Like any market or trade, the internet and online marketing requires it’s own tools and methods. Your average people in the industry are already familiar with the following terms, but for the new guys on the block, google will become your friend. Sample tools include Auto responders, link building systems and page ranking sites, Search Engine Optimization software and training, content management software, affiliate programs and the list continues with many more tools. For anyone getting wanting to get involved, or already involved, the following quick rundown of several marketing tools may prove helpful for now or in the future.

1. Domain Name

This is the first stop, and the most important, its your online beginning phase. Your domain name is your first internet marketing tool and you should think hard and long about it before just up and purchasing any random one. Pick this right and it can be more than effective, although pick it wrong and all could be over right from the start.Anybody out there giving advice concerning websites and domain names is going to give you one tip right from the start; keep it short, sweet, and to the point. A short but memorable (and keyword-related domain), such as www.food.com, are perfect because it is memorable and it tells you exactly what the website you are going to is all about.

Sometimes though, some self proclaimed internet moguls or marketers are going to suggest you opt for something short and jazzy that can also be easily remembered by your visitors. Some examples include places such as Napster, Google, Yahoo, Ebay, etc. Regardless of the path you choose, just be sure to examine your marketing strategy and potential before you pick your domain name. Always remember that your domain name can be one of your most effective marketing tools on the the internet.

The next tip when it comes to domains if your server it’s going to be connected and setup onto. Many experts (who often think out of their own pocket, not yours) suggest you go with a Dedicated Server for your domain(s). A Dedicated Server literally hosts one domain and one domain only. Shared servers, which are much more inexpensive, allow more more domains on one server and all falling under the same IP address. With this, the only real problems come down to Bandwidth limitations on shared servers along with actual space alloted for your account. Other than that flaw, your other worry should be if one of your fellow shared server mates decides to start spamming sites, your IP is the same as his and your site could get blocked along with his. Even though you might want to go with Shared hosting, most companies will still allow you to opt into having a dedicated IP for a small fee each month.

2. Keywords

Surferes type what are keywords into search engines to find what they are looking for and thus are the building blocks of the web. They are almost the single most important elements in any online marketing adventure. Picking the right keywords puts your site into business and keeps you from failing like so many other sites. Picking the wrong words (or improperly labeling) creates game over from the beginning just like picking the wrong domain name.

Keywords can be challenging to decide if you are new to the idea of internet marketing, but you really have two methods of going about designing them; One being manually learning how to draw proper words out of your text or using special software to help. There are special software packages online and sites/services to help you do this if you choose the latter method. Many online top marketers use such sites as WordTracker, GoodKeywords, etc. A properly designed keyword research product supplies valuable information such as the number of searches made each month, amount of competition to your keyword, and the top sites targeting your keywords.

Always remember, you must target the right keywords with your web site or online marketing practices. Targeted keywords draw targeted traffic (customers) to your sites or products along with properly created content. The right keyword software or programming will have a direct impact to the success/failure in your adventures. So choose wisely and learn to love/appreciate the nature of the internet marketing!

3. Articles

Many of those involved in internet marking only trust in purely “organic” search engine optimization techniques for getting there site out to the masses. One simple way of describing organic marketing is just writing and submitting keyword related articles around the topic(s) of your website with links back to your site from other similar sites. As other sites in your same field begin to display your articles, you gain valuable link backs to your site (which goes back to my previous PageRank article).

As your wonderful website becomes valuable by using outstanding keywords and excellent content, other sites will want to link to your site in order to become optimized for those same keywords. Article keyword marketing is one of the most effective internet marketing tools at your disposal when it’s used properly it can properly position your site(s) in the search engines and bring in all of that highly wanted targeted traffic.

Keep in your head that many Internet marketers have skipped the whole search engine optimization by just buying their way into search engines via per-per-click (PPC) advertising. Google AdWords is one of the biggest programs to show off an example of this method. Marketers basically bid on clicks to their site’s meta keywords and bring in more targeted customers. In the hands of a true internet mogul, PPC marketting is extremely effective as a marketing tool; especially when mixed with great Search Engine Optimization.

4. Blogs And RSS Feeds

Blogging and RSS feeds have become essential marketing tools for savvy online marketers. In all honesty, online journals and weblogs (aka Blogs) are the thing to have these days, especially in the marketing field. Blogging systems such as Wordpress (php system used for this site) are great Content Management Systems (CMS) that will quickly build a content-rich site, pulling in directly targeted readers for your content.

All search engines, as well as online communities, and chock full of blogs and RSS feeds for most any topic you can even come up with in your mind. The main reason for this is because blogs will provide you with fresh content which is the main livelihood of search engines. For this reason, try avoiding creating a site without some kind of normal blog thats updated daily. It will keep your content regularly visited and indexed by search engines across the net. Additionally, all that information added and content being added daily is a perfect tool for drawing potential readers to your content, products, and services.

Along with your domains, content, keywords, and articles?blogs are an highly effective marketing tool that will play an important role in the success of your online marketing adventures. In the right hands, these Internet marketing tools can work magic on any web sites target goals for users, content, etc.

Never count your eggs in one basket, make sure you know and understand them all while fully optimizing them all at one time. Basically make sure you think outside of the normal, but just make sure you understand what you are jumping into :)

Now this is a neat idea for once, and remember, I’m not even a PayPal Supporter! PayPal is sending a select group of members to try out the Beta launch of PayPal Virtual Debit Card. What is a virtual debit card according to PayPal?

You can use PayPal Virtual Debit Card when making online purchases anywhere MasterCard is accepted. PayPal Virtual Debit Card generates a virtual card number each time you make a transactiononline so you don?t have to use your personal debit or credit card number.

By generating a new virtual card number to use in place of your debit or credit card number, PayPal Virtual Debit Card helps protect your financial information every time you shop. It also saves you time by automatically filling in shipping in billing forms at checkout, protects you from fake eBay and PayPal websites, and offers zero liability on unauthorized purchases made from your account.

The virtual number is a MasterCard number used in place of your credit or debit card number. Each time you make a purchase from a website, a new number is generated. This helps create a situation where a new number is created every time you use the card and helps to avoid online theft by someone obtaining your number. Neat in idea, we’ll see how well it works in theory.

I’m curious to see if Google (ex: w/ Google Checkout) will soon follow with something similar….

What Is Google PageRank? PageRank is a value that represents how “important” a page is on the internet and more importantly on Google. Google basically assumes that when one persons web page links to another persons web page that it is more or less recommending the site. In effect, the more recommendations, the more important the page is assumed to be.

Google calculates a pages importance via the number of recommendations cast for a site and each one is taken into account when a PageRank is calculated. Basically, PageRank is just Google’s way of deciding a pages importance and this matters because one of the factors that determines a page’s ranking is of course search results. (Side Note: Linking to sites with Page Rankings of 0-1 can possibly provide a penalty instead of a positive on your site.)

For another way of explaining exactly what Google PageRank is, lets go right to the source from Google’s own website:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page?s value. Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves ?important? weigh more heavily and help to make other pages ?important.?

Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don?t match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page?s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it?s a good match for your query.

Lets take it and dumb it down a little more and better explain how it all works…basically the rule of thumb to remember and to understand is that it is a combination of variables that determine how well your site performs in Google. The following are some of the most important, not done individually, but done together:

• Incoming links to your site (keep in mind the PageRank of your sites linked to)
• The relevancy (to your site?s primary topics and themes) of the pages linking to your site and the PageRank of these pages.
• The keywords that other sites use to link to your site and their relevance (as stated above).
• The keywords on your website in particular in places like page titles and headlines.

Some of those factors you have the ability to control, but others you can semi manipulate but not directly control. The important thing to understand and remember regarding PageRank is that all those items will determine how high your site shows up in search engine results.

The actual formula comes out to be something similar to this:

PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + … + PR(tn)/C(tn))

When basically just converts out to be in simpler terms similar to this:

A page’s PageRank = 0.15 + 0.85 * (a “share” of the PageRank of every page that links to your site)
“share” = the linking page’s PageRank divided by the number of outbound links on the page.

PageRank fear is an issue that every webmaster may fall victim to and in reality should not. There are rumors that Google will be changing the PageRank system because they are in fact not happy with how it is currently being manipulated and interpreted by users and marketers. As a rule of thumb, always watch your PageRanking, but don’t take it to seriously or spend too much time trying to force it to increase (just yell, scream, and kick the monitor a couple times - it might increase).

Search Engine Optimization (SeO) experts are always tracking PageRank and looking into things such as backlinks, tracebacks, etc to try and work out what the top search engine sites are doing at the current moment, replicate the ideas, and possibly make it higher in the rankings. This is all good in theory because there is no need to reinvent the wheel when you can learn from the competition and go one step further, thus taking the cycle to the beginning again with another company mocking your methods.

Where it goes wrong is the fact that there is a good amount of randomness in PageRank and Search Engine Results (keywords too). As Google has stated, randomness could be fought by misunderstanding over the algorithms used for Page Rankings. For exmaple, there are many high ranking sites that seem to have little to no links back to their site and in reality, not that great of search results. How does this site get ranked up so highly compared to someone who works day in and day out to obtain a high ranking? When you can explain it to me, please let me know as I am still learning and figuring out exactly how it all works. But luckily the randomness that is PageRank can result in positive outcomes also, with your site(s) jumping high into search results in places where you wouldn?t normally expect it to. It works well, just don?t expect it to work precisely how or when you want it to without fully understanding what you are jumping into.

Which leads me back to the facts; Having people link to your site has, and more than likely, will always be a good thing and PageRank was in fact a result of this method. Don?t get confused with the order of things as they evolved over time…first came the Internet and links and then came PageRank. Focus on creating a environment where quality links recommending other quality links help create a useful environment for those looking for relevant information to their search. This practice will naturally improve your PageRank and also increase the amount of visitors coming to your site each month. Don?t get mind boggled trying to chase down links from only high PageRank sites or waste energy adding links from just any site willing to link to you (remember low PR sites can bring your down.). Just go with the flow and do things naturally and your site will grow naturally and allow you the chance to build something that helps users and keeps users coming back for new information.

Always before jumping into this mess and trying to get your Page Rank up, learn the importance of keywords and Search Engine Optimization. Keywords play a crucial role in bringing the right type of traffic and relevant groups to your site. They play a major role, but that does not mean you need to spend millions of hours staring at the monitor (don’t forget to yell at it once and a while again) trying to create the perfect title for your newest article or keyword set. Keywords are major, but content is key. Name your content logically across the board on all of your sites and think about what search words your audience would use to find the article that you are posting. You can quickly and easily develop excellent keywords without spending hours and hours tweaking and modifying every little phrase and heading. I do highly recommend checking out a program called Good Keywords though while learning about Meta Tags and Search Engine Optimization for some quick and easy help. Your next best bet if you get lost or confused is to look at the competitors and see what methods they use and how they accomplish bringing the users in (yet again, no need to reinvent the wheel).

Sort of like the movie Field of Dreams, if you build it, they will come. If you provide the users with content they want to see and want to read about (relevant to their search and/or topic), while always keeping in mind your important keywords and actively working every day to earn and create new backlinks to your site you will improve your PageRank. The best sites with the highest PageRank never worry about PageRank, they simply keep pushing out new and “fresh” (relevant) content that people love to link to. This is a strategy that every webmaster and internet entrepreneur should imitate for success in their online adventures.

For those who even close to know me or have been reading my blog over the past several years (the older domain was a .com which was shutdown - details in a minute) have known that from last year around this time until this year at the same point has been one hell of a long road and a long set of changes for me, my family, and my friends. Basically nothing is really the same as it was and honestly I can’t say that I would want to change it in any way because of how much I’ve grown, learned, and moved on from so many things.

It’s amazing to fall asleep last night (as well as the past weeks) thinking about what was going on last year compared to what is going on this year. The job at Department of Defense ended due to several reasons that really only closer friends and family know about as well as the people involved, but I think that hit me the hardest last year and basically cut my motivation and drive in two. It wasn’t easy to even try and get back on my feet and thats being completely honest but it had to be done. I had lived, eaten, and drilled that job inside my head for over two years (damn near three) and to walk away couldn’t have been any harder in my eyes, but what happened did so for a reason.

Around the same time, Oubipaws.com had been up for months with a blog running talking of everything from emo-daily posts, black hat tips, security methods, and alot of other topics most of my avid readers will remember. The sad part is that I stupidly had not backed up any of my wordpress databases and my host could not provide me with any of them either when the site went down and I lost close to a year worth of writings. Anywho, the site was shut down by the government (aka Ft. Detrick, MD) due to conflicts of interest including descriptions of breaking AES Encryption, Harris Stat serial releases, Peer Pressure show to public (even though I wrote the software), and many other things. I can honestly say that the person writing those posts was not the same person sitting behind the keyboard today nor would I want to go back to that state of mind, but its still something I think about everyday as I change and grow more.

Today I sit here with so many plans of the future, so many goals, and so many ideas that I actually have motivation, inspiration, and the strength to move on. Then I was sitting behind a keyboard with a head in the clouds writing about idiot people I was hanging out with and things people never really cared about (as many of you don’t care about this post either, but it’s something I wanted and needed to do). About six months ago when I went to meet someone concerning some things that happened in Maryland and FT. Detrick, they pulled out a thick stack of papers from inside a folder with my name on it. Inside this stack of papers I saw many things that I hadn’t seen in months concerning myself and it stunted me a little bit.

From this folder appears the stack of papers and many of which I’m shown to be asked questions about to see if they really were as they sounded and a print out of ‘certain’ posts from my previous blog were printed out (roughly 9 pages worth of entries). From these blog entries came questions concerning who I was, what I was thinking, and why I posted such information without thinking before acting and at the time my answer was the same as it is now; I was a different person and was still slowly growing up (to slowly). Tonight I pull back out a copy of those entries this person had copies of and a certain couple entries intrigue me:

[November 8th, 2005] The weekend was filled with events such as moving out, becoming homeless, destroying an entire bedroom with urine, destroying the chance of selling a house, wasting 80 dollars on a movie we couldn’t even get into, actually getting into Jarhead, playing pool, goofing off with friends, etc. Perfect weekend…well, nothing is ever perfect, but about one of the best ones I can remember.

[November 29th, 2005] As you slowly fall asleep; pillow against the window; car turned on just to keep you warm for a few more minutes; cell phone in hand as you fall asleep waiting and hoping that someone will call; hoping that this is not how life is meant to be lived; cold and covered in a single blanket; slowly realizing you are stuck here for the night; this is my life for the time being.

[December 6th, 2005] It’s Tuesday; a wonderful day; a wonderful start; a wonderfully screwed up day already…

That was just the beginning. From that point on; the snow got heavier, the car felt slippery; the world felt like I was just in the middle of a never ending dream. Slowly watching the snow fall and the world so peaceful and at the same time; I’m missing the ability to sit down, watch a movie, drink hot chocolate, and wake up in the morning to find everything perfect again. Instead I’m forced to sleep amongst the amongst the snow; cold and worried about where I will sleep tomorrow night; what will I do when something goes wrong; it’s a fear and people have offered to help, but I refuse it every time. My mom as much as she “hates” me, she taught me never to accept help and if I’m going to fail, then I will fail due to my own mistakes and due to my own stubbornness.

It all goes back to the dream; driving down the road, watching the snow fall, peaceful and full of serenity; it’s perfect and exactly what everyone wanted…except me…I wanted another warm night, I wanted another night of sleeping comfortably (as comfortable as I can be in my car), I wanted another night to just be alone…So instead of accepting a warm couch to sleep on, I drove around until three or four AM and finally just passed out in a random parking lot because the snow was getting to thick and I was to tired to see properly.

It’s scary when you don’t know whats going to happen and it’s scary when you fear that tonight might be a little colder; a little harder; a little different than last night. I guess this is the life I have deserved; the opportunity to completely fail; the chance to fall completely flat on my face.

What those of you who weren’t readers at the time don’t understand is that these posts really showed a true showing of my frame of mind (not current, but then). Thinking back, I remember falling asleep in the car not wanting to ask for help, I remember those “perfect weekends,” and I remember all of my mistakes. It’s hard to think back and say if only things had been different things might have worked out…but things did work out.

They worked out exactly as they were suppose to and how they were intended to happen. Last year as you can tell from the above posts (primarily the first one) punishment didn’t occur in my mind, all that mattered was having a good time and enjoying myself. Now one year later I’m a completely new person, but we’ll get to that more towards the end of this post. Back then I had friends who could have cost me my life at any moment because of the things they were involved in and things I should have never been near. Not to mention psycho mothers following me around throwing accusations, repossession men coming after my car (home at the time), and just everything falling apart.

Backing up a little bit as I am getting a head of myself, life didn’t just up and change right after Christmas. My job with the Department of Defense ended on December 12th, 2005 due to incidents that will not be discussed in detail on a public blog, but it happened. I had no money, no job, and couldn’t afford to do anything and finally crawled back to my parents. I went home on roughly the 14th to stay until around the 22nd of December. I left because I didn’t like the idea of having rules governing my life nor did I like the fact that I had “no options” so I just up and left heading for South Carolina. I drove down to SC on Christmas Eve, stayed in a Hotel, met some interesting people and had some fun.

Christmas Day I went to visit my Grandparents, spent dinner there with them, and then went to see my mother’s ex husband. He offered me a place to live and a chance to start over with a roof over my head, food to eat each night, a computer to get work done on, and the ability to get my life back together again.

All sounds great eh? Well it should have been (oops…said should have been…it happened for a reason), but I choose a different way of handling the situation; doing nothing at all. I spent 4 months not really doing much except sitting around the house all day, hanging out with a couple people, and just being a slacker by staying up all night and sleeping all day.

I submitted resumes at first hoping for a chance, but being discouraged, I gave up basically and just said screw it. Not until around April did I decide to finally get off my butt and start really looking for a job. I lied to my mom’s ex-husband about having a job, cost him alot of money in cell phone bills, and alot of other long stories and then moved out and in with Caesi. From there my life started to pick up…

I moved in with Caesi, she helped me to gain that motivation again to make something of myself and gave me a reason to make something out of myself. Not to mention working with a counselor to help understand why I had done some of the things that I had done and how to prevent them in the future (ex: keeping myself from self-destruction). It all helped and over the past six months, I’ve started several projects, worked steady with one company (up until the Briarcliffe RV incident), and continued to grow as a person with ideas, goals, and dreams of what I want to do and who I want to be.

It’s kind of hard though…not to be the person that I am today…but to have to fall asleep at night thinking about the people that I hurt then and how I could have handled things different; but as I’ve said a countless number of times, life is a game of chance and I made all of those decisions at the time and now I handle them in the best manner I can and prevent them from happening again, but then again, no one is perfect nor does perfection even exist outside of facades.

Outside of the past, the future…The future is just as important as understanding the past and it’s what I’m working on now. I sit here with everything I really want sitting right around me (minus having my own apartment), I have tons of people who care about me, I’ve got my small group of friends, and I really can’t complain about the path my life has taken and I only look forward to the future that I can enjoy with those around me. I look forward to working with new people, I look forward to getting to know current people better, and I look forward to knowing and understanding myself to a deeper extent.

Conclusion…
It’s been roughly a year of changes and I just find it hard to believe how much has changed and how much it feels like the past year has just flown by at moments and stood still at others. I will never honestly be able to forget those who tormented me or those who helped me (or tried) and I will forever spend my life trying to memories of the past…but I don’t let these memories take over instead I use them as a chance to use as an example of what not to be and how I really should be living my life.

So with that said…Today is my 20th Birthday, and I will be on a plane tomorrow to Texas to spend time with my family (much blogging and photographs coming) and today I will be releasing some new information concerning future new projects, domains, how you can help, and where my future will lead. Also, I would like to let everyone know thats been asking, Yes the rumor that I’m moving next year is true. I will be moving to Aurora, Colorado in July in hopes of living off my current projects and getting a job in Denver in Application Development or Network Security.

But as for now…I’ve left enough blanks to not give out to much information concerning certain events, but at the same time given enough information for people to understand the change of a person over time. I hope people actually will take the time to read this even though it’s not the normal technical/nerdy blog but instead something a little bit more personal.

-N

This is a short video, with an introduction by CNet’s Tom Merritt, remembering James Kim and his work at CNet. It seems like Tom is barely holding it together in the clip.

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