How Can I Make Money With My Computer?

What do you do with your computer? If you are like most people you use it to send emails to friends and family members, perhaps read the news, look up favorite recipes, or watch a video or two. While most use the computer for things “such as these”, others are using their computer to make some serious dollars. We would like to introduce to you five ways that people are making money online:

IDEA #1) Why not write for Web Logs…Blogs for short. Writing for some of the more established blogs is one of the easiest ways that you can make money online. You can make between $5 and $100 for each article you write, and you won’t even need to have your own web site. Exactly how much money you will make depends on various things, but here are a few: popularity, Alexa Ranking, Page Rank, RSS Subscribers count, etc. Check out these established blogs:

a) ReviewMe
b) SponsoredReviews
c) Blogsvertise
d) Payperpost
e) Smorty
f) Linkworth

IDEA #2) Filling out Online Web Surveys. There are legitimate and profitable web sites that will pay you to fill out their various online surveys…but you have to do your homework. Be sure to check into their payment history to ensure that they are legit, and check out the various comments and reviews that other users give them. One potential candidate is: CashCrate.com. Be sure to see what they offer.

IDEA #3) You can always write original content for other web sites. Do you have a particular skill or hobby that others would love to learn about? Do others always say you are so informative about this or that? Is there a particular hobby that you spend all your time at? If the answer is “yes” to any of these questions, you should give this form of making money a try. Here are some web sites you should look at:

1) About.com
2) eHow.com
3) Helium.com
4) Bukisa.com
5) AssociatedContent.com

IDEA #4) Working at Freelance Jobs. If you can do computer programming, or design web sites, write technical info, draw, etc. you can leverage these skills to make some extra money online. People are looking for these skills in the online marketplace today…and they will pay you good money for it. If this interests you, check out:

- Guru.com
- GetaFreeLancer.com
- Elance.com

IDEA #5) Via Online Affiliate Sales. If you have an established website, there are companies out there that will pay you for sending paying customers their way. Companies such as: Commission Junction, Amazon, ClickBank, and LinkShare will provide you with the names of these companies. Put one of their ads on your website, and whenever someone purchases an item via your ad, you will get some $. With Amazon you can make 5-15% for each product sold through the ad on your website. For ClickBank, the percentage is anywhere from 50-75%. The key to this method of making money online is that you need to have an establish web site…one that a lot of people look at.

Want to find out more about Making Easy Money Online, then visit Mark Goodwin’s site on how to choose the best money making method for your needs.

What are the ABC’s of Making Easy Money Online?

In’95 when the Internet exploded into the living rooms of people around the world, they could send email, read the news, look up favorite recipes, and search for “whatever”. Since then a number of people have been making some serious money online. We would like to present our 5 top picks of possible ways to make money online:

IDEA #1) Why not write for Web Logs…Blogs for short. Writing for some of the more established blogs is one of the easiest ways that you can make money online. You can make between $5 and $100 for each article you write, and you won’t even need to have your own web site. Exactly how much money you will make depends on various things, but here are a few: popularity, Alexa Ranking, Page Rank, RSS Subscribers count, etc. Check out these established blogs:

a) ReviewMe
b) SponsoredReviews
c) Blogsvertise
d) Payperpost
e) Smorty
f) Linkworth

IDEA #2) You can fill out Online Web Surveys. While some of these web sites are SCAMS, there are legitimate and profitable sites out there. You just need to do your homework to find out which is which. Be sure to check out their payment history, and see what other users are giving them in terms of comments and reviews. Here’s one potential candidate: CashCrate.com Check them out!

IDEA #3) You can always write original content for other web sites. Do you have a particular skill or hobby that others would love to learn about? Do others always say you are so informative about this or that? Is there a particular hobby that you spend all your time at? If the answer is “yes” to any of these questions, you should give this form of making money a try. Here are some web sites you should look at:

1) About.com
2) eHow.com
3) Helium.com
4) Bukisa.com
5) AssociatedContent.com

IDEA #4) Do Freelance Work. What does this mean? If you have knowledge or skill in the areas of: computer programming, writing technical documentation, designing web sites, drawing, etc., you can leverage this “know how” to make some easy money online. People are constantly looking for these skills, and are willing to pay the right person for them. If you think this is right for you, check out:

- Guru.com
- GetaFreeLancer.com
- Elance.com

IDEA #5) Affiliate Sales. What are affiliate sales you ask? It’s when you help someone sell a product via your web site. In a nutshell, there are companies out there who will pay you to send customers their way. Which companies? You can get a list of them from Commission Junction, Amazon, LinkShare, or ClickBank. Here’s how easy it is. You put an ad from one of these companies on your web site. When one of the people who comes to your web site clicks on their ad, and purchases an item from their web site, you get a percentage of the sale. Amazon will give you between 5-15%, while Clickbank will give you 50-75%. Definitely a way to go if you have an established web site that has a lot of traffic.

Want to find out more about Making Easy Money Online, then visit Mark Goodwin’s site on how to choose the best money making method for your needs.

Improve Your Web Site To Achieve Top Search Rankings

After selecting the right keywords you want to optimize your website for, you need to focus on what is called on-page optimization. On page optimization is what you do on your website pages to improve organic rankings. The good news is that through years of trial and error, research, and modeling top ranked web sites, I have identified the most important on page factors for improving organic rankings.

When contemplating how to optimize your web site pages, there are a number of things to consider. The most important aspects of on page optimization are meta tags, the speed at which your page loads, and the URLs you’re using. Even though this short list of factors may seem obvious to some, they are the most powerful aspects of on page optimization.

Meta tags are important to web site rankings because they provide some basic information to search engine spiders. Properly formatted meta tags go a long way towards enhancing search engine rankings. My research as shows that meta tags by themselves cannot radically improve rankings. It is my belief that meta tags may be used to verify other aspects of your website and are important for getting users to click through from search engine results.

Meta tags should have a title tag which has your most important keywords and contains no more than 60 characters. This is the number of characters that can be shown on Google search results. Your description tag which is also displayed after a user does a search engine query, should be no more than 150 characters. This tag is most effective when mentioning your keywords two times.

The last meta tag worthy of description is the keyword tag. This tag is misused all too often and it may actually be hurting your search engine rankings. When using a keyword tag, focus on only a dozen of your most important and highly trafficked keywords. Search engines should know that you are an authority site and worthy of top rankings. Do your research and only include the keywords that truly matter. You can also evaluate the sites in the top positions and model their keywords as long as they are included on your web site or blog.

Once you have your meta tags within your web page code it’s time to focus on the next on page optimization factor. The load time of your web pages matter a great deal to Google and other search engines. Not only does your web page need to be properly formatted but it needs to load quickly. Fast loading web sites mean a better user experience. Search engines like Google reward you for providing the right information quickly to web site browsers. Keep load times to a minimum and continually work to improve the speed at which your site loads.

The final topic we are going to cover is URL structure. The ideal structure is to have your most important keyword in the URL root. The root of a site would be here: www.keyword.com. If a domain is not available that doesn’t include your keyword, use an aged domain that you can add a folder or subdirectory to. An example would be mysite.com/keyword or keyword.mysite.com. In both examples, we are adding our keyword “root” to either domain. Again, this is not as good as having the keyword in your root but is valuable if the domain you need in not available.

Before you begin any search engine optimization effort, evaluate your web site, landing page, or blog from the perspective of meta tags, load speed, and URLs. There are additional on page factors we’ll discuss in the next SEO article, but the three mentioned herein are vitally important to your search engine optimization success.

Looking for help with your SEO? Learn more about our SEO training program. Also, if you’re looking to improve search engine rankings Learn more about our Webmaster Training Guide.

Improve Your Web Site To Achieve Top Search Rankings

Improving your search engine rankings always begins with thorough keyword research. By identifying the right keywords to support your optimization efforts you stay ahead of the competition and make the vision of number one rankings a reality. After you’ve selected the right keywords the next step is to focus your efforts towards on page optimization. This is where you apply some techniques to your web pages to ensure top rankings.

There are a number of important on page optimization factors to consider when optimizing your web pages. I have found three factors in particular to have more of an impact than others when correlating them to search engine rankings. In particular, meta tags, URL structure, and page load speed seem to have the greatest affect on where your website ranks for particular keywords or keyword phrases.

Meta tags provide large search engines a quick way to identify what a web page is all about. When tags are formatted correctly, search engine spiders have an easy way of evaluating content and properly ranking web pages. Although meta tags alone can’t significantly improve a web site’s ranking, they can definitely hurt if not properly formatted. You need to integrate additional on page optimization best practices but properly formatted meta tags are vitally important.

Meta tags should have a title tag which has your most important keywords and contains no more than 60 characters. This is the number of characters that can be shown on Google search results. Your description tag which is also displayed after a user does a search engine query, should be no more than 150 characters. This tag is most effective when mentioning your keywords two times.

Another meta tag is your keyword tag. This tag should include your most important keywords. I choose to keep my list concise, usually around 12 keywords. This shows Google and other search engines that your web page is both focused and relevant. Sites that engage in keyword stuffing are only hurting themselves. Consider doing to keyword research to determine which keywords get the most search engine traffic and use them.

When users search the web, they are not only looking for valuable content related to their query, they are also looking for well performing web sites. The second factor we need to look at for on page optimization is load time. You should be aware of how quickly your web site pages load and continually work to make the faster. When sites load quickly, major search engines take notice and improve rankings. Focus on user experience in addition to a properly formatted web page and success happens more quickly

The final factor related to on page optimization we are discussing today is the web site URL. The best format is to have your keyword in root of the domain. For example, it may look something like www.keyword.com. Truthfully the days of picking up a domain like this are pretty much over but you can find some options on expired domain listings. You can also add your keyword next to the root URL by creating a separate page or folder on your main directory. The other strategy you can consider is a subdomain strategy where you would place your keyword before your domain. Most hosts offer this option.

Before you begin any search engine optimization effort, evaluate your web site, landing page, or blog from the perspective of meta tags, load speed, and URLs. There are additional on page factors we’ll discuss in the next lesson, but the three mentioned herein are vitally important to your search engine optimization success.

Looking for help with your SEO? Check out our SEO training program. Also, if you’re looking to improve search engine rankings check out our Webmaster Training Guide.

Using The ASP.NET GridView Control

Database-driven website are a fairly standard requirement and, in some development environments, it can take a fair amount of programming to achieve. In ASP.NET, however, it is remarkably easy, thanks to the use of built-in data-bound controls. There are two types of data-bound controls: those which are designed to display multiple records and those which will display one record only. The GridView control, the workhorse of databinding in ASP.NET, falls into the first category. It automatically generates an HTML table and fills it with information from a given data source with each record in the database rendered as a row in the table.

Microsoft Visual Web Developer offers a really easy way to create a GridView control: simply explore the appropriate data source using the database explorer, then drag the appropriate table or view onto the page. This action creates both a DataSource object and a GridView object, both of which can be customised either in Design or Source view. If the listing you wish to display on the page is to be tabular, you may not need to change the default GridView. However, it is more usual that you will want to customize the way in which data is displayed.

Naturally, you do not have to display all of the fields in the database in the HTML table generated by the Gridview. The GridView’s AutoGenerateColumns attribute should be set to False (which it is by default). Additionally, we can display data in a number of different ways. By default information is displayed in a BoundField, meaning that the data is displayed as text. By default, the heading displayed at the top of each column is simply the name of each field in the database. However, you can modify this by changing the HeaderText property of each BoundField element. Another useful property is DataFormatString which allow you to use a format string to control the display of data.

Another useful form of customization is the display of data in a choice of other HTML formats: CheckboxField, RadioButtonField, HyperlinkField, ButtonField and ImageField. The final type of field is CommandField which enables you to display links enabling the user to edit, delete or select rows of data.

TemplateFields offer even greater flexibility, allowing you to place any HTML content you like in a given column and use databinding statements to embed information from the database as required. Template fields can even contain ASP.NET server controls.

The author is a trainer and developer with Macresource Computer Training, a UK IT training company offering ASP.NET Classes at their central London training centre.

categories: asp.net,web development,microsoft,computers,software