This is just a quick post to let you know that, with the launch of Google+ Brand Pages, Get Paid to Write Online now has its own Google+ page. There’s not a lot there at the moment, but for those who prefer to get news of blog updates on that site, that’s where it will happen. My thinking at the moment, though this may change, is that I’ll share all GPTWO content on its page, while continuing to share selectively on my own personal Google+ profile. This feature is so new that it’s hard to say how it will develop. I’ve shared my initial thoughts here. If you’re interested in getting your own page, then check out this easy tutorial from Hesham Zebida. And if you’re a writer, come back and share your page with me so I can check it out.

I’ve been hanging around on Google+ for just under a week and so far I have to say I love it. G+ is Google’s new social network and I think it offers real advantages for work at home writers. I’m not going to review the site in detail here, as that’s been exhaustively covered by others. Instead, I’ll concentrate on where I see the benefits, in reverse order.

Searching with Sparks

Let’s start with Sparks, Google’s name for saved searches. As well as a bunch of pre-filled categories, you can make your own. Although people have criticized Sparks for being rather lacking, my personal experience has been positive. I’ve already used it to find content that generated post ideas. I think it works best when you’re specific – a search for ‘business travel’ is more useful than a search for the broader topic of ‘travel’.

Just Hanging Out

When I first went freelance, I used to take part in a weekly IM chat for writers – we had a great time! Hangouts feels the same, but with video. Obviously, you have to heave yourself out of your typical work at home uniform (mine’s a ratty old T-shirt and shorts) and make sure your hair’s tidy. But I think it’s a wonderful way to connect with other writers. You can only hang out with 10 people at anyone time. The Google engineers have been using this as a feedback tool, so you can see the potential.

Who’s in Your Circle?

Circles are my favorite part of G+ so far. Think of them as Twitter lists or Facebook friend lists, but they are much more useful than the former and much easier to put together than the latter. Name your circles (I have one for general writers and another for travel and lifestyle bloggers, as well as the default friends, family, following and acquaintances ones that Google provides.) I can share with everyone I know or with a select group – or even an individual. And the privacy controls are pretty good.

Are you on Google+ yet? What’s your impression of it? If you are, check out my G+ profile and say hi!

Check out more of my thoughts on Google+ on the Authopublisher blog: How Self Publishers Can Make the Most of Google+ and on Basic Blog Tips: Why I’m Loving Google+

Other resources:

• Google+: 50 Helpful Posts to Get You Started
• Getting Started with Google Plus
• Google plus – A Collaborative Document

(Image credit: Bruce Clay, Inc)

Google rocks my freelance writing world and I love them for it - is that such a bad thing?

I love Apple. I love Microsoft. I love Google.

I’m probably what you’d call a corporate…ahem, right?

Don’t get me wrong, I do my bit to support smaller organisations and I steer clear of any company that I truly believe isn’t providing a benefit to their customers or is in some way impacting in a particularly negative way on others, but when the big guys make things so easy, it’s difficult to not get sucked in – and to a certain extent, be in awe of them.

Of all of the large organisations that I use, Google is arguably the one I spend most time with.

Most people know Google as simply being the world’s most popular search engine, but the truth is that they offer over four dozen primary products, all of which are available for free – and that’s without looking at their more specialist ones.

The reason why I love Google is that ever since I discovered that they are so much more than a search engine, my freelance writing career has gone from strength to strength. It might just be a strange coincidence, but I like to put some of my success to date down to the following five products that are offered by Google.

1. Gmail / Googlemail

Simply put, I don’t think I’d be able to work without my Gmail account.

It might sound like a bit of a melodramatic statement, but I organise my whole day, week, month and year through Gmail, including both my personal and work lives.

What I like most about Gmail, aside from the fact it seamlessly integrates with a lot of the other products I use, is that I can set it up so that it retrieves my e-mails from my other accounts and allows me to view and reply to them from my Gmail inbox.

Some might think this isn’t a major selling point, but for someone who has three or four different e-mail accounts with various providers, I can safely say that the fact I can check them all in one place is a massive plus for me.

2. Calendar

To be a success as a freelance writer – or in fact in any vocation – I strongly believe that you need to have your working life in some type of order and for me, Google calendar meets my needs exactly.

I know plenty of people who live out of their paper calendars / diaries, but it just never works for me, largely because it means I have to carry around a diary with me wherever I go, along with everything else.

With the online calendar, I can schedule things whilst I’m actually at my computer, sync it to my iPhone and keep up-to-date with what I should be doing wherever I am.

3. Reader

I love reading blogs and getting involved in discussions and whilst I’ve got a small number that I visit regularly, there are dozens that I like to check in with when I get the opportunity.

To keep on track of all of the blogs that I follow, I use Google Reader, a service that not only allows me to see which blogs I’m subscribed to, but which gives me the title and a snippet of the text every time a new post goes live from the blogs that I’m subscribed to.

Plus, it gives me recommendations of blogs that I should follow, which is a fantastic feature and one that’s allowed me to discover some particularly useful and interesting blogs.

4. Alerts

The Alerts service that Google offers is one of the most recent ones that I’ve come to use – I didn’t even know it existed until I read Dana’s post here on Get Paid To Write Online about how Google Alerts is a great freelance writing tool.

The way the Alerts service works is by allowing you to setup an alert for a specific phrase and receive an e-mail every time that phrase is mentioned online.

Some people use it to track their own name and others to see if any of their work is being plagiarized. Whilst both are great ideas, I use it primarily to help me with ideas for articles and blog posts, as one of the clients I work for sees me deliver pieces each month on roughly the same topics.

It’s easy to think up a new idea or two by yourself, but when you’ve got to deliver two dozen different pieces, using a service like Google Alerts makes the whole process that extra bit easier by providing you with the one thing you need first and foremost – inspiration.

5. Images

I like to use images in most of my blog posts. Whether it’s for my own blog or a client’s, the use of the right image can enhance the post and compliment it perfectly.

Whilst in some instances it does require for a stock image to be purchased, more often than not there are suitable royalty free images available to use online – it’s just finding them that’s often the problem.

Fortunately, Google Images makes the process so simple that you can be presented with a screen of suitable images in a matter of seconds and all you have to do is go to the ‘Images’ section of Google’s search engine, click on the ‘Advanced Image Search’ link and then choose ‘labeled for reuse’ from the ‘Usage Rights’ dropdown box.

Enter your search terms, hit ‘Google Search’ and every image that’s returned has been marked by the author as being suitable for reuse (as long as you give credit to the author in the piece in which the image is used).

There’s no doubt that the above five Google products are the ones I use first and foremost – perhaps even more so than the search engine itself – but whilst writing this post I’ve realised that I actually utilize more of Google’s products than I first thought and Docs, Picasa, Trends, Translate, Earth and iGoogle are all used on somewhat of a regular basis.

And I can’t go without mentioning Chrome, my browser of choice, either.

I know it’s not particularly the right thing to do, declaring your love for such a major organisation, especially when companies of this type appear to be trying to dominate various industries, but am I the only one who relies so heavily on the wonder that is Google?

Image:  Alvar Lopez (Picasa Web Albums)

Have you checked out my recent post ‘It’s Time To Give Something Back To The Freelance Writing Community‘?  I’m answering your questions on freelance writing and business development – for free!

On the surface, Squidoo.com may look like a free way to create a minisite and share information with others. In its simplest form, that is exactly what it is. But there are a lot of other ways you can benefit from having a Squidoo lens.

First Page on Google

One of the big perks is that Squidoo lenses tend to do well on Google, especially if you optimize for a certain keyword. For example, I have a lens that is optimized for the keyword “make money writing”. It spends a lot of time on the first page now and the rest of the time is spent on the second page.

In order to get your lens on the first page you need to do several things. Here is a short list:

• Do some keyword research and make sure they are in the URL.
• Put the keyword in the main page title and then scatter it throughout the page.
• Make sure you have 4 modules at the minimum. The more modules you have, the better.
• Update it often. In the beginning, you will need to update it every day. Small changes count, such as deleting a sentence.
• Promote your lens whenever you can.

Newsletter Subscribers

You can use your lens to get newsletter subscribers. You can put your subscriber box in one of the text modules. This requires that you use an “iframe” command. You can find some information online on how to do that. Or, click on my link at the end of this post and I’ll send you some information.

Affiliate Marketing

I promote affiliate programs on my lenses. In the month of June, I made around $40. Yes, you can make money through the modules on Squidoo, but you can make a lot more if you sign up for the affiliate programs yourself and add them to your lens.

Show That you are an Expert

Another thing that a lens does is that it shows you are an expert at a particular subject. If you want to develop a reputation that you know a lot about something, you can research it and create a lens. This is a tool that you can use for self promotion.

*****
Katherine Huether is a freelance writer who loves creating Squidoo lenses. To view a list of her lenses visit http://www.squidoo.com/kathography

Now, we all know how long it’s supposed to take to get your site listed in the search engines, right? Well, guess what? The home page of this site is already listed in Google.  This was before I did any search engine submission. So how did it happen?

Simple – it’s because of Stumbleupon.  One of my friends stumbled the site and now it appears in the search engines.

Of course, there’s still work to do. I need to get some of the other posts and pages listed. That’s why I’ve added an archive page and why I will add a sitemap. (The archive is for readers and the sitemap is for search engines.) But it’s a good start, isn’t it?

A little submissiveness goes a long way, especially when you’re talking about website promotion. Once you’ve finished all the on-page optimization of your site, by doing keyword research, keyword placement and creating a sitemap, it’s time to get the word out to Google, Yahoo, MSN and others. Haven has a tip on search engine submission, which has the submission addresses for Google, Yahoo and MSN. As Haven points out, you only need to submit the main – or index – page of your site; if you’ve got a good sitemap, the search engines will do the rest – eventually.

Beyond Google, Yahoo and MSN

It can take a while for your site to show up on the ‘Big 3′ (Google is a particularly tough nut to crack), so there are a few strategies you can use to improve your chances. Google, Yahoo and MSN also crawl other search engines, so submitting to some of the lesser known ones (which are likely to list you faster) will help to get you on their list. A resource I found really useful was WebCEO, free software that automates website management and tracking. It includes keyword and page optimisation tools and a very good submission tool. (See Gracepub’s review)

What else can I do to promote my website?

Glad you asked. You can also submit your website to relevant directories, and I know of another free resource that will help you to do it. The SEO friendly directory list catalogues directories by interest and country and includes PageRank information for each directory listed. That means you can decide which directories are worth bothering with. I started with the 9s and 8s and worked my way down to the 3s and subnmitted my site to so many directories that I’ve forgotten which ones they are. Be warned, this will take time, as in many cases you’ll have to submit your site manually. But if you’re listed by external websites, Google, Yahoo and MSN will start to like you.

How can I make the most of this site promotion strategy?

Resubmit your site every six months to keep the listing fresh and practice deep submission – submitting links to individual pages that you think are important. (Samishra has a good post on this.) This works for blogs, too. I have submitted the URLs for most of my posts and they show up on Google (if you click on ‘show omitted results’).

One final tip: you might want to set up a disposable email address just for site submission, because you will get a LOT of email. You’ll also find that you’ve been subscribed to lots of site promotion newsletters, most of which are a waste of time, IMHO. I set up a new one on my domain and once I’ve confirmed my directory listing, I can then ignore everything else that comes to that address.

========================================================
There is a wide range of web hosting services which are provided by many online companies. These companies are also providing a unique range of website design collections for their customers along with cheapest domain name registration. Many web hosters prefer linux shared hosting because of its less cost with higher security. These companies are also providing internet marketing services to their customers for promoting their websites. These companies are also updating their customers by latest internet marketing information for making better future strategies. A new very cheap and revolutionary service of internet phone is also provided by these hosting companies.
========================================================

Search engine optimization (SEO) costs money. There are lots of people out there who will charge you lots of money to make sure that Google, Yahoo and MSN will find your website. But when I wanted to increase my search engine ranking a few months ago, I didn’t have the budget to pay anyone to do it for me. What I needed was a do-it-yourself approach to website promotion. I did some reading, tried a few things and realised that it was easy to promote my site myself if I could devote a couple of hours a week to doing it properly. This is how I started:

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a way of making it easy for Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines to find and index your pages. The easier it is for search engines to find your pages, the more likely it is that someone will come to your website and offer you work or buy a product you’ve offered for sale. SEO increases traffic to your site or blog and, in the case of WritingUp, makes it more likely that someone will click on your ads and rack up those Adsense earnings.

How do I optimize my website?

If you’re launching a site from scratch, you start with keyword research. If you’re updating an old site, start with keyword research. If you want to bring traffic to your blog (and can write about anything), start with … (you get the idea). You need to think about what keywords best describe your website, business or blog and what similar keywords people are looking for on Google, Yahoo, MSN and others.

What will keyword research cost me?

Zilch. Zip. Nada. Bupkes. You can pay if you want to, but there are a few free tools you can use that will work well if you’re on a tight budget. They are:

Overture
Wordtracker/Overture
Adwords analyzer

These tools are simple to use. You type the keywords you want into the form, enter and you get back a list of related keywords or the number of times those keywords have been searched in the past month. Once you’ve identified the keywords that are best for you, you need to put them into your page content. This is covered in Part 2 of the series.
========================================================
The wireless internet anywhere concept becomes feasible due to very rapid and high development in wireless communication. Due to this development people are launching websites and selection of web design is becoming critical issue fro them. After selecting the design they move towards domain name registration for their websites. After this, there is a need of web site hosting to launch the website. But, the web owners of image based sites are trying to get best image hosting for their website along with high efficient backup services. But, then there is a need of promotion of websites with which hosting companies are also providing search engine optimization services.
========================================================