http://www.articletrader.com/ Articles at ArticleTrader en-us http://www.articletrader.com/internet/online-business/the-right-keywords-will-make-your-traffic-soar.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/online-business/the-right-keywords-will-make-your-traffic-soar.html Wed, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500
For example, let’s assume I am going to build a site about water heaters, and I want people to come to my site. I need to find out what kind of information about water heaters that people are looking for so I can build pages optimized for the keywords that people are really using.

The first thing I do is go to a keyword tool to do my keyword research. There are a number of keyword tools online, my favorite is Wordtracker. Others include KeywordDiscovery, and the Google AdWords suggestion tool There is simply no substitute for doing your keyword research. With these tools you can put in a seed word or phrase, and the tools will provide you with lists of related keywords and keyword phrases that are searched for, and how many times per month they are searched for. Using these tools there are ways to estimate the size of the market for products and services, ways to optimize you web pages, find new niche markets, and much more.

With Wordtracker I find quickly that many more people search for “tankless water heater” than search for water heater…which surprises me. Nearly as many people search for “hot water heater” as search for “water heater”. Wordtracker also informs me that there are far fewer websites trying to be ranked high for “hot water heater” than for “water heater”. Ah-Ha! I’ll be sure to optimize a few pages for “hot water heater”. In fact, I find that the terms “tankless water heater”, tankless hot water heater”, tankless water heaters, electric tankless water heaters, and tankless heaters all have more people searching for them than “water heater”.

Single word keywords are very difficult to get high rankings for, so it’s wise to shoot for longer keyword phrases. Three and four word phrases are what I use most often.

After finding out what information people are looking for, and what keywords they are using to find that information, you can build the appropriate pages and optimize them for those keywords that have significant traffic searching for them.

Now that we have our keyword list and we are ready to build our pages, where do we put the keywords?

The first and probably one of the most important places to have your keywords are in the title tag. This is one of the tags in the head section of the html code of your web page and lists the title that is displayed in the web browser. Internet Explorer displays this tag in the top bar of the browser window. It’s very important that you always write for humans. The search engines are getting smarter and smarter, and they are looking for sites optimized for humans, not search engines.

Get some of your keywords into the keyword meta tag, not crucial but it won’t hurt.

Make sure you have some keywords in your Alt tags for your images…don’t overdo it though. Write it for humans, but try to work a few keywords in if you can. Alt tags are displayed as a popup when you pass your mouse over an image.

The Description Meta Tag is still a valuable place to use your keywords. Many search engines will look at the description Meta tag for keywords to compare against your body copy. Yahoo uses your description tag as the description of your site in their listings. Consider the description tag just like it is named, a concise description of your site. Keep under 50 words.

Your body copy is obviously a very important place for placement of your keywords. Remember, write for humans. If your keywords don’t appear in your body copy, you won’t place high in the search engine results for those keywords. Work your keyword into the text appropriately. Select one or two keywords and make the page specifically about those keywords.

Use your keywords appropriately for humans on your site where you can. This will increase your search engine effectiveness.


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William Lund has been a webmaster since 1998. His website provides free information about website design, development, promotion, and monetization. For more about keywords and other website topics visit: Lund One Web Marketing and More Mr. Lund Also has a blog: Pondering Everything

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/home-and-family/home-improvement/instant-hot-water-provides-water-conservation-be-green-save-water.html http://www.articletrader.com/home-and-family/home-improvement/instant-hot-water-provides-water-conservation-be-green-save-water.html Wed, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500
Yes. A hot water circulating system will eliminate the need to run that water down the drain. There are several types of hot water circulating systems available, and they are fairly easy to understand.

The first type of system is the full-time circulating system. In this type of system the hot water outlet of the water heater connects to a pipe that runs past each fixture in the home, and then back to the water heater. A small pump circulates the hot water through the pipe, thus there is always hot water near every fixture. Instant hot water!

But there is a price to pay! This is an expensive system to operate, since the pump consumes some energy and is running constantly; you have to pay for that energy. But far greater is the expense of heating the water. Heating water is very expensive, and so when you pump it through a long pipe, and the pipe is losing heat energy to the atmosphere around it, you end up spending a lot of money to heat the hot water piping and its immediate surroundings.

You can place the pump on a timer, so that during periods that people don’t normally use hot water, the pump is turned off. That helps, but it is still very expensive. Some systems also control the pump by monitoring the temperature of the water. The pump turns off when it reaches a set point, and then back on when the water drops to the lower set point. This reduces the energy consumption by the pump, but does little to reduce the far larger energy losses of the heat loss from the system.

Another problem with these systems is that they require a dedicated return line from the furthest fixture back to the water heater to function. This is an expensive option when building a home, and a far more expensive option to add on to an existing home.

There is another class of hot water circulating systems that do not require a return line. These systems use the cold water line as the return line. The cold water line always connects to the inlet of the water heater, so it will always work. There are a number of approaches being used for these cold water return type hot water circulating systems.

In some instances, for instance, where the water heater is lower than the rest of the system like in homes with a basement, a gravity type system can be used. Since hot water is less dense than cold water, the hot water rises up from the water heater to the fixtures and the cooled off hot water goes down the cold water return line back to the heater. A connection is required between the hot and cold water lines, and a valve that responds to temperatures is installed between them. Without a valve, the hot and cold water would always mix when you used either one.

Some systems use a pump connected between the hot and cold water lines with a built in valve, and as with the full time systems, some are operated via a timer, some are temperature controlled, and some use both methods.

Another type of system is known as a “hot water demand system”. With the demand type system, the user must push a button or utilize some other signal to start the pump, and then when hot water reaches the fixture, the pump shuts off.

The demand system is the lowest cost in terms of operating costs since it does not cause any more heat loss than if you just used the hot water fixture without the system. It only pumps when you “demand” hot water. Typically such systems use only $1 to $2 per year in electricity for running the pump.

You obtain your hot water more quickly than if you ran the faucet full blast, and you don’t wastefully run water down the drain. You’re happy and the environment is happy!


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William Lund is a successful inventor and webmaster. For more information about hot water systems and water heaters visit Mr. Lund’s website: All About Water Heaters
Mr. Lund also has a blog: Pondering Everything


Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/online-business/my-websites-are-making-money-my-internet-success-story.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/online-business/my-websites-are-making-money-my-internet-success-story.html Wed, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500
The site, asparagusharvester.com, fulfilled its function. Washington State University became aware of my machine through the site, and ended up funding the development of the machine for a number of years.

The first site I built, in 1998, after teaching myself HTML online, was to market an invention I had come up with, the Chilipepper appliance. It’s a pump that pumps hot water from the water heater to the fixture very quickly, and without running water down the drain. You get your hot water quicker and save quite a bit of water.

But how do you market something online that no one has ever heard of? No one would be searching for it because they did not know anything like it existed. When I first built the site, I optimized it for the keyword phrase “Hot Water”. I got very good rankings for the phrase and zero traffic. It turns out no one searches for the key words “hot water” and why would you?

I thought about it and decided that I would build into the site a section about water heaters. It would cover how they work, and how to maintain and repair them. I know a lot about water heaters since I worked with them quite a bit while inventing the Chilipepper hot water circulating pump.

Eventually the site obtained very good rankings and I was getting about 1,000 unique visitors a day. I had been reading about this new affiliate stuff and decided to try putting some advertising on my site. I joined Commission Junction and selected some affiliate programs, placing the ads on the water heating related pages. I don’t put ads on the main pages of the Chilipepper demand system since I want them to stay and buy a Chilipepper. Pretty soon I started getting checks for commissions I earned. People were actually clicking the ads on my site, going to the advertiser’s site, and making purchases. And guess what they were buying…tankless water heaters. I still can’t believe people buy tankless water heaters on line, but they do.

So there I was, making about $200.00 a month on commissions from affiliate programs. Then I read about a new program called adsense. I put adsense ads on my Chilipepper site, and on a website that I built while on cruise ship vacations. My wife and I cruise quite a bit, and while on the cruise we update the site. We review all of our cruises on the site. I put adsense ads on the site, cruisesrfun.com. I put hem on a site I built about inventing, inventionspatents.com, and a few others too. Instantly I was making quite a bit more money from these sites than with the affiliate programs.

Recently I’ve started receiving requests from advertisers to place their ads on the pages of some of my sites. Sometimes they want to put an ad up permanently for a one time fee…I always say no. They offer usually around $75 to $150 per ad. It just doesn’t click with me for some reason. Just a couple of months ago I got an offer from an ad outfit offering me 50 cents per 1,000 ad views on one of my sites. No clicking necessary!

For some of my sites the $/1000 page views is in the tens of dollars, while for other sites its just a few cents/1000. The ad agency lets me put two ads per page, and both ads have to be above the fold. I get $1.00 for every 1,000 page views. I have two more ads below those, and they are adsense ads. I still make money from the adsense ads, not as much as before, but when you ad the two together it is substantially more money than with just the adsense ads alone. I also like the idea of not having all of my eggs in one basket. I’m not totally dependent on Adsense.

Another new thing I am trying is 5 second audio ads. It’s a new program that has some very nice features. When a visitor lands on one of my pages, a 5 second audio ad plays. I get paid for that ad. My visitor doesn’t have to click on anything. My visitor does not leave my page. The ad is short enough it doesn’t bother my visitor, and it won’t play another ad to the visitor for at least 3 minutes. It doesn’t affect any of my other advertising, no problems with Adsense, and doesn’t take up any room on my page. It also does not cost anything to join so I’m not risking anything.

The audio ads program is in beta right now, and is slowly ramping up, but I am already making money, and I expect the audio ads to nearly double the income from the advertising on my sites once it is in full swing.

My sites are informational sites, and so my visitors are looking for information, not fancy graphics and whatnot. So I build simple sites with simple navigation. No search engine spider has trouble finding any of my pages. I write with humans in mind…I’m probably not always successful in that endeavor but I try. I keep my ads to a minimum. When I land on a page that is cluttered with ads and banners I usually leave quickly.

I make sure my Title meta tag has an appropriate and effective title, incorporating my most important key words whenever possible. I make sure the meta description tag has a well written description meaningful to humans. I try to have my main key words worked into the text in a few places on the page, but not too many. If my pages have images I use the alt text to describe the image and work in a keyword or two. Do not overdo it though.

If you trade links with other sites try to make sure you trade with other quality sites that have some kind of connection that a search engine would recognize.

And finally, I have patience. It just takes a long time to reach the point where you get significant traffic from the search engines. I figure at least one year and possibly two before I’m getting thousands of visitors on a particular site. You can opt for paid traffic and get those numbers quickly, but I am not willing to buy traffic, and I doubt it would be profitable, at least for the sites I have.

So there you have it. Build quality websites with information people are looking for. Monetize your sites with a variety of advertising, but don’t overdo the ads. And while you are waiting for the income to develop, get on to your next site.


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William Lund is a successful inventor and webmaster. Learn more about website development, SEO, and promotion at his website Lund One Free SEO and Marketing Information

For information about the Chilipepper hot water pump visit: Faster Hot Water!


Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/online-business/incredible-new-income-opportunity-for-webmasters-and-bloggers.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/online-business/incredible-new-income-opportunity-for-webmasters-and-bloggers.html Wed, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500
With the social boom caused by web 2.0 including social networks, online movies and video, social networks that cater to specialized interests' are booming. They are growing faster than the Internet itself. This trend is bad news for the television networks! The Internet offers television’s viewing audience better entertainment because the audience can do, see and hear what they want, and when they want it.

The average person with Internet access is spending more time online than watching TV. The effectiveness of television advertising is dwindling! The truth is, people hate commercials. Most people have learned to ignore commercials, even if they are watching them!

Introducing Pay-Per-Play Audio Advertising...

Pay-Per-Play (PPP) advertising is an advertising program that is set to take the web by storm. PPP works on a bid management system similar to Google AdWords and will compensate publishers just like Google AdSense but with one critical difference… Publishers (website owners) will earn revenue on all of their traffic... no clicks necessary! When a visitor lands on a page with the PPP code, the ad plays and the publisher gets paid.

Once the audio ad has played, it won’t play again for at least 3 minutes, so visitors are not bombarded with a continuous stream of audio ads. After 3 minutes if the visitor refreshes the page or lands on a new page that has the code, then another ad will play.

For webmasters and bloggers who host the ads, the audio ads do not take up any space on a webpage... They are just heard, not seen, and there is nothing to click on, the ad just plays when a visitor lands on a page that has the code inserted. The visitor never even leaves the page. Website owners are paid "Per-Play" not Per-Click. The ads don’t affect Adsense or any other advertising.

The Super Bowl is Nothing Compared to This...

It costs 2.6 million dollars or more to run an ad spot on the Super Bowl. There has been no other media event that could capture an audience of 100 million people at the same time until now. 907 million people go online every day... 97% of those people have audio systems. This makes the Internet the world’s largest listening device.

Pay-Per-Play offers a way for big advertisers to reach their audience through this massive listening network. This network is bigger than television, radio and all other forms of media combined! And the listeners are sitting at their computers, attentive, waiting for the page they just clicked on to load. They aren’t in the bathroom or grabbing a snack from the kitchen. The listener is “tuned in” mentally and receptive when the ad plays. The advertisers love it.

As a website owner you have the opportunity to earn 25% of the "per-play" revenue spent by the advertisers that play audio ads on your website. All you have to do is copy and paste a simple piece of code onto the web pages where you want the ads to play.

The other way you can earn is by simply referring other website owners and bloggers to run ads on their websites.

You will earn a healthy 5% of the total amount that the advertisers spend running ads on your referrals websites, and 5% of what the advertiser spends on ads played on the websites that your direct referrals bring on board. It is a 3 tiered program.

It costs nothing to join and it costs nothing for your referrals to join. Each time you refer a new website that places the PPP code, you have just added another piece of residual income to your bank account.

The ability to sign up new advertisers is a temporary situation, and once enough sites have signed up the opportunity will disappear. But once you sign up, and put the code on at least one page, you can then sign up advertisers for that 5% for life. I’ve already put my code up.


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William Lund has been an inventor for over 35 years and has over a dozen patents. He has also been a webmaster since 1998. For more information about Pay-Per-Play Audio ads visit Mr. Lund’s website:Lund One – Audio Ad Information

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/online-business/hot-new-revenue-source-new-key-2-page-from-netaudioads-pay-per-play.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/online-business/hot-new-revenue-source-new-key-2-page-from-netaudioads-pay-per-play.html Wed, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500
For those of you who are not yet familiar with the NetAudioAds Pay-Per-Play ad program let me give you a quick description of the program. As a webmaster or website owner you can install a small piece of code on your site, and when a visitor lands on one of your pages with the code, a 5 second long audio ad plays, and the webmaster or owner gets paid. Pretty simple. Once an ad has played, another ad won’t play for at least 3 minutes.

Your visitor doesn’t have to click anything and doesn’t leave the page. If the visitor is still on your site 3 minutes after the 1st ad played, and he refreshes the page or goes to another page that has the code installed he will hear another ad, and you get paid again.

For the publishers it’s a great program, you get paid for every ad played, the code doesn’t take up any real estate on your site, the visitor doesn’t leave your site, and extensive testing has shown that it does not drive visitors away from your site either. Since the program does not cost anything to join you are not risking anything.

On top of all that, you as a publisher can sign up more publishers an then you receive a part of the ad buy for any ads that play on their sites. It goes down one more level. You get additional money for ads played on sites owned by publishers signed up by publisher you signed up. That’s level 3 an that is where it ends. It is a 3 tiered program. For ads that play on your own site you get 25% of the money the advertiser spends. For all other ads played on your down lines sites you get 5% of the ad buy.

But back to the exciting new Key2Page information. The Key2Page feature is a new type of 5 second audio ad. For the first time in Internet history a new form of action has been born… They call this action a “key through”. A key through is like a click through, but no mouse is clicked … A key on the keyboard is pressed instead.

At the end of the 5 second audio ad the visitor is told to press a key, (1, 2, or Z), and it will take the visitor to the advertisers web page. Apparently the advertisers love this new feature. It’s being introduced at 1.2 cents per key-press, (cost to the advertiser) as an introductory price, but it will be priced similar to Adsense ads with bids and all that. The price is expected to rise dramatically once bidding begins, and I suspect the publisher could end up getting over a penny a key-through as they call it.

The webmasters have the ability to control whether the Key2Page ads are used on their websites, and can control it down to individual pages if they wish. They have global control from the back office, a control panel, and they can control individual pages with some variables in the code on the pages. If you don’t want your visitor to leave your page then you opt to not offer Key 2 Page ads, however, from what I’m hearing, the Key 2 Page ads are going to be huge. Since it appears that early on there will be a lot more ad slots available than ads to fill them, it might be wise to allow all ads.

I listened to a Pay-Per-Play NetAudioAds conference call with Larry Host, this evening, and he informed us that the program would probably come out of beta this week, and that ad plays would be ramping up this week. They are going to be contacting registered publishers and notifying them that it’s time to put the code up on their pages if they haven’t already done so, and notifying them if they find any corrupted code etc. Larry mentioned that they felt they would be filling about half of the available ad slots by mid summer. This is getting very interesting. I am anxious to see what else they come up with over at NetAudioAds.


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William Lund has been building and operating web sites since 1998. Learn more about Pay-Per-Play NetAudioAds at his website: Info about 5 Second Audio Ads Information about Key 2 Page is there as well.

Visit Mr. Lund’s blog: Pondering Everything


Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/home-and-family/home-improvement/tankless-water-heaters-save-energy-but-dont-waste-water.html http://www.articletrader.com/home-and-family/home-improvement/tankless-water-heaters-save-energy-but-dont-waste-water.html Tue, 06 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500
As is well advertised, tankless water heaters save energy. The savings come from the fact that the tankless water heaters do not have a tank full of water slowly leaking out heat all day and all night. Another factor for gas water heaters is the tankless units don’t having standing pilot lights. Actually some do, but most don’t. Even so, we are not talking about a very large amount of energy.

One of the advertised benefits is endless hot water. Take as long a shower as you like, you will never run out. However, there is a price to be paid. Suddenly you are not actually saving energy, but using more energy with that longer shower. Human nature being what it is, many families actually spend more money on heating water after switching to a tankless water heater.

As for those folks interested in conserving water, tankless water heaters are not a friend. It takes longer to get hot water from a tankless unit than a storage type water heater because when you turn on the tap with a storage heater the hot water immediately flows into the pipe and off to the tap. But with the tankless unit, there is no hot water ready and waiting to flow off to the tap, all the water in the system is cold. So first the water must be heated by the tankless heater and then make it to the tap. Not only does it take considerably longer to get hot water to the sink, but it warms up much more gradually than with a storage type water heater. This means you are running more water down the drain while you are waiting for the hot water to reach the fixture, and finally stabilize at the desired temperature.

There is a fix; a demand type hot water pump would solve the wasted water problem. With a demand hot water system you don’t run any water down the drain while you are waiting, and you don’t wait as long either.

The circulating system must be a “demand” type system. A traditional full time hot water circulating system with a return line from the last fixture back to the water heater will not work. It would either keep the heater on all the time, or it wouldn’t pump enough water to turn the heater on at all, depending upon the size of the pump. A traditional circulating system will void the warranty of a tankless unit, or greatly reduce it.

By combining a tankless water heater with a demand type hot water circulating system you get the best of both worlds. You save energy and you save water. Perhaps best of all you save time since you don’t have to wait as long for your hot water.


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William Lund has a number of websites including a water heating related site:Water Heater Information and a site about earning money with your website: Make Money with Your Website

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/home-and-family/home-improvement/instant-hot-water-systems-explained-and-compared.html http://www.articletrader.com/home-and-family/home-improvement/instant-hot-water-systems-explained-and-compared.html Tue, 06 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500
Traditional hot water circulating systems form a loop with the hot water piping that connects from the water heater outlet to the fixtures, and then back to the water heater. A pump circulates the hot water through the loop. These systems provide nearly instant hot water at each fixture, but they are very expensive to operate. They waste huge amounts of energy keeping hot water in the pipe, and decrease the life of the water heater. They are inappropriate for tankless water heaters. Traditional circulating systems are made by Grundfos, Taco, Bell & Gusset, and others.

Laing makes a system suitable for retro-fitting to existing homes that don’t have a dedicated return line, called the Auto Circ. It is a small pump that mounts under the sink, and pumps water from the hot water pipe into the cold water pipe, and when hot water reaches 95 degrees, the pump shuts off. When the temperature drops to 85 degrees the pump turns back on and the cycle repeats. The pump can handle several fixtures if the plumbing layout is correct. This system uses a lot of energy since it keeps the plumbing full of above ambient temperature water, and the cold water line ends up with tepid water not cold. The Laing autocirc is not suitable for use with a tankless water heater.

Grundfos makes a similar hot water circulating system for retrofitting into homes that don’t have a dedicated hot water return line. A pump connects to the outlet of the water heater, and a thermally controlled valve is placed at each fixture in the home. The valves are connected between the hot and cold water lines. When each valve is cold water can flow from the hot line to the cold, and does so because the pump at the water heater outlet is providing pressure. When hot water reaches the valve, the valve closes. This keeps hot water near all the fixtures in the home with just one pump. However, like the Laing Autocirc, it doesn’t really deliver hot water, just luke warm, and it replaces the cold water with tepid. The system is not suitable for use with a tankless water heater.

Metlund and Chilipepper make “demand” hot water systems. Demand hot water systems are residential hot water circulating systems designed to work without a dedicated return, and are suitable for retrofit to existing homes. They also use the cold water piping for a return line. The demand pumps, like the Laing pump, are placed under a fixture where they connect the hot and cold water lines. When the pump is activated by the user pushing a button, it pumps water out of the hot water pipe and into the cold water pipe, and shuts off when the hot water reaches the pump. Demand system pumps are more powerful than the other types of systems to move the water quickly.

The demand system has several advantages over the traditional system, and saves the same amount of water. One large advantage is the reduction in energy usage. Since the demand system only runs for a few seconds whenever someone demands hot water, it uses very little energy for pumping…typically less than $2.00 a year. It stops running when hot water reaches the fixture, and so it doesn’t use any more hot water than what you would normally use without a circulating system. Another advantage is the much smaller installation cost. It’s easy and economical to retrofit to any house.

Demand systems have more powerful pumps than the other systems and so the Chilipepper pump and at least one of the larger Metlund pumps will work with tankless water heaters. Most of the circulating pumps won’t pump enough water to activate the tankless heaters.


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William Lund has been an inventor for over 35 years, and has over a dozen patents. His website deals with water heaters both storage and tankless, and hot water circulating systems. Water Heaters and Demand Systems And Mr. Lund invites you to visit his blog:Pondering Everything

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/business/marketing/have-a-great-idea-for-an-invention-protect-your-idea-now.html http://www.articletrader.com/business/marketing/have-a-great-idea-for-an-invention-protect-your-idea-now.html Tue, 06 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500
If you ever end up in court over your invention, you need conclusive evidence of when you thought of your idea. In the United States the rightful owner of a patent is the one who thought of it first, not the one who patented it first. So you must be able to prove when you thought of it.

One way to protect your idea is to write down your idea as simply and plainly as you can, and then have three or four credible non-relatives witness your document stating that they understand the invention and dating their signature. It's usually a good idea to include drawings or sketches as well. In the future, if there is any dispute as to when you came up with your idea, you have witnesses that can testify in court, as to when you showed them your idea. Proof positive is what you need.

You might want to consider writing it in an approved inventor's journal - a book specially designed with numbered pages so that it is difficult to add information later. There are numerous sources, just search the internet for them. It his harder at least in theory to later alter the contents of the journal, making it better evidence when in court.

Once you've established the date that you thought of your idea, you have to follow a few simple rules to avoid losing your protection. If you do not do anything to develop your idea within one year, then your idea becomes part of the public domain and you lose your right to obtain a patent. So keep a file where you can put notes, receipts, etc. in, and at least do something that leaves a paper record you can file away in case you end up in court someday. Be able to prove in court that more than a year never passed that you did not in some way work on the idea.

If you disclose your idea in a publication like a newspaper or magazine, that starts a one year period in which you must file a patent, or you lose your right to file.

Just because you have never seen your idea in a store doesn't mean it's patentable or marketable. According to the patent office, less than 3% of issued patents ever make it to the marketplace. It’s quite possible your idea was invented but for any number of reasons was never marketed. If an invention has ever existed, anywhere, at any time, created by any person, you can't patent it - it's already been invented! And the U.S. Patent office searches world wide when they process your patent application.

You can do your own patent search using several online resources, but if you have determined that you have a viable and marketable invention, I would recommend that you hire a competent patent attorney to have a professional prior-art patent search done, to make sure your idea hasn't already been thought of, wasting your valuable time and money.

I’ve tried doing patent searches on my own, and I was stunned when I saw the results a real patent examiner found. They are professionals and they know what they are doing.

Be careful of patent clubs and organizations that provide discount patent services. Any patent search needs to include a world wide search, because that is what the patent office does.


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William Lund is an inventor of over 35 years, and holds over a dozen patents. His website provides assistance for small inventors: Help with inventing patenting prototyping and more
Mr. Lund has a blog at:Pondering Everything


Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/travel/vacations/cruise-ship-vacations-one-husbands-opinion.html http://www.articletrader.com/travel/vacations/cruise-ship-vacations-one-husbands-opinion.html Tue, 06 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500
Our second cruise a year later was aboard the Crown Odyssey, a smaller older ship, on a cruise through the Greek islands. What a trip! I discovered that I love old Greek and Roman ruins, and Mediterranean food is fantastic! Kathy says Greece has the best tomatoes of anywhere in the world. We had a blast, visiting places like Athens, Mykonos, Santorini, and Istanbul.

During that second cruise we built a website about the cruise and we would upload pictures and text to the site during our stops in port. We would find an internet café and do the uploading while sipping a cold drink. We have a photo on our site with Kathy seated at a computer at an internet café in Athens, and out the window over her shoulder you can see the Parthenon.

One of the best things about cruising is that you can see damned near everything you ever wanted to see by going on a cruise. For example, one day I told Kathy that if she could find a cruise where I could see the Egyptian Pyramids, then I would go. I think it took her all of about 20 minutes to book the cruise. Silly me. But hey…there I am at the pyramids and in front of the sphinx in Egypt. It turns out that the Pyramids are just a couple of hours by bus from the port of Alexandria.

Other places I’ve found myself on these cruises are eating French fries in a McDonald’s in Beijing, after seeing the Great Wall of China, Tiananmen Square, and the Forbidden City! On that same cruise I had been to ground zero in Nagasaki Japan. Now I must admit I never thought I would ever be at ground zero where the Atomic bomb was dropped. Speaking of McDonald’s, there is one at Red Square in Moscow. I was there during our Baltic cruise. We docked for a couple of days in St. Petersburg, and took a plane to Moscow for a day.

Now I grew up in the days of the cold war, and it’s hard to get used to a McDonald’s in Moscow. Earlier on that trip I visited Berlin and we saw what was left of the Berlin Wall. It was simply remarkable for me to be visiting such places. Never thought I would find myself standing in East Berlin.

Ok so there are a lot of amazing destinations, but not all cruises are destination cruises. Some are what my wife and I call “Party” cruises. Not much to see at the ports of call, but lots and lots of partying. A recent cruise we went on to the eastern Caribbean was one of the most fun filled cruises I’ve been on. Kathy had been conversing with about 72 people who were going to be on the cruise on something called “Cruise Critics” a message board place where people meet to chat about cruises.

So we had cruise critic parties frequently on board the ship, and went to the shore excursions as a group. It was like doing everything with a whole boatload of best friends you were meeting for the first time.

I hope my wife keeps dragging me on these cruises…I’ll be kicking and screaming the whole way with a big grin on my face.


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Mr. Lund is an avid cruiser and has website devoted to his cruises. Cruises R Fun There are cruise reviews and loads of photos of his cruises and cruise destinations.

William Lund is also an inventor and webmaster with over a dozen patents and a number of websites. His business website dealing with making money online is: Website Marketing and SEO


Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/online-business/four-great-ways-to-monetize-your-website-make-more-money-online.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/online-business/four-great-ways-to-monetize-your-website-make-more-money-online.html Tue, 06 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500
One important method is of course using Adsense ads or similar programs that are available from Yahoo, MSN, and others. With these programs, you place script on your website, and Adsense spiders your site to find out what it is about. Then when it displays ads on your site it shows ads that are likely to be relevant to your visitors because it matches your pages content. Your visitors are far more likely to click on highly targeted ads than non- targeted ads.

Different advertisers pay different amounts for the ads depending on the subject matter. Some ads go for pennies, and some ads go for tens of dollars per click. If your subject material attracts lower paying ads, it could be worth looking into the second method of monetizing your site, pay per view ads. If you are making more than $1.00 per 1,000 page views, you might want to stick with pay per click ads.

I have a site where an ad agency is paying me 50 cents per 1000 page views for each of two ads on my pages. The ads must be above the fold and the ads cannot be the same size and shape. I use a banner ad across the top of the page, and a skyscraper ad on the right hand side of the page.

That leaves room for another Google adsense ad on the right hand side below the CPM ad, and one banner ad across the bottom of the page. I make a dollar for every 1,000 page views, and I still make more money from clicks on the Google ads.

I also am a member of several affiliate programs, the third method of monetization. With the affiliate programs you place an ad on your site from the affiliate program you are a member of, and if someone clicks through to the advertiser’s site and buys something you get a commission. There are lots of affiliate programs available. I joined Commission Junction, and I’m very happy with the selection of programs available.

Commission Junctions collects the money and pays you for any and all of the programs you join. They provide you with comprehensive stats and all kinds of support. If you are a webmaster you should at least check out their programs and see what’s there.

The Fourth method of monetizing your site is called 5 second audio ads. The program is band new, in fact it’s still in beta, but it is very interesting. When a visitor lands on your page, a 5 second long audio ad plays. Every time an audio ad plays you get paid. The ads will not play again for at least 3 minutes after your visitor hears one. After 3 minutes since the last ad played, the visitor can hear another if he refreshes the page or goes to a new page on your site.

The ads are very effective, since the visitor isn’t off in the bathroom, or grabbing a snack as so often happens with radio and TV. Your visitor is not driving a car either. He is sitting in front of the computer waiting for a page to finish loading. His mind is receptive to the ad. It’s actually a quite remarkable way to advertise.

You as a webmaster or publisher can also sign up other webmasters and publishers who want to run ads on their own sites. If you are the one that signs them up then you receive a commission on every ad that plays on their site. It can ad up to quite a bit of income if you get some decent sign ups.

The 5 second audio ads program is free to join so you don’t risk anything. It doesn’t even take up any real estate on your pages. It has no affect on any of your other advertising. And perhaps best of all, the visitor never leaves your site. It’s like finding free money.

So now that you know how to monetize your website or blog, you can move on to promoting your site!


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William Lund has been marketing online since 1998. Learn more about Web Marketing and SEO at his website Lund One Marketing and SEO

And for Instant hot water visit Chilipepper Hot Water Demand System Works with storage and tankless water heaters.


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