http://www.articletrader.com/ Articles at ArticleTrader en-us http://www.articletrader.com/internet/seo/getting-links-to-your-website.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/seo/getting-links-to-your-website.html Tue, 18 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0600
Write Your Way In
The easiest and fastest way to get links from other websites to your own is simply to place the link there yourself! Yes, it can be done. What you do is to write an article relevant to your own website. Then go to an Article Directory and post your article there. You can post your article in as many article directories as you wish, the more the better. You may also want to make slight variations to your article submitted to different article directories, so that they do not come out looking exactly alike. Your article should provide valuable content that is useful to readers. It is not the place to promote yourself.

That comes separately. In most article directories, you are provided a box called "bio" or "resource box". This is where you sell yourself. Write a short description of yourself that is relevant to your article and your website, and at the end of it, include a link to your website. That backlink to your website is the entire purpose of the whole exercise.

If the article directory does not have a bio or resource box, then include the bio with the backlink as the final paragraph of your article. Reject any article directory that does not allow you to link back to your website.

You can find article directories by simply going to Google and search for "Article Directory". Prioritize on article directories with a PageRank of 5 or 6, as getting your articles listed there will help get your website found by the search engine faster. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the higher a website's PageRank, the more often Google crawls and index it. Getting one PageRank 6 website to link to your website will ensure Google index your website in 3 days. If you can get a PageRank 7 website to link to your website, more power to you, Google will index you within 24 hours.

I can prove to you how well it works too. Go to Google and look for "Guide to earning a living without holding a job", and you will see HappyJoblessGuy listed at the top of the ranking. Below the HappyJoblessGuy website are other articles I have written, now showing in the article directories. The appearance of my articles in the article directories has boosted the popularity of my website to the number one ranking.

Writing articles to the article directories is my preferred way to promote my website because it is entirely free, and I can recycle what I have written for my own website to be submitted to the directories. All I have to do now is to keep writing new articles and posting them, to maintain my position.

Buy Your Way In
If you find that writing articles for the Internet is too tough for you, then the other option available is to buy your way in. To do this, look for a reputable link broker - a person or website that buys and sell links. Be prepared to pay about $150 per month to get one link from a PageRank 7 website to yours. You only need to buy the link for one month, because within that time, Google would have been able to find and index your website. As earlier mentioned, a link from a PageRank 7 website will get you listed in 24 hours, but you get to keep the link to your site for a full month. Of course, if you buy a link from a site with a lower PageRank, you'll need to pay less, but you have a longer wait before Google indexes you.

Where to buy links? Go to Google and search for "Link Broker" or "Text Ad Links" and a whole list will come out.

Between the two choices above, my preference is the first. After all, it is free. However, I am just showing you the options available. You can jolly well try both.

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Timothy Tye has been earning from the web for the past four years. He shares tips on how to earn a living without holding a job from his website, HappyJoblessGuy. For more details about getting links to one's website, go to: http://www.happyjoblessguy.com/getting-links-to-your-website.htm

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/entertainment/photography/light-and-illumination-in-photography.html http://www.articletrader.com/entertainment/photography/light-and-illumination-in-photography.html Mon, 17 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0600
If you ask me to name the most important thing in photography, I would say light. Without light, there is no illumination. In a room without illumination, everything is pitch black. You can't see a thing. Taking a shot - assuming your camera allows you to - produces a solid black photograph. You switch on a lamp, and you send light across the room, and everything is illuminated. Now you can take a photograph and show something in the picture. You realize that your eye and the camera both need light and illumination to work.

Photography is about capturing light and recording it, whether on paper, or more frequently now, in a digital format. As a photographer, you control the amount, intensity and duration of light required to create the picture. The apparatus used to draw with light is called the camera, which comes from camera obscura, a box with a hole for light to pass through and strike the backwall of it. The name "camera obscura" actually means dark chamber, and indeed, the word "camera" is still used in some languages such as Italian to mean "room" or "chamber".

There is a saying that the camera never lies. Actually, the camera is rarely capable of telling the whole truth. Without even going to what the camera shows, it often cannot even get the brightness right. Have you ever taken a photograph, and the shot seems brighter or darker than what you remember the scene to be? With a digital camera, you can even see then and there how distant the difference between what you see in front of you and what the camera recorded. Why is that so?

The camera and our eyes work in pretty much the same way. The difference between the two is that our eyes are better able to handle wide differences in light intensity. For example, if you take a photograph from inside a room with an open window, you may get the room properly exposed but the window is too bright, or the window looks right but the room too dark. Yet our eyes don't have such a problem: they can see everything inside the room and outside the window properly exposed. The reason is, our eyes can compensate for the wide difference in light whereas the camera cannot.

Secondly, our eye is more sensitive to light than most of the amateur/prosumer cameras. In a dark environment, such as inside a movie theater, our eyes can still adjust to the lack of light and allow us to see the rows of chairs and people. Most cameras would have difficulty focusing under such a demanding condition.

So are we saying that the eye shows reality but the camera doesn't? Neither is capable of showing us reality all the time. What our eye and the camera do is that they provide their interpretation of reality. What we see with our eye and what we see with the camera are what they are capable of showing us. As an example:

Switch on a fan. You see the blades start to turn. Soon the blades become a blur. Now aim a camera at the fan, set the camera to the highest shutter speed and take a shot of the fan. The picture comes out showing the blades seemingly motionless. Why is it that our eyes show the blades blur while the camera shows them still?

On the other hand, have you seen photographs taken in crowded public places such as railway stations or airports, where the people seem to be blur? Your eyes never show you people as a motion blur, and yet that's how they look like in the photo. How is that possible?

Our eyes are capable of showing a moving object as sharp, up to a certain speed. Beyond that, it becomes a blur. The camera, on the other hand, will record the object as sharp or blur, depending on the shutter speed that we set. Our eyes and the camera both provide an interpretation of reality, but they interpret reality in their own way. Moreover, our eyes see things in continuous motion while the camera captures a moment.

Have you seen a photo where people appear as motion blur? Have you seen a photo where the subject is sharp but the background of off-focus? Or a photo of a stream where the water become a milky blur? Or an ocean where the rolling waves are frozen? These are all possible with a camera, even though reality doesn't look like that at all. And yet, often such pictures are regarding as being very well taken.

That takes us back to the art of photography. It is after all, an art form. Art doesn't have to look like reality. Art can be very unreal as still look pleasing. As a photographer, your goal is to create photographs that are pleasing to the eye. The next time someone tells you, "Oh, your photo looks so real!" thank them, but be mindful that none of your photograph - not a single one - is 100% the real thing, but only an interpretation on it.

What we've learned in this article:
- Our eye and the camera need light and illumination to work.
- Our eye and the camera do not record reality, but provide an interpretation of reality.
- Our eye and the camera interpret reality differently.
- Our goal as photographer is to create images that are pleasing to the eye.

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Timothy Tye is a travel writer and photographer with many websites on travel and photography. He provides tips to take better travel photographs at http://www.travelphotographyworkshop.com. To read the latest on light and illumination in photography, go to: http://www.travelphotographyworkshop.com/light-and-illumination-in-photography.htm


Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/travel/destinations/tourist-attractions-in-the-singapore-chinatown.html http://www.articletrader.com/travel/destinations/tourist-attractions-in-the-singapore-chinatown.html Mon, 17 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0600
Today Singapore is a cosmopolitan metropolis where people of different cultures live together. In a country where the population is predominantly Chinese, Singapore nonetheless still have a section called Chinatown. It has been preserved and restored as a tourist attraction, and draws visitors from far and wide looking to experience instant Asia. Yet even in Chinatown, one can still find mosques and Hindu temples as well as churches.

There are many Chinese temples within the Singapore Chinatown. The biggest and one of the oldest is Thian Hock Keng Temple. It was dedicated to the Taoist goddess Ma Cho Po, also called Matsu, the Mother of the Heavenly Sages. Matsu is the patron goddess of sailors, and temples dedicated to her is commonly found where there are new Chinese settlements. Followers pray to her for safe passages across the turbulent waters. This is especially relevant for the early settlers to Singapore, having newly arrived after charting the choppy South China Sea.

The doors into the Thian Hock Keng Temple are embellished with ornate paintings of door gods, the sentinels into Taoist temples. Also seen are tigers and lions. The door gods and beasts are intended to keep evil spirits at bay. The main shrine is dedicated to Matsu, while secondary shrines and pagodas on both sides are dedicated to various immortalized personalities, including Confucious, the Bodhisattva Sangharama, Governor Kai Zheng, Great Generals Da Er Ye Bai, and City Gods. The Thian Hock Keng Temple, like so many architectural masterpieces, are built without a single nail used. The entire structure is supported on iron and wooden posts.

Along the same road as Thian Hock Keng Temple is the Al-Abrar Mosque. Also known as Masjid Al-Abrar, Kuchu Palli and Masjid Chulia, the Al-Abrar Mosque is an Indian Muslim mosque, and one of the oldest mosques in Singapore. The name Kuchu Palli means "hut mosque", due to the mosque's rather modest structure.

Al-Abrar Mosque has been at Telok Ayer Street for a long while, even before the land on the opposite side of Telok Ayer Street was reclaimed. It was here that the Chulias who arrived from the Coromandel coast of South India settled.

There was already a makeshift mosque on the site of the Al-Abrar Mosque as early as 1827. A brick structure was built to replace the hut mosque in around 1850-1855. In 1890, the trustee was granted a 999-year lease on the land. In 1910, five trustees were appointed to the board of the Al-Abrar Mosque. They are the same trustees for the Jamae Mosque and the Nagore Durgha Shrine.

The Al-Abrar Mosque occupies an area equal to the width of three shophouse. Although it follows the alignment of the street, it also manages to face Mecca.

The architecture is Indian-Islamic, reflecting its original owners. There was little change to the appearance of the mosque, with only minor repairs done in the 1950's and mid-1980's. However, in 1986 and 1989, major renovations were carried out that changed the appearance of the mosque as we see it today. Nevertheless, the changes were sensitive to the original style.

Going to the other end of the road from Al-Abrar Mosque, passing the Thian Hock Keng Temple again, we arrive at the Nagore Durgha Shrine. The Nagore Durgha is a shrine to a Muslim saint from southern India, particularly the Chulia people, which are Muslim merchants and moneylenders from South India's Coromandel Coast. It is similar to the Nagore Durgha Shrine in Penang and is also dedicated to the Muslim Saint, Shahul Hamid Durgha. The Nagore Durgha Shrine in Singapore was built around 1828-1830, likely later than the Penang shrine. The architecture blends Classical and Indian Muslim motifs. The Nagore Durgha was built to commemorate the visit of a Muslim holy man.

The land on which the shrine was built was donated by a man by the name of Kaderpillai in 1827, with a rather curious condition attached: that it should not to be used for a building of wood or attap. Hence, the structure was of bricks. The facade consists of two arched windows flank an arched doorway, with columns in between. At the corners are 14-tier minarets. At the time of writing, the Nagore Durgha Shrine is fenced up and awaiting a proper restoration work to be carried out on it.

One of the biggest Hindu temples in Singapore is located in Chinatown. Sri Mariamman Temple at South Bridge Road was founded by Narayana Pillay in 1827, a government clerk who arrived in Singapore from Penang aboard the same ship carried Stamford Raffles. Initially, the Sri Mariamman Temple was only a small attap hut with the small statue of the deity in the main sanctum. Later on, the temple was expanded when an Indian landowner Seshasalam Pillay donated some land to it.

The present temple building was constructed in 1843 by ex-convicts from Madras who happened to be skilled craftsmen. It was dedicated to the goddess Mariamman, who has power to protect against disease and death. The Singapore Sri Mariamman Temple was a place for immigrants from South India to find shelter before they could get permanent living quarters. Being a temple built by the South Indians, the Sri Mariamman Temple was built in the South Indian Dravidian style. The most outstanding feature of the Singapore Sri Mariamman Temple is its ornately decorated tower, or gopuram. Incidentally, Pagoda Street, the road just beside the Sri Mariamman Temple, was erroneously named because the authorities mistook the gopuram for a pagoda!

As we walk through Chinatown, admire the well-preserved shophouses. Note the corridors called Five-Foot Ways. These were created to keep pedestrians out of the elements. According to popular belief, Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore provided the idea to create such corridors. Today they are enjoyed by tourists and locals as another element that makes Singapore a fascinating destination.

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Timothy Tye explores and documents the tourist attractions of the world in EarthDocumentary, http://www.earthdocumentary.com. To know more about Singapore, go to: http://www.earthdocumentary.com/singapore_travel_guide.htm


Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/travel/destinations/exploring-angkor-wat.html http://www.articletrader.com/travel/destinations/exploring-angkor-wat.html Mon, 17 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0600
The name Angkor Wat is the modern Khmer name of the ruin, not its original name. It means "City Temple" or "Capital Temple", from the two words, "Angkor", which is the vernacular form of the word nokor, itself derived from the Sanskrit word nagara, meaning "capital", and "wat" which appears in Khmer and Thai meaning "temple". It is not know what is the original name of Angkor Wat. It was known as Preah Pisnulok, after the posthumous title of Suryavarman II, during the 14th and 15th century, when it was re-used as a Theravada Buddhist sanctuary. By the time the first Westerner set foot there, it was already known as Angkor Wat.

Angkor Wat has been visited by Western explorers and missionaries as early as the 16th century. One of the first to arrive was Antonio da Magdalena, a Portuguese monk who reached Angkor in 1586. Nevertheless Angkor Wat remained largely unknown to the outside world until the publication of the travel notes of Henri Mouhot who visited and documented it in the mid 19th century. Mouhot is credited as being the person who brought the world's attention to Angkor Wat.

Angkor Wat was constructed during the reign of King Suryavarman II, who reigned from 1113 to 1150 AD. Work on Angkor Wat may have been interrupted or stopped when he died - the bas-reliefs in the Angkor Wat galleries show differing standards of quality, those of inferior quality may have been executed at a later time, long after the temple had been completed. Originally constructed as a Hindu temple dedicated to Vishnu, Angkor Wat became a Theravada Buddhist monument some time around the 16th century, and earned the word "Wat" to its name. Construction of Angkor Wat probably began during the reign of Suryavarman II, and continue after his demise. The carving of the bas-reliefs continued long after Angkor Wat was constructed, although the later carvings were far inferior to those executed during Suryavarman II's reign. The whole project took 30 years to complete, rivalling in scale to the pyramids of Egypt. To appreciate the composition of Angkor Wat, it is necessary to recognize the repetitive elements of the architecture.

unlike almost all other Khmer ruins, Angkor Wat faces west instead of east. It is designed to represent Mount Meru, the home of the gods in Hinduism. Scholars believe that Angkor Wat may have been Suryavarman II's funerary temple, which would require a reverse orientation from the non-funerary temples. Further evidence comes from the bas-reliefs, which are arranged counter-clockwise around the temple rather than clockwise. Another theory put forward by scholars is that Angkor Wat was originally dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu, who is associated with the west.

Angkor Wat is so ingeniously designed that one can only view all its five towers from special angels. It took me close to twenty minutes to make one full circle around it. I have visited Angkor Wat many times during my visits to Siem Reap, but I can't say I have fully explored it. There is just so much to cover that you just need to make a few trips to overcome fatigue.

The enormity of Angkor Wat is mind boggling. Consider these statistics: area occupied, 210 hectares; width of moat, 200 meters; height of tallest tower, 65 meters; the enclosure walls measures 5.5 kilometers! The area occupied by the temple itself measures 332 x 258 meters. That's nearly 9 hectares - the size of an airport terminal.

We would enter Angkor Wat from the west, unlike other Angkor temples which would be entered from the east. This gives the belief that Angkor Wat was originally built as a funerary temple by Suryavarman II for himself, as the elements associated with death is orientated in mirror image to the living. Few Angkor temples faces west, the notable include Phimai in northeast Thailand, which faces southeast, and Preah Vihear, which faces north. At Angkor itself, two of the temples at Preah Pithu as well as the Vishnu temple at Preah Khan face west.

Depending on what sort of photography you are looking for, the best times to visit Angkor Wat is at sunrise, at afternoon, and at sunset. There are two man-made lily ponds in front of Angkor Wat, of which the one on the left is bigger and offers a better view. During sunrise, you should position yourself somewhere in front of the left pond (where it can get very crowded). As the sun rises, try to get it between the prasats (towers).

Once the sun has risen high (9:00am - 10:00am), it's time to go inside Angkor Wat, as the grounds outside will start getting hot. If you have the patience to explore it systematically, then the way to do it is anti-clockwise beginning from the West Gallery. Scroll down to Exploring Inside Angkor Wat to explore the bas-reliefs.

As Angkor Wat faces west, it will be challenging trying to get a good shot of the front facade in the morning. You'd have better luck in the afternoon, preferably after 3:00pm, when the sun is on one side. Then you'd get the front of Angkor Wat illuminated, just like the photograph at the top of this page. It will be an added bonus, of course, if there's blue sky. Plan to visit Angkor Wat during the dry season, around January-March, for greater likelihood of blue skies.

For more information on Angkor Wat, visit also http://www.asiaexplorers.com/cambodia/angkor_wat.htm



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Timothy Tye explores and documents the tourist attractions of the world. Visit his website at http://www.earthdocumentary.com and http://www.worldgreatestsites.com


Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/seo/google-spider-and-pagerank.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/seo/google-spider-and-pagerank.html Fri, 14 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0600
To make sense of this massive entangled heap of threads, we use search engines such as Google to find what we want. We go to the Google search engine, we type in what we want to find, and it serves us a list of results. Have you questioned how Google does it?

Google uses a program that browses through the World Wide Web to find, index and compile the content. Just as a spider crawls through the web in the garden, the program used to crawl through the World Wide Web is also called a "spider". A spider program, also called a web crawler and a web spider, is used by all the Search Engines to look for content and compile them.

If you want your website or webpage to come up when someone uses the Search Engine, you want to make sure the web spider has crawled your website. To achieve that, there has to be a link from some other website to your website. Websites that are standing alone never appears in the search rankings. That's not want you want. You want people to find your website, and to find it repeatedly.

On the Internet today, there are millions and millions of websites. Some are linked to another while others are alone. A link is achieved when you link to somebody, when somebody links to you, or when you link both ways. This linkage, called hyperlink, is a very important component of the Internet, for it allows the spider to reach your website or webpage, and ultimately provide a ranking to it. Websites that don't link to anybody, and nobody links to, are standing alone, and are virtually ignored by the spider. Quite simply, they are out of reach.

What is a web spider? It is a program or automated script that browses through the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner. The process of browsing through the pages is called web crawling or web spidering.

All the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. have their own web spiders. Google's spider is called Googlebot. There are two types of Googlebot, in fact, called deepbot and freshbot. The deepbot is a spider that tries to follow every link on your webpage. It brings the information back to the Google indexers to analyze and index. The freshbot is a spider that crawls through the web looking for new content, and may visit your website frequently.

In order to determine the importance of every website on the Internet, Google devised a ranking system, called PageRank. The name PageRank is a patented trademark of Google - the patent went to Stanford University, where the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, developed it. PageRank ensures that the most important websites are duly accorded its place on the Internet. Every page of every website on the web is assigned a PageRank from 0 to 10, with 0 being the least important, and 10 being the most. Every new website starts at 0, and tries to work its way up.

How do the spiders work? I am simplifying things, but basically, the spider starts from the websites with the highest ranking, say PageRank 10, and work its way down towards PageRank 0. Pages with PageRank 10 gets enormous attention from the spiders - the freshbot spider might visit it many, many times in an hour. On the other hand, PageRank 0 sites might not get any attention at all. What the spiders do is, they read through a page, starting from the top left and ending at the bottom right. If they encounter a hyperlink, they'll follow that link to the next page, and start reading there. What you want, is for the spider to follow a hyperlink from someone's website to your website. It doesn't help you if you place a link from your website to someone's website - the link must come from somebody else to you.

When someone links to your website, that page that carries the link, gives a "ballot" to your webpage. The more vote you collect, the higher your PageRank. And votes are not equal. A webpage that has a high PageRank throws out a higher vote than pages with low PageRank. If you can get important pages to link to you, you earn their strong votes, elevating your webpage's PageRank position. At the same time, you do not generously link to any websites, because you bleed away your PageRank in doing so. In short, you want incoming links from high PageRank webpages, and you do not want to give outgoing links to anybody.

This is a mistake that I made in the first few years of starting my website AsiaExplorers. I link to anybody and everybody who asks me to link to them. Now I am very careful who I link to.

It is enormously difficult to reach PageRank 10. In fact, the only website I can think of with a PageRank 10 ranking is the Google homepage itself. Yahoo, MSN, Dell and Apple Computer homepages all carry PageRank 9. These are some of the biggest players on the Internet. Most of the important websites have PageRank between 4 and 6. It is your goal therefore to reach that level. And mind you, it gets harder and harder to go from one PageRank to another. PageRank uses a scale similar to the Richter Scale.

A fast way to view the PageRank of any page on the web is to download the Google Toolbar, and the PageRank of the page you load will be displayed. Just use the Google search engine, and search for "Google Toolbar".

Understanding how Google spider and PageRank work help tremendously in optimizing our website, making it easier for the search engines to find it.


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Timothy Tye began earning an income from the web four years ago. Now he writes full time for the Internet, which allows him to earn an income without holding a job. He believes that anybody can do it and shares useful tips and knowledge in his website, http://www.happyjoblessguy.com. For his article on Google spider and PageRank, visit also http://www.happyjoblessguy.com/google-spider-and-pagerank.htm.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/self-improvement/motivation/dont-you-just-hate-mondays.html http://www.articletrader.com/self-improvement/motivation/dont-you-just-hate-mondays.html Fri, 14 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0600
If you disdain Mondays, you are not alone. It affects millions of people worldwide. And it's nothing to do with the type of job you hold: many people holding rather "pleasant" jobs do not look forward to the approach of Monday either.

Why do people hate Mondays?

Different people have given me different answers, but generally, it boils down to one reason: Monday represents the sacrifice of personal freedom for the sake of financial survival. A day or two of rest puts us in Relax Mode, and we abhor the very thought that our Relax Mode is ending.

But why do we have to go to work on Monday anyway?

In order to keep the job.
In order to earn the salary.
In order to pay the bills.
In order to survive in today's society.

If you don't realize how silly that is, listen to this: When a person says he is looking for a job, I tell you, he isn't looking for a job. If you give him a job without a pay, do you think he will take it? No sir, what he is looking for, is the opportunity to trade his time and energy and skill in exchange for money. Why then, does a person say he is looking for a job, when in fact he is looking for regular money? Because society has conditioned him to accept that the only acceptable way of getting regular money is to trade his time, energy and skill for it. If instead of a job, you offer him regular money, would he accept it? You bet he would! Unfortunately society doesn't work that way. In fact, society has us believing there is no such thing as regular money without a job. So much so that a jobless person is regarded with sympathy, if not contempt.

If you say everybody should accept his lot, go to work and bear with it, you are exhibiting herd mentality. If the whole village says the world is flat, do you accept that, or do you continue to believe that it is round? Just because everybody believes something or does something, doesn't mean it is the best thing to do. If it is, why do we hate Mondays, why do we look forward to public holidays, why do we wish our annual leave is longer? It's because humans are not made to work.

I believe God created us for a better purpose than simply to work for a living. I think God would be very disappointed that we waste the precious life on earth working for money, when we should be spending it edifying the human race. How do we "edify the human race"? By creating things of value, things of beauty, things that help people, including writing an article like this one that helps people realize their purpose of living. At the very least, we should be enjoying this life rather than spending it in exchange for money.

Do you love your job? If you say yes, would you be willing to hold the job without pay? If you say yes to that, then you are indeed filling your time doing something you are passionate about. You should continue doing it, whether or not it pays money. If, however, you don't love your job, or you love it but you wouldn't do it without pay, then you should seek to create a new stream of income so that one day you can either quit the job you hate, or work simply for the love of it. In either case, you should be working for the love of the work, not because you depend on it. Does that make sense?

I acknowledge that today's society is powered by money. Electricity may keep a lot of things running, but money is the ultimate fuel that keeps everything - including electricity - running.

If you're looking for an alternative income, you should have no difficulty finding one. Snap a finger and twenty will line up outside your door. There's always Multi-Level Marketing. Then there's sales, of everything from pots and pans to insurance, investment instruments, and encyclopedias. Before you sign up to an alternative form of income, ask yourself this important question: are you going to love that new job? If it's no or if you're once again trading your time/energy/skill for money, don't go any further!

Through my website HappyJoblessGuy, I teach people to earn an income by building their own website. However, a web-based income is by no means the only way to earn a living without holding a job. There may be others, but I am sharing this method with you because it works for me. I am not saying it is the easiest thing to do. Like everything else, you need to develop a skill. But if you can spend a few years in college just to acquire a skill, so that you can exchange that skill (plus your time) for money, you should be intelligent enough to acquire the skill to build a website that earns you money. Always build websites that support your passion, not just for the sake of earning money. Do not imitate me by putting up another travel website or living-skill website, rather look at yourself, discover your own passion, and create a website where your passion is celebrated.

When I started my first serious website AsiaExplorers four years ago, I wasn't able to articulate back then that I did it as a new stream of income. Instead, I did it because I was passionate about exploring Asia. Now it earns regular money, a byproduct of the passion I invested into it. Isn't that the grooviest thing, to do what you love to do, and earn money for it? I suppose it would have earned even more, had I known how to make the website more optimized to earn money. That's lesson learned as I move on to new websites.

Many people hate Mondays. If you're one of them, do something about it. Start today.


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Timothy Tye writes articles to help people earn an income from the web. For his other articles, visit HappyJoblessGuy. Read also about Monday blues on his website.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/ppc-advertising/building-a-profit-making-website.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/ppc-advertising/building-a-profit-making-website.html Mon, 10 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0600 1. You can sell your own products and services
2. You can sell other people's products and services
3. You can advertise other people's products and services
Of the many, many ways you can make your website earn money, the one I am going to touch on today is “how to advertise other people's products and services on your website”. The advantage of advertising other people’s products and services on your website is, you don’t have to create your own products or services to sell. To me, it is quite simply the best answer. You can write about anything, and your website will still earn you a continuous income.
There are many ways to add advertisements to your website, but in my opinion, the best is Google AdSense. It isn’t the easiest to get accepted, but once you get in, you are on your way to earning an income online.
I am sure you have heard of Google. The majority of us use it for its Search Engine. More than half of all searches conducted on the Internet today are done through that bizarrely simple-looking homepage of Google. However, behind that simple front is one of the most sophisticated technology on the web. If you're a web publisher - that's to say, someone with a website – you have the opportunity to harness that technology for your own benefit by enrolling to Google AdSense.
What is Google AdSense
Google AdSense is the ad serving program run by Google. It places text, image and some times video advertisements on websites that enroll to it. You are paid when someone clicks on the ads appearing on your webpage.
How does Google AdSense work
Where do the advertisements come from? On the reverse side of the coin from AdSense is Google's advertising tools called AdWords. Businesses wanting to advertise through Google enrols to it. Their advertisements appear in two places: as "Ads by Google" in websites participating in AdSense, and as "sponsored links" on Google's search results.
As a webmaster, you are concerned about the "Ads by Google" that you can place on your website, because it generates money for you every time someone clicks on it. Those who are serious about earning from the web often work hard to maximize their AdSense income, and we'll look into that in future chapters. There is also other programs similar to AdSense, but if you can get AdSense, the other programs are all secondary.
Let's straight away enrol into AdSense, so that you can start putting the ads on your website. I am assuming here that you do have a website to enrol, otherwise go through the earlier chapters to read about how you can go about setting one up.
Now let's get on with the business.

To set up your Google AdSense account, go to the Google homepage and click on Advertising Program. Then click to Google AdSense and follow the steps to sign up. I will leave you to set up the account and submit the application. Google will evaluate your website to determine whether or not they will to enroll you. You will receive a notification from Google after a few days of submitting your application, informing you whether or not Google has approved or rejected your application. Yes, Google may reject your application if they find that the website you show them is not suitable for their ads. For that reason, it may be to ensure you have some content on your website before attempting to apply with Google.

Assuming that after submitting your application, you received the happy news that Google accepted your application, then you're in. The bad news is, now the real work has just begun!

As you probably expect by now, putting up a website and throwing advertisements into it is just the tip of the iceberg. Sure, you now have a profit-making website, but if you leave it as it is, the amount of profit you make is going to be minuscule.

I will cover the steps to take to optimize your website to make a profit. For now, I would urge you to proceed to set up your AdSense account and get familiar with it.


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Timothy Tye began earning an income from the web when he launched his first website four years ago. Since then, he has started several successful websites that allow him to earn an income without holding a job. He believes that anybody can do it and shares useful tips and knowledge in his website, HappyJoblessGuy.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/web-design/tools-to-build-your-first-website.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/web-design/tools-to-build-your-first-website.html Mon, 10 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0600
If you intend to earn serious, long-time income from websites, my first advise to you, first of all, is to get your own domain name. Do not have your website hosted under someone else’s domain. You only benefit him, not yourself.

If you were to ask me, what are the tools you need to build a great website, I can count them with the fingers of one hand. You can probably bypass knowing any of the tools by hiring a web programmer to build your website for you, but that is hardly the way to do things, if you are serious about earning an income from the web. Although you do not need to know programming in detail, you need to have some basic web knowledge in order to build your own website. Without that, you are like a captain of a ship who cannot tell stern from starboard.

The first tool you need to build your website is a HTML Editor.
A HTML Editor is a software application for you to write the web pages. You can use a WYSIWYG software that shows you exactly how your webpage will appear. However, I encourage you to learn a bit of coding, as it will come in handy when you are ready to optimize your website.
There are several brand of HTML Editor in the market, including Microsoft Frontpage, Dreamweaver and so on. Find one that you can use comfortably.

The second tool you need is knowledge of HTML Codes.
HTML Codes are instructions to tell the Internet how to display or format your pages. Get a book or get someone to teach you. Go on the web and search for a free tutorial. The basic HTML codes you need to know are:
• Title
• Body
• Head
• Html
• Headers (H1, H2, H3, etc.)
• Bold
• Italic
• Underline
• Hyperlink
• Table
In addition to the above, it would do you good to learn how to format size and colour of your font, background, border. More advanced features such as CSS would be helpful too, but are still all together very easy, that even a dummy could learn it (so if you have to, find a book for dummies and learn all about it).
The third tool to build your website is a Domain Name.
As mentioned earlier, you should get your own domain name. The domain name, also called the hostname or sitename, will be your web presence. It is your brand. To use your website to earn an income, I would suggest you go for a “dot com” domain name. It is the most popular, hence, the most difficult to get.

You probably will not get the first domain name of your choice, and will need to try a few times before landing on one that is still available. This is a very important exercise, so take all the time you need.

Registering and keeping a domain name will cost you approximately US$10 per year or even lower. That is peanuts if you can earn the amount back. When you register a domain, choose a name that is descriptive. As far as possible, avoid using proper names – i.e. your own personal name, your child’s name, etc – unless you happen to be a celebrity, such a domain name is simply meaningless to visitors. To drive quick traffic into your web, try to get a domain name that reflects the activity of your website.


The fourth tool for your website is Web hosting.
Web hosting is space that you rent on a server to host your website. You do not need to purchase a server - you don't even need to know how a server works. The web hosting company usually takes care of the technical details for you, and provide you a web-based control panel to upload your pages.

What’s the difference between domain name and web hosting? Think of web hosting as a safe deposit box, and the domain name as the safe deposit box number. When you register for web hosting, you are buying space in a safe deposit box. The amount you pay should determine the amount of space you need. For that reason, the web hosting fee is directly related to the amount of space you purchase. The safe deposit box number remains the same, regardless the amount of space you use. In a similar sense, the fee for domain name is fixed regardless the amount of content you have on the web.

When you start your website, the amount of space you need will most likely be pretty low, less than 1GB, so do not pay for a lot of space that you are not going to use. You can always buy more space as your needs grow. If you pay for 5GB per year, and throughout the course of that year, you never use more than 1GB, then the balance 4GB is money wasted.

The fifth and final tool you need is an FTP Software. An FTP Software is an application that enables you to transfer data from your computer to your website on the Internet, and vice versa. Some web hosting companies allow you to upload directly to their server using the web, but FTP software is usually speedier than the web option.
The FTP Software allows you to upload new pages to your website as well as update existing pages.

Now that I have listed out the five essential tools, I want you to get familiar with it before we go any further. Choose a domain name and register it. Quite often, web hosting companies allow you to register domains for free, or at a low price, if you get the hosting from them. In addition, acquire a HTML Editor – some can be found on the web and you can try it out for free over a time period. Sign up for a HTML tutorial or get one direct from the web.

In a future article – assuming you have put together a website – we will look at how we can make a profit from the web. It is a very exciting subject. I hope you have enjoyed reading this article and would look forward to the next one.


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Timothy Tye starts his first website four years ago. He now runs several successful websites that allow him to earn an income without holding a job. He believes that anybody can do it and shares useful tips and knowledge in his website, HappyJoblessGuy.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/seo/how-to-earn-from-the-web.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/seo/how-to-earn-from-the-web.html Thu, 06 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0600
If you ever want to earn from the web, spend some time to learn from some of the mistake I made when I started my website AsiaExplorers four years ago. My advise to those starting out is that it is very important to get it right from the very beginning. Mistakes cost you time and difficult to un-do, especially when you’re too far down the road. By getting it right from the beginning, you increase your potential to earn from the web, making the goal of earning a living without holding a job all the more attainable.

As we enter the second chapter of our Guide for Earning a Living without Holding a Job, I urge you to go through every lesson carefully. I spend much time researching to find you the best information. Do not skip any chapter, re-read those you don't fully understand. You will be thankful that you did. All advice I am providing to you is free; there is no section where you will find me asking you to pay me money.
Fishing Rods and Fish Traps
There is a popular saying, "If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. But if you give him a fishing rod, you feed him for a lifetime." Although that saying has some philosophical wisdom to it, today I am going to show you the disadvantage of giving the man a fishing rod.

If you give the man a fishing rod, for as long as the man wants to be fed, the man has to fish. If he stops fishing, he starts getting hungry again. What if one day the man is unable to fish anymore. What if he is too old to fish or to weak to fish? How then will he be able to feed himself? He won't. For that reason, if we want to ensure the man will never be hungry again, we need to give him something better than a fishing rod. What we need to do, is to teach the man how to make fish traps.

Fish traps are contraptions you place in the river or sea. Due to flowing current, fish swim into the trap and are unable to get out again. By building a proper fish trap, you are assured of an abundant supply of fish, continuously. The superiority of the fish trap over the fishing rod is that, once properly built, the man does not have to watch it the whole time. Sure, he has to maintain the fish trap, but it beats having to fish to feed himself all the rest of his life. He can go about doing other stuff, coming back once in a while to collect his meal and occasionally to mend the trap. Now, isn't that much better than having to wait for the fish the whole time?

In the same way, that is how we should approach earning an income from the web. The first thing to be mindful about is, is our website a fishing rod or a fish trap? I mean, do we have to watch our website for it to earn us money, or can it go into auto-pilot and earn the money for us? If it stops earning money the moment we let go of it, then it is definitely a fishing rod. If it continues to generate an income for us, even when we're not looking at it, even when we're out playing, eating, sleeping, it is a fish trap.

The right way to earn an income from the web is to always ensure that your website is a fish trap and not a fishing rod. Now that I don't hold a job, I have numerous options available: I can be a tour guide, I can sell tours, I can be a newspaper columnist, I can be a wedding photographer, I can build websites for people - many of you who have known me in person will know that I can do all that. But can you see that every one of these are fishing rod occupations? A tour guide who stops guiding stops earning from guiding. A newspaper columnist who stops writing articles stops receiving cheques from the newspaper. If I put a tour on the web, I need to provide support to people who book my tours. If I stop doing that, I stop earning from tours. For that reason, I only create tours for my own pleasure, and not because I need to earn a living from it. And while I may do a little bit of all the aforementioned activities, I'll do them for fun, not for work. Fishing rod activities also consume our time and energy: how many newspaper columns can I write, emails can I respond to, weddings can I photograph? The activity itself limits the amount that I can earn from it. Look at your own job: are you holding on to a fishing rod occupation? If you decide to stop working, will the company continue to pay you month after month?

I am not asking you to quit. Rather, I am telling you that the opportunity to create your own fish trap is available to all who wants to learn. Make sure you have a properly working fish trap before you say bye bye to your boss.

But first, you need to be able to differentiate a fishing rod activity from a fish trap activity. Some times, the same activity can be a fishing rod or a fish trap. If I write an article and give it to the newspaper, and the newspaper pays $100 for it, it's a fishing rod. If I write an article and put it on the web, and the article earns me $1 every day, it's a fish trap. A year from now, that article will still be earning me $1 per day and probably more. If I repeat the process, write an article a day, in a year's time, I will have 365 articles, earning me $365 a day, whether or not I write another.
If you're working for someone, your job is a fishing rod, his business is a fish trap. You have to continue working in order to earn the salary. The owner of the business, on the other hand, can leave you to run the business, while he enjoys himself with his family, go play golf, travel, etc. If you don't do a good enough job, he replaces you. Of course, some businesses require the owner himself to be hands-on the whole time. In a similar way, some fish traps require more maintenance than others. That's not the type of fish traps we want to create, let alone own.

To be smart and successful, we want to create one that requires minimal maintenance. Then will we have time to enjoy ourselves, to travel, to dine, to buy all the things that make us happy, to do all the things that we can do because we have the time to do them, for we don't hold jobs.

Look at all the jobs out there, and identify whether they are fishing rods or fish traps. Stay away from the fishing rod occupations and gravitate towards the fish traps. The best fish traps are those that require minimal maintenance and little capital. For me, it's in the form of a profit-making website.


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Timothy Tye began to earn an income from the web with his travel website, AsiaExplorers, four years ago. Today he writes full time, and shares his know-how from his website, HappyJoblessGuy.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]>