers to see who does interviews, then talk to them. Many freelancers specialize in celebrity interviews, and that's what you want.

Reviews of movies, books, music

Posted on 10:59 | | In

     This is perhaps the easiest category to get content for. If you have friends who are movie, book, or music fans, they'll probably write reviews for free just for the thrill of seeing their stuff on a site.
     Also, this is a never-ending source of content, since there are always new movies, books and music coming out. Contrast that with dog breeds-once you've written everything there is to say about every known breed, you have to wait for them to come up with a new breed!
     If you want to have some fun, you can review movies yourself. And actually, if you're running your Google AdSense site as a business, you may even be able to deduct the cost of movie tickets from your taxes. Check with a tax consultant to make sure, though.
     Music is easy, too, especially if you live in a town that has lots of live music or festivals. If not, you can buy used Cd's online, listen, and review. In fact, you could even hire a high-school kid to do this, but check their writing skills first.
     Books are a little harder, since they take more time to review and cost more than Cd's and movie tickets.
However, you can paraphrase what others have said if you're clever and don't violate copyright.

Conglomerating the best content

Posted on 10:44 | | In

     If you can make your site into the ultimate content resource on issues related to your topic, I guarantee you you'll attract and retain a loyal audience. your site will become known as a The place for anyone who wants information on your subject. For example, Harry Knowles has made aintitcoolnews.com into the site for movie reviews and advance spoilers.
     Since you're the expert on your topic, you can evaluate sites and other resources (ezines, directories, books, offline publications) and sniff out the best ones to list along with your rating and opinions.
     This sort of content is like the old book reports you used to have to write for school. Read up thoroughly on your subjcts, then hit the high points of a topic. or, consider writing a summary of three separate article that have the same theme.

Political Opinion and News Stories

Posted on 07:21 | | In

    Political Opinion
 Using political opinion on your site can be tricky. People are deeply divided these days and have strong opinions. If you do run a political site, You'll probably want to carve out your own niche. Even then, be prepared for flamers from very different view points.
     On the other hand, if you can manage to run a site that actually features a somewhat well-mannered debate, you'll have a huge hit on your hands. Be prepared to moderate this type of site.

News Stories
     Your site can become a news source for the latest developments and happenings in certain niche area by providing timely news on topics of interest to your readers.
I'm not saying you can be the next CNN or MS-NBC, because that takes building a huge operation. But what you can be is, for example, the CNN of the karate world, or the ABS-News of the bonsai tree hobbyists.
     What you'll want to do is create a separate section of your site to deal with industry news. Or, devote an entire site to news updates. There are many ways of presenting news:

  • As a feature article
  • As short news clips, with a link to the full story
  • As news stories, where each item is explained at length.
     However you decide present the news, make sure you give it your own personal style. Check out salon.com.
Has its own style, doesn't it? Now look at drudge report.com/ That's another style. Make yours reader, and timely. Old news ain't no news at all, it's history! So how do you get news? By:

  • Subscribe to ezines on your subject or topic
  • Sign up for e-mail news delivery services
  • Register to get regular press releases n your topic
  • Surf the web for new news items
  • Get news from newspapers, magazines and books
  • Go to conferences, workshops or seminars and write about what yous see and who you talk to.

Can you use reprints?

Posted on 09:44 | | In

          Reprint articles written by others, but you must always obtain permission. All work, from the moment it is written, is copyright and owned by the author, whether it is marked with a copyright symbol or not. Content is not free. you can, however, make reprints interesting and personalised by putting your own 'spin' on the content.
Write an introduction to the subject, or comment on the author's opinions or conclusions.
Take care to avoid 'editing' the original article without the author's permission. Avoid articles that have been reprinted many times before on other websites and electronic publications.

To Get Content

Posted on 09:44 | | In

  1. Offer to pay guest authors for their work. A guest author could be someone you found on your bulletin board who happens to write well.
  2. Exchange articles with the guest author's site. Your site visitors benefit by providing them with another point of view. And you might just gain some new regular visitors from your guest author's site!
  3. Make sure you get exclusivity. When someone writes for you, make sure they won't submit that same article to dozens of other websites and newsletters. When your site publishes exclusive content, you have opportunities for syndication in other publications, online and off, and you gain a lot of reader loyalty. The key phrase in a contract with a writer is that you're buying all rights, Including electronic.

Full-length Feature Articles

Posted on 05:18 | | In

This is the most common and in many people's opinion one of the best forms of content. Depending on what your site is like, the articles could be long or brief, formal or chatty, technical or entertaining.
     Here are some tips:
  • Keep it short. While there aren't any hard and fast rules, you should keep these articles below 1200 words. If they are longer, make them into multi-part features. People hate to have to scroll down a lot.
  • Articles should be relevant to your site.
  • Articles ought to educate, entertain or inform.
                  Don't overwhelm people: stick to one or two ideas.
  • refrain from rehashing an article you've read somewhere else. By publishing something that's new, you up the value and credibility of your site.

Editorials

Posted on 10:47 | | In

Editorials are the opinion of someone who's seen as an expert in the field--(either you a guest contributor).
This makes good content because people like to respond to it, either by agreeing with or opposing the writer. This can make for an exciting page, and you'll probably have to moderate it.
     Give your people a way to make their views known, put up a bulletin board or guest book on your site.people will come back to read other responses to their comments. And you can use this feedback from your audience by incorporating it into a follow up article in the future.
     For instance, is everybody complaining about a new government travel policy? Do an article on it, since clearly that's something people are talking about so they'll want to read about it.

What Kind of content should I put up?

Posted on 23:52 | | In

     Any kind you want, of course, since we're talking about the Internet. But seriously, you'll want to give this topic some consideration, since there's more interest in some topics than others.
     You know the people who are your audience, since ideally you're talking about something you know about. For instance, if you're talking about Ultimate Frisbee, it's because you play it. So you know what other Ultimate people are like, and what they want to know and what they find entertaining.
     Once you know that, you can decide about which types of content will best serve their needs and how to go about finding or creating it. Here are some general categories to get you started with your brainstorming:

  • Editorials
  • Feature articles
  • Political Opinion
  • News stories
  • Art galleries
  • A conglomeration of the best content
  • Reviews of movies, books, music
  • Interviews
  • Interactive features-polls,feedback, discussion groups, forums, chat.

Regular Updates Are Critical To your site

Posted on 23:51 | | In

     Nothing is deader than a website that looks like some body's forgotten about it. Regularly updating or modifying your site content gives you a big advantage over the competition. Web surfers will keep on coming back to your site if they notice that there's always something new to see, learn, or enjoy each time.

Discipline is key

Posted on 00:09 | | In

To create a content-rich website, you need to hone your focus and your self-discipline. I don't have to tell you how incredibly easy it is to waste hours, even days, just surfing around the web from one site to another. You can't let yourself get distracted like that or you won't accomplish anything. Start with setting a limit to surfing for fun so that you limit your searches to sites and resources that are relate very directly to your site's subject.
     Discipline also applies to creating creation.
Successful writers can't afford to wait for inspiration to strike before starting work. Instead, they develop a writing schedule for themselves and they stick with it like it was their Jobs-since it is. As one famous writer said, "I write when i feel like it. and every morning at 9am, I make sure I feel like it." Schedule a time for yourself to sit down at your desk and write.
     And you'll need to develop another schedule for when to add content to your website, and follow that schedule religiously. Make a commitment to yourself and follow through with it.
     And remember if you just simply can't write, or you find yourself making too many excuses not to write content, just hire someone.
     Go to Elance.com and post a project to write 20 articles of 300-600 words each for $5 to $10 each. You'll find someone.

How Do I Build One?

Posted on 10:56 | | In

     I know the notion of creating your very own content-rich website might be a little intimidating, but you can do it. It's not hare. You don't have to be a good write to have good content on your site. In fact, you don't have to be a writer at all. There are plenty of successful people who make a lot of money from Google Ad Sense and they don't write a word of that content. We'll talk more about that later, but you can hire writers, or have guest writers it's not hard.
     Anyone can create a content-rich website by following a few key points:
  • Have some discipline-maintain your site.
  • Update that site often. Having a schedule is best.
  • Be able to beg, borrow, or commission content.
     Note: The easiest way of creating an html website is using a WYSIYUG (what you see is what you get) html editor. Some of the most popular ones are Front page and Dreaweaver but they are very expensive.

What are content-Rich Sites and Why Have One?

Posted on 11:01 | | In

     A content-rich site is one that has lots of informative articles up at it, usually centered around a theme. Most sites can't quite pull off being Wikipedia, so they specialize. For instance, you could do a site for dog owners. Possible articles on that site would cover:

  • How to figure to what kind of dog you want
  • where to get a dog
  • How to deal with a puppy 
  • Life stages of a dog 
  • House-training puppies
  • Dog training 
  • What to feed dogs
  • Whether to get more than one dog
  • How to socialize dogs with other dogs and with cats
  • Exercise needs of dogs
  • Training dogs to do tricks
  • Treating fleas 
  • Common dog ailments and when to go to the vet
  • Dog nutrition 
  • Taking your dog on a trip
  • Getting a pet sitter or boarding your dog if you don't take him on a trip
The articles you'll want to have on your site should be short enough so that someone can read them in about 5 minutes. This means you want to stick to articles of 250 to 750 words, with 300 to 600 words optimal. To give you an idea, a single page in a published novel has about 300 words.
          Of course, your real purpose in putting up all these nice little short articles and changing them out frequently is not to just put information out into the word. It is to have a site that people will come back to so that they will see the Google Ad Sense ads, and click on them, and then you will get checks in the mail.
           That's a key point, so I'm going to repeat it:

           The purpose of having a content-rich website is to attract people to it, again and again, so that they will see the ads and click on them.

           You might think it's lots of cool graphics and colors that make a site attractive to a visitor, but it's really the content. In order to make money from Google Ad Sense, you need to grasp that concept. Believe me, you could run a wonderful advertising campaign and develop all sorts of viral marketing tools and attractive affiliate programs.
           But unless your website is content-rich, the traffic spikes that you get for your efforts will only be temporary. The very best way to attract and retain an online audience is to provide content that's useful, valuable, informative, educational or just downright funny as hell or entertaining in some way.
            What does a content-rich website look like? Here are a few examples.




Building Content-Rich Sites

Posted on 06:37 | | In

First off, why would you want to build content-rich websites? The short answer is "Because it keeps people on your site for awhile, it makes them come back, and they tell their friends about that site."
                 But why? Well, for one thing, people will stay on a content-rich site because it takes awhile to read an article or two. Thus, while they're reading the material, their peripheral vision (off to the sides) notices little ads that happen to surround that articles.

                  And if people start to realize that a certain site has good content that they like, and in particulat, different content that constantly changes and is updated, then they'll check back to see what's new.
                  The worst thing in the world to have is a stagnant website that never changes. people will visit it exactly twice-the first time to check it out, and the second one to see what's changed-and when they find out it hasn't changed, they most likely won't come back. Ever.


What Kinds of Ads Will I Get On My Site?

Posted on 00:46 | | In

Obviously, there are some kinds of ads you wouldn't want to have on your site, such as pornographic ones or ads for sleazy multi-level marketing schemes that scream "Make $30,000 a month just for watching TV!" in big red letters.
         Well, you can put your mind at ease. Google has an ad review process that checks the ads they send to your site. This process ensures that the ads that you serve up are family-friendly and that they comply with Google's strict editorial guidelines.

Google's ad-screening team combines sensitive language filters, input from site owners like you,  and a team of linguists with good old common sense to filter out ads that could be inappropriate for your content. And if that's not enough, you have to capability to block competitive ads and choose your own default ads. That's another nice feature: Google kind of lets you run your own show.






Now, another thing you might be concerned about is whether the ads will clash with the look, feel, and colors scheme you've got going with your site. Don't worry. You can customize the appearance of ads and choose from a wide range of colors and templates. Same thing goes for your search results page. And reports are customizable, too. Google provides flexible reporting tools that allow you to group your pages any which way you want.
             That means you can view your results by URL, domain, ad type, category and more so that you can figure out where your earnings are coming from.



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