Making The Most Of RSS

If you're spending a lot of time online, you may be noticing a lot of websites with links to RSS feeds, and you may not be certain what these are. If you're looking for current information or if you want to provide information, you may be missing out on a great tool.

There are a couple opinions as to what RSS stands for, but basically what you need to know is that it allows the content from a website to be syndicated. For visitors, this makes it easier to keep up with what is happening on a website; for webmasters it provides one more way to keep in contact with your visitors.

Even if you are not familiar with RSS you might have used it already. Yahoo, MSN and Google all have pages you can personalize to include information that is of interest to you. RSS is how this is generally done. With each of these services there are items they have listed that you can easily add as well as a way for you to select an RSS feed so that exactly the things you are interested in appear on your page.

One of the most common uses is in blogs. The feed is a very popular way to encourage people to come back and visit regularly, as they are automatically notified of new content.

Some websites are also using RSS as a supplement to email newsletters. RSS has the advantage for the user that it is easy to subscribe or unsubscribe to, and there is no spam. For the website owner, RSS ensures that their messages do not fall prey to spam filters or spam complaintsSubscribing to an RSS feed is very easy if you have a My Yahoo, My MSN or a personalized Google homepage. Some sites have buttons you just click; other times you need to get the URL of the RSS feed, then find where you add content to your pages and put in the URL.

You might also choose to use a feed reader on your computer. There are free and paid versions; a quick search on your favorite search engine should find one that is suitable to your needs.

If you have a website and want to take advantage of RSS, there are several possibilities. One is, of course, the aforementioned blog. Content management systems such as Joomla also provide you with an RSS feed for people to subscribe to. You can also create an RSS feed on your own, although that requires more effort.

RSS is tremendously helpful in making content more accessible. A well planned RSS feed benefits both webmasters and visitors. Choose a way that is easy for you to subscribe to RSS feeds and let the information come to you.

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Simple Steps Lead To Successful Books

Like most first time authors, I figured that once the word was out that I'd written a book, the world would beat a path to my door wanting to buy it. I'll admit I gave little thought to marketing until the day my first printing of Handbook To A Happier Life was delivered. In a panic, I called a published author I knew and asked, "What do I do now?" She suggested several books about book marketing, which I bought immediately. I was on my way.

Success in book selling is a three step process: 1. Write the book. 2. Print the book. 3. Sell the book. That last one can be bit tricky:-)

Space does not permit me to go into all the details of my process or to list the many people who helped, however, there are a couple of very important points I learned early on which made all the difference.

The most important thing I learned was to identify my reader. As much as I hated to admit it, not everyone would buy my book. My early feedback told me entrepreneurs, network marketers and salespeople were buying my book. I began to ask myself focused questions as to how I could best reach these people. I set goals. After all, if you don't have a goal, how will you know when you've succeeded? I took specific actions daily. That's important. Consistent action will make all the difference.

There were days when I was ready to give up but I kept taking action. I refused to give up. Another important point. Never, never, never give up! One day, a door opened. I had located a distributor who was selling to the market I wanted to reach. They reviewed "Handbook To A Happier Life" and it was put on a recommended reading list. It went into eight printings with almost 100,000 copies sold and was translated into several languages, and then sold to a big publisher. I knew all along that once people saw this book, they would want to read it. I firmly believe most books will sell once you have taken the time to clearly define your market, set your goals and commit to taking daily action. And more action - keeping in mind that there are many places you can sell books besides bookstores. Go for it!

The Best Business Card You Ever Had

"Keep in mind Jim, this is a great business card." That was my first lesson as a new author and it has served me well over the years. On a lark, I sent 20 copies of my new book to the presidents of several big direct sales companies. The result was a glowing testimonial from the president of one of the companies, along with an order for 250 books. Was it worth the cost of giving away the 20? You bet it was! I like to think of giving away books as planting seeds. You never know which ones will spout or when.

Many professional speakers and coaches willingly give away their $12 paperback book (with a cost of a $2-$4) and attract clients and bookings worth thousands of dollars from it. Others obtain high priced consulting contracts using the book as a door opener.

To receive a FREE "Successful Self-publishing" e-book, visit
http://www.writepublishselllyourbook.com

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Top 10 SEO Copywriting

What would happen if…? I'm a person to always ask that question. I love testing and tracking to see what factors can improve or worsen a situation. So, it was only natural for me to track the moves of a little experiment I did involving SEO copywriting recently. I'll gladly share my findings with you.

Before I do, however, I want to make a couple of things very clear. The outcome of this experiment will not be the same for every keyphrase on every page of every site. There are too many unknown factors at play in the overall SEO equation. Not to mention, all keyphrases are not the same, and all sites are not the same. In addition, this experiment takes no account of link popularity, which is a huge factor in achieving high rankings. With that said, let me show you how I took the home page of one of my sites - that didn't even rank in the top 50 - and caused it to rank in the top 10.

First of all, I'm not a big fan of checking rankings on a regular basis. I don't run ranking reports for all my sites to be sure they are all in the positions I want them in for every given keyphrase. I'll do it from time to time just to satisfy my own occasional curiosity. This experiment began when I noticed the home page of one of my sites was ranking highly for a keyphrase that didn't seem to appear anywhere in the text. Upon further investigation, I saw that the keyphrase was included in the ALT tags (a.k.a. image attribute tags) and that it was also included in the title tag.

I knew ALT tags previously carried a lot of weight with the engines, but had been downgraded in importance because site owners had badly abused the tag. Had ALT tags been reinstated in their level of importance? I decided to find out.

Keyword #1 was currently in the ALT tags and the title tag, so I decided to eliminate the keyword in the title tag. This would let me see if the ALT tags alone could hold the position in the search engine results pages (SERPs). To make things more interesting, I also decided to research and find a keyword that was a little more competitive and insert it into the title tag. On the same day I removed Keyword #1 from the title tag, I inserted Keyword #2. My home page was not ranked in the top 50 at that time for Keyword #2.

A few days later, the Googlebot came by and boosted my home page to position #18 for Keyword #2. Not bad! The page fell one spot (from #17 to #18) for Keyword #1 since the removal of the phrase from the title tag.

Keep in mind, these are not the most competitive keywords ever known. They each got between 100 to 200 searches a day. Also, the home page of this particular site had been (and still is) well ranked for years for other keyphrases and had a positive legacy with GoogleFive days later, Keyword #2 was moved up three notches to a ranking of #14 while Keyword #1 stayed the same. Things remained in their status quo for roughly 10 days and then began to shift again. Keyword #1, the original that was previously in both the ALT tags and the title tag, vanished completely. It was not found in the top 50. Keyword #2, that was only found in the title tag and nowhere else, dropped to position #25.

Four days later, Keyword #2 was back up in the rankings and was now at #16. To see if I could improve rankings further, I began to make small tweaks to the page attributes. I added Keyword #2 to the ALT tags (taking the places where Keyword #1 had once been), and I also added Keyword #2 to the body copy. The keyphrase was added to one, bold sub-headline and at three places within the body copy: none of which were above the fold. It was not added to any primary headlines that used tags, and no keyword density formula was followed for the body copy. No other pages on my site used this term as anchor text in links pointing to the home page. That gave the page keyword placement in the:

· Title tag

· ALT tags

· Body copy

Seven days later, the home page hit the top 10 for Keyword #2!

So, what does all this mean? Simple. There is no single primary factor in search engine rankings. It takes balance, testing and tracking to find out what works for your particular pages. Your best bet is to do exactly what I did… begin one step at a time and track your progress. Did something cause a positive movement? Keep it. If something causes a negative shift, take it out.

I'm not finished with this page yet. I'll keep trying different things from time to time just to see what happens. Maybe I'll add anchor text links from the internal pages to the home page. I might try writing articles with keyword-rich anchor text links to help boost the rankings more. There are many acceptable practices I can implement for this page (or any page) that will allow me to observe the shifts in ranking. As the old saying goes, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." A diversified approach to SEO copywriting that includes tags, copy and links is always a wise start down the road to top 10 rankings.

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The Importance Of An Email List For Your Online Business And How To Create One

For any business whether offline or online you need customers. It's much easier to get potential customers into your online store, or business website, by a number of different means, search engine traffic, adverts of many kinds, or from links on other sites. It doesn't matter how they got there in the first place, as long as they buy, you can capture some details then and send them updates on your later offers or deals. But what about if these visitors don't buy, how do you bring them back again if you offer a better deal in the future, or have new products they may be interested in?

That's where an email list becomes your best friend, and online businesses biggest asset. You need to capture those email addresses before the visitor leaves. This is so important that the big name online marketers make building a subscriber list one of their main activities. Some of the figures bandied about concerning email lists may be erroneous, but from my own personal experience, they're not too far out, so I will repeat them here.

Figures quoted for the value of each subscriber range from 50 cents to 1 dollar per subscriber per month, so the larger the subscriber list you have the more you can make each month, you do the maths for yourself. There is a caveat to this, your subscriber list needs to be targeted, ie it's no use trying to sell high heeled shoes to a predominately male audience, or sending your best ad for gardening tools to people who sign up on a site about rap music, if they have little interest you won't make anything. It's also claimed that sales increase after the potential customer has received several emails from an online business, and the extra sales are in the order of over 50% of customers purchase when they are more comfortable with the seller following receipt of the emails.

So now we know the value of having an email list, how do we start to build our own subscriber base?

The easiest method is to use an online "autoresponder" such as getresponse.com which you can preload with messages ready to send to anyone who signs up. Then you will need a way for your website visitors to subscribe to your newsletter or sales letter series, all good autoresponders will give you some html code ready to paste into your webpages into which visitors can place their name and email address as a minimum, and some will allow you to include boxes for more information should you require it.

You now need to post this code into a visible spot in your webpage(s) and make it as easy as possible for your visitor to sign up for your email subscriber list. Now you have a way to capture contact details to give you a second chance at making a sale even after your visitor has left your site. So that's it sit and wait for those subscribers to sign upHold on a minute, why would they want to sign up for your newsletter, or email series?

You need to give the visitor a good reason to subscribe to your list, after all they probably already get enough emails from spam, friends sending them the latest joke, and other online businesses who have their address, so you need to sweeten the deal in their favour. One of the easiest ways to attract subscribers is to offer a free gift for subscribing. The gift can be as simple as making the emails a course to teach them something about the topic of your website, a free ebook (there are plenty available on a variety of subjects if you don't have one to give away already, search in your favourite search engine) or you could offer a competition where subscribers can win one of your products. Whatever you do, try to make it an offer the visitor will find it hard to turn down,and they will subscribe to get it.

So these are the reasons to start your own subscriber list, and an overview of how to start getting subscribers, but what sort of emails should you send as your list grows?

Obviously if you are just selling something, and want to remind visitors why they went to your site in the first place, then send them some information about your product(s) in a series of emails, and include a reminder of the original link so they can go back to review the salespage and hopefully buy. There is a more subtle way though. Information is why most people are looking on the internet, so it makes sense to make your emails informational, and gently bring your sales pitch to the subscribers as part of the information. If you don't have time to write your own informational articles, you can search in article directories for ones written on the topic your site and newsletter deal with, just follow the directories terms for using the articles. These articles can then be preloaded into your autoresponder along with your additional promotional text, ready to be sent. Once it is setup, it can be all left to run automatically.

Hopefully you will now see the benefits of using email newsletters to increase your online business, or website visits, and see that it's not too difficult to get started. An article of this type can only give you an overview of the basics of email subscriber lists for online businesses, but there is plenty more available online, and I'd recommend you to find out more about it, especially how to avoid spam complaints. But most importantly, start your own email subscriber list today, and watch your business grow.

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Chinese Gambling Games: Casino Games with Chinese Origins

The Chinese culture has a significant influence on the American gambling industry. Many of todays popular casino games were introduced to American casinos by Chinese immigrants. In this review, you can read about some of the most popular Chinese gambling games that had a successful immigration to the West.

Pai Gow Poker

Pai Gow Poker is a hybrid of American poker and traditional Chinese tiles game called Pai Gow. The original tile game Pai Gow, which means Make 9, is one of the most ancient gambling games that are still available in cotemporary casinos. Pai Gow Poker is played with playing cards instead of tiles and it uses the traditional poker hand ranking. It is one of the most popular casino games worldwide and it can be found in almost every major casino in the US. Its online version can be played at most casinos on the internet.

The object of the Pai Gow Poker is to form the highest possible two poker hands, one five card hand and a two card hand, out of the seven cards dealt to each player. Each player competes against the banker that can be either the casino dealer or one of the players who can afford paying the players winnings.

Sic Bo

Sic Bo is yet another popular casino game with roots that go back to ancient China. The chance game came to the States around the beginning of the 20th century by Chinese immigrants. It can be played in most land based casinos in Macau, the US and the UK. Sic Bo has an online version as well.

The meaning of Sic Bo is Dice Pair. It is played with three standard dice on a special table. Each player places any number of bets on the table and then tosses the dice. The outcome is determined by the combinations of the three dice. Each combination has a different payoff according to a payoff schedule, which vary from one casino to the other.

Fan Tan

Fan Tan used to be the most popular gambling game among Chinese gamblers but the glory days of Fan Tan have already passed. During the 1890s, Chinese immigrants brought the game to the United States. At that time, every Chinatown in American City had several Fan Tan houses that were always full of enthusiastic gamblers. Nowadays, you can find Fan Tan in some casinos in Macau as well as in some online gaming sites. Traditional Fan Tan, not to be confused with the card game of the same name, used to be played with any objects such as coins, dried beans or small buttons on a table with a square marked on it. Fan Tan. The object of the game is pretty simple and odds are 1: 4.

The play begins with the banker puts on the table a pile of objects then covers them with a bowl. Each player has to bet on one of the numbers that mark the four sides of the square, or on one of the corners of the square. After the bowl is removed, the croupier removes four of the objects each time until the last group remains. If 1 object is left, then the player who placed a bet on 1 wins the pot, and so on.

Mahjong

Mahjong is probably the biggest inherit of Chinese culture to the gaming world. The ancient Chinese tile game has many variants worldwide including variety of online games. According to the myth, Mahjong was developed by Confucius around the 500 BC. The game was brought to the United States during the 1920s and soon was very popular especially among women. The game was played in Chinese style decorated rooms with waiters wearing traditional customs.

The American version of Mahjong was developed during the 1930s and it is played in America until today. At the same time, the National Mahjong league was founded. In addition to American Mahjong, there are Japanese, Vietnamese, Cantonese and other variations of the game, which vary from one to the other by their scoring structure, number of tiles and rules variants. In 1998, the China State Sports Commission had set a standard set of rules that will differentiate the illegal gambling game from the skill game.

Mahjong Solitaire, the online version of Mahjong, gains wide popularity recently. The online version of the classic Chinese game is a matching game that uses the Mahjong tiles. Online Mahjong games can be found in many online gaming sites in variety of layouts and versions.

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