You now have to sign into blogger thru your gmail account. I think that it´s a smart move on Google´s part to do that. It will be far easier for people to access their weblogs on a regular basis and write something here and there. I believe that Blogger´s popularity will increase. Maybe they will come up with a few new things to give wordpress a run for their money. Never know!
More …

Paul Hirsch from the Intenational Web Developers´ Network hsa conducted a very interesting experiment regarding all the major search engines and what methods of presenting information on a website will get picked up by them.
This is a must read!

Check it out!

… and digg it

Recently I have been looking for a new affiliate forum “with a flow”.
I have never been on one before.
All of them seem to be kind of stale. Nobody appears interested in really helping out a newbie.
I have been a Super Moderator for quite some time at the Earners Forum.
But when it came to start promoting the Furniture For Sale Affiliate Program, I wanted to find a community which would give me feedback without holding back.
I think I have finally found it. A Best Web Forum is a forum w/ many affiliates, affiliate managers and representatives from Affiliate Networks and related industries such as Reveue Magazine.

When you get your website up, think about it like getting it ready for a date with Big G.
Don’t try to outsmart Google. You want to establish a long term relationship here and not mess things up for the future. That might work with MSN, the one night stand kind of search engine.
Google is different.
Google will love you, but you have to follow a few rules.
When you get your site up, think BIG.
Google loves “big sites”. Websites with many pages and tons of unique content.
You can easily put up a lot of pages writing about your products if you start writing about what you know a lot about. When you write, my advice to you is to forget about the keywords you are after. Check out the websites ranked for the keywords you are after first. Click on “cached” and tell me how many times you see the keyterms actually ON the sites itselves.
3 or 4 times? 3 or 4 times in the midst of 5,000 words? Look at every single site on the first pages and a half and get an idea.
Do what they are doing, but do it your own way.
Get links from YOUR friends and your networking partners, don’t try to get links from the same sources as your competition. Google loves variety. Do however try to get your links onto any site from the top results if you can, offer them some money for advertising, that will get you direct traffic while waiting for Google to recognize your new links.

More to come …

So Digg has now unbanned Frog Engine and these sites. If you have been banned from Digg before, take a look and see if your url can be submitted again for stories. About time that they unbanned everyone. Digitalpoint, v7n and many other hi profile sites were banned including a lot of members of those communities.

Hope to see some good stories in the future, especially some new developments in the world of the search engines.

Mike

I love Costa Rica. I miss America- But there are so many Americans here, it feels like home. What a beautiful country. Especially the Nicoya Peninsula. But before you go to Costa Rica, know where you are going. Costa Rica has a little bit of everything for everyone. Whatever you are into, you will get it here. Here are some of the most popular vacation spots and what they are all about:

Tamarindo

THE party place. I was there for 1 1/2 months. It got old after a while. There are 5 bars and they are happening, especially Babylon.

Malpais

Gringo Town. There is one major bar called Tabu, right by the beach. You have to watch yourself though. A lot of thieves are watching you if you are either by yourself or with just one other person.

Samara

The honeymoon spot.
Way boring, but if you have just gotten married or some marital problems to work thru, take your sweetheart there and it will all work out.

Santa Teresa

Just next to Malpais.

Montezuma

Hippie town. Half Ticos, half gringos. Cool spot. Waterfalls, beaches, a secret spot where you can surf. We will take you there as soon as Costa Sports Club opens in April.

So, this is pretty much where I have been. I have been to a lot more places, but none was worth mentioning. Spare yourself the bad experience of San Jose. San Jose is just like Tijuana, Mexico. No thanks.

Mike

P.S.: Before you go, please cheack out the Costa Rica Directory and book your hotel rooms thru Data Place Travel.

I can’t stress enough the importance of getting links from sites which are not being used by many internet marketers for links. If you are getting links from link pools, you might as well spend the time on something more fun than building links. Links that are from sites with links to every site owned by members of the same forum are not going to help you as much as links which come from sites that no one within your community knows.

This post is all about what I have been thru last week. I was in Nicaragua to get my visa extended in Costa Rica. My passport got stolen, so I had to go to the embassy to get a new one. In Managua. You have to be there to understand just how dangerous the place is. I finally wound up meeting a ton of cool people from there, but before that, I was pretty bad not really knowing the place. Nicaragua is a country that has more problems than you can imagine. Compared to Costa Rica, you don’t see people smiling at you and there is not a lot of interaction between gringos and locals. Once you get to know people, it’s not a bad place, but before you wind up meeting cool people, you might wind up dead in the gutter.
Once thing about Nicaragua is that the country is dirtcheap. A pack of marlboros runs around 75 cents. You can go out to bars and pay like 60 cents a beer max. There is also a place called San Juan Del Sur by the beach where most businesses are American owned and there it is pretty safe compared to the rest of the country.
I don’t recommend going to Nicaragua unless you really know where you are going. I also don’t recommend giving money to the professional panhandlers at the border and anywhere else, because many who have given money, wound up being robbed by the panhandlers friends waiting for them right around the corner. Only right answer to give is ” I have no money”. Anyways, I finally got my new passport and even though I felt like I needed some German lessons, I got my point across. Everyone there spoke spanish and my spanish is getting pretty good.

Mike

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