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Saturday

How to Get People to Link to your Web Site: 10 Strategies That Work!

So you finally got a web site up and running. Whether it's a personal site or a business site, you need others to link to your web site. Search engines look favorably at web sites that other sites are linking to. In addition, having other webmasters linking to your site is one good way to generate traffic to your site. But how exactly can you get others to link to your site? Below are 10 strategies that work.

1. Offer Free Content
Contact webmasters or owners of web sites that are similar to yours. Let them know that you have content (e.g., articles) that they can use for free on their site. Make sure the free articles you offer have your short bio and link to your site. Most webmasters won't mind linking to your site this way if it means keeping their own sites regularly updated.

2. Review Web Sites
Visit your favorite sites or find those that are similar to yours. Find the positives in these sites and write them out in the form of short web site reviews. Post these reviews on your site. Once posted, contact the owners of the sites you reviewed. Let them know that they can display the review you wrote about their site on their own site. Be a step ahead by providing them a ready-to-publish review piece, complete with a link to your site. For this strategy to work, though, review sites that you truly like and find useful.

3. Syndicate Your Newsletter
If you publish an e-zine or newsletter, give other web sites the ability to publish or display issues of your e-zine on their site. You can accomplish this by using a syndication script or by sending issues of your e-zine directly to webmasters who express their interest in publishing your e-zine on their sites. This strategy not only will drive traffic to your site, but will also get visitors to subscribe directly to your e-zine.

4. Turn Your Site into a Free Web Book
Create an e-book version of your site and offer it as a free download. This strategy is particularly effective if you compile informative articles in an e-book. You can take this a step further by offering a customized versions of your e-book that other webmasters can offer as a free download from their site. Make sure that your e-book has links going back to your web site.

5. Create an Article Directory
If you have plenty of articles that you (or a ghostwriter) have written, feature them on a section of your web site. This could be an instant article directory that your visitors can link to from their own sites.

6. Open a Public Discussion Board
Host a discussion board or forum on your web site and invite owners of sites similar to yours to link to the online discussion board or forum. Make sure that the discussion board has visible links to your main site so that visitors can check out the other stuff you offer.

7. Create a "Members Only" Site
Make an offer to visitors and potential members that they will find hard to resist -- free access to your members only section of your site if they put a link to your site on theirs. Make sure, though, that what you offer in the members only area is something that members will find unique and useful.

8. Run an Affiliate Program
If you sell your own products and services, consider running an affiliate program and letting other people promote your products and services from their own web sites and e-zines. Offer a generous commission and a way for affiliates to track sales. There are many affiliate management scripts available that you can try out.

9. Give Out Awards
Here's a good reason for webmasters and owners to link to your site -- give out awards periodically. If you are targeting a specific niche, tailor your awards to this niche and seek out notable sites. Create an award graphic that your awardees can proudly display on their sites while linking to yours.

10. Offer Free Consultations
If you have expertise in a specific subject or area, offer visitors free e-mail consultations in return for linking to your site. In this strategy, your visitors will find that linking to your site is a small price to pay for getting valuable information from you for free.

There you have it. You don't have to use all ten strategies, even a few will stand your website in good stead. You should see an improvement in your ranking in no time.
Source: ArticlesBase.com

About the Author:
Zackery Lim is a very active affiliate marketer who likes to experiment with new ways of marketing. Read his report here on how to make quick affiliate profits without pay per clicks or list building.

Quality of your life

Quality of life than a higher Salary

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Big paychecks and bonuses aren't everything.

Some employees would prefer a better quality of life than a higher salary, suggests a survey released Monday.

Sixty-two percent of small-business employees think that salaries are better at large companies, according to Salary.com's Working for a Small Business Survey.

But they like working at small companies anyway for reasons that include work/life balance, commute times, loyalty, bosses, and relationships with co-workers.

Forty-six percent of those surveyed said the work/life balance was one of the reasons they stayed at a small firm, while 38 percent also cited having an easier commute, 35 percent credited loyalty, 31 percent like their boss and 30 percent mentioned relationships with co-workers.

"Different organizations have different things to offer, and money isn't everything - but it's not nothing," said Bill Coleman, senior vice president and chief compensation officer at Salary.com.

When it comes to base salary, he added, "smaller organizations sometimes have a harder time competing with bigger companies, but they do have other things going for them. They have culture, environment and flexibility."

Also, the perception that big companies offer better salaries may not always be true. Of those surveyed who had worked for a large company, 75 percent said that at a bigger firm, the benefits were better, and 45 percent said the opportunities to move up were greater. Just 38 percent of those respondents said pay was actually better at a large company.

Salary.com surveyed 474 employees from small and large companie

Friday

20,000 more U.S. troops to Iraq

George Bush said that he plans to send 20,000 more U.S. troops to Iraq to help keep the country from becoming a haven for terrorists.

Arab perspective: Playing US politics with Iraqi blood for oil

Bracing for 2008 presidential election, US Democrats in opposition and the ruling Republicans have embroiled the American public in a political crisis between the executive and legislative powers over deadlines for combat operations in Iraq that could develop into a constitutional showdown, but for Arabs and Iraqis in particular it is merely playing electoral politics with Iraqi blood for oil because the Democratic Alternative for President George W. Bush’s strategy, when scrutinized, promises them no fundamental change to the bloody status quo.

Building on the recommendation of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group of James Baker and Lee Hamilton, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi engaged Syrian leaders amid cautious Arab diplomatic and media welcome after her arrival in Damascus on Tuesday in a visit that enraged President George W. Bush, in the latest manifestation of Democrat-Republican colliding approaches to secure American national interests in Iraq. Pelosi said she hoped to rebuild lost confidence between Washington and Damascus, but American politicians of both mainstream parties have a long way to go before they could win over the hearts and minds of the wider Arab masses and redress the negative public image of their country among Arabs, an image that the occupation of Iraq has damaged probably beyond repair for a long time to come.

Democrats were perceived by Arabs as promising to offer an alternative to Bush strategy in Iraq, but so far have merely proved themselves responsive to their voters’ anti-war sentiments: 60 percent of the public wants to get out of Iraq, the election defeat of the Republicans was a strong indication of public sentiment, expectations have risen, yet the killing goes on, and in some ways gets worse. Yet the Democrats’ supplemental budget bill provides funding to continue the war, while setting a controversial date to end it, and there is disagreement on its strategic effect. They could neither raise the “mission accomplished” banner nor could promise to do so in the near future, not even after Bush’s constitutional mandate expires. How do frustrated Iraqis and Arabs make sense of “this” Democratic alternative?

Why Asian oil firms are likely to be first at Iraqi's oil

Despite claims by some critics that the Bush administration invaded Iraq to take control of its oil, the first contracts with major oil firms from Iraq's new government are likely to go not to U.S. companies, but rather to companies from China, India, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

While Iraqi lawmakers struggle to pass an agreement on exactly who will award the contracts and how the revenue will be shared, experts say a draft version that passed the cabinet earlier this year will likely uphold agreements previously signed by those countries under Saddam Hussein's government.

"The Chinese could announce something within the next few months" if all goes well with the oil law, said James Placke, a senior associate at Cambridge Energy Research Associates who specializes in the Middle East.

Behind high oil and gas prices
The Asian firms are at an advantage for several reasons.

First, less constrained by Western sanctions during the Hussein regime, they've been operating in Iraq and know the country's oilfields, said Falah Aljibury, an energy analyst who has advised several Iraqi oil ministers as well as other OPEC nations.

Aljibury said the first contracts likely awarded will be to the Chinese in the south central part of Iraq, the Vietnamese in the south, the Indians along the Kuwaiti border, and the Indonesians in the western desert.

The contracts under consideration are small.

Aljibury said the Chinese agreement is to produce about 70,000 barrels of oil a day, while the Vietnamese one is for about 60,000.

It's hard to put a dollar amount on what those contracts might be worth, as security costs, drilling conditions and the exact terms to be offered by Baghdad are unknown, said Christopher Ruppel, a senior geopolitical analyst with the consulting firm John S. Herold.

But the barrel amount is tiny even by Iraq's depressed post-war production of around 2 million barrels a day.

And the country is thought to be able to ramp up production to over 3 million barrels a day with fairly little effort, providing the security situation improves. Rosy estimates even have Iraq producing 6 million barrels a day in the long term, which would make it the world's No. 4 producer behind Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States.