Twitter Doppelganger

The last time I blogged, I got the bright idea to join Twitter. I’m not sure why. I guess because all the cool kids were doing it, I figured I should be too. You know, since I’m a cool kid. And, yes, if all the cool kids were jumping off bridges, I’d so be right there doing it too.

Anyway, imagine my surprise when I went to register my name and found there was someone else in the world named Daria Black. Imagine that. Worse, they beat me to the punch and registered the username. Double worse, they are actually using it. I tried to resort to using my old internet handle, Smutwriter but, once again, my plan for Twitter domination was spoiled. Someone is using that one too.

Writing Prompts: Thirteen Essay Ideas

Up until now, the writing prompts have focussed on fiction writing. This week, however, I’m going to show some love to our nonfiction writers and throw out some ideas for possible articles/blog posts/school essays.

1. Just recently a young girl in India was born with four legs and four arms due to a rare condition where her twin died in the womb and her body tried to absorb the tissue (link to article). Her village views her as the reincarnation of the Hindu goddess she is named after. Discuss how society treats those who are born outside the norm.

2. Discuss how you would overhaul our current system of government. Discuss if it is really necessary to have a governmental entity and what would it take for us to be able to get rid of it completely.

3. What does it mean to be success in our current age? How does that compare what it meant to be a success in previous ages and what success might mean in the future.

Seven Ways to Make Money on the Internet

The internet has opened up the floodgates of opportunity and offers many a budding entrepreneur the chance they need to strike out on their own. If you are looking to become a billionaire or just make a few extra dollars to pay those pesky bills, I’ve identified seven arenas you can enter that will put you on the road to making money online.

1. Subscriptions

With this setup, clients are charged a reoccurring fee for access to a product or service. This fee is usually collected upfront before the service or product is rendered and can be charged on a monthly, semi-yearly and yearly basis although daily and weekly models exist as well.

Subscriptions can be set up for manual renewal where the customer is required to send in or authorize payment or automatic renewal where a customer’s credit card or checking account is charged automatically when the subscription period ends.

An example of the subscription model is the dating service eHarmony.

Making the Most of Your Article Marketing

Okay, we already talked about why article marketing should only play a small part in your marketing efforts and I’ve given a few alternate suggestions for better and more effective ways of building traffic and back links to your site. If you still are hardcore about including article marketing as apart of your total marketing effort, here are a few tips to reap the most from your efforts:

1. Make sure they’ve been around for awhile. Not only do these directories tend to have a higher PageRank but they are usually well known on the webernet and thus attract the people more likely to reuse your content.

2. Pick the ones that screen submissions. Directories that accept anything will only drag down the value of your articles.

Get More Website Traffic Than You Can Handle

It used to be so easy to get free website traffic to your blog. All you had to do was fill out a few meta tags and made sure you used relevant keywords in your content. Now everyone is on the internet trying to make money, get their message out, or just plain connect to other people with like interests and the competition for attention has gotten fierce. Getting free targeted traffic to your website is a lot more challenging.

But with consistent action and these seven tips, you can drive traffic to your website without having to spend money on hit or miss advertising.

1. Increase Website Traffic by Getting Involved

Get involved in the internet via forums, social networking sites, and commenting on blogs. This accomplishes several things. First of all you are meeting people and making contacts. By helping out on a forum in your niche, you are increasing the perception of you as an expert and because most forums and blogs allow you to link to your website, you are also improving your search rankings with back links and getting targeted website traffic from both the sites and the search engines.