This Site has Moved to SonOfFiveRivers.com

Click Here to Vist NEW Site: www.SonOfFiveRivers.com

I’ve been blogging for several months now and I’m glad to have recieved the feedback I have.  I’ve enjoyed the experince and for that reason I’ve decided to take blogging to another level.  I’ll be self hosting my blog and that means you’ll see a lot more creativity in the design, functionality and layout of the new blog.

Check it out: www.SONofFIVErivers.com

Cheers

A Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books

So I cam across this book about 4-5 years ago and it just captivated me.   Sikhs and Jews have a lot in common and this story tells a tall tale.   Click on the Video Link to know what I mean.

The Book: Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books

Author: Aaron Lansky

The Website: http://yiddishbookcenter.org/

Video: http://yiddishbookcenter.org/vid/ABridgeofBooks.html

So why I am I curious about Yeddish Books?

My Dad and I have been talking about these particular issues for about 5 years and finally I took a baby step and spent part of my new years eve volunteering with an amazing and inspiring group of people from my book club.   We spent time showing youth and the sikh community at large a new website that was launched to perserve Sikh litrature and history.  The project is called the Panjab Digital Library (http://www.panjabdigilib.org).

This particular demo was held at a sikh temple (Gurdwara) in Surrey,  I decided to bow out of my volunteer obligations a little early as I wanted to spend the new year  with my family who were at Gurdwara closer to home.

How to Insert a Vimeo Video into WordPress

Visit Vimeo and find a video you would like to insert. Copy the URL or video ID from your web browser’s address bar while viewing the video.

Insert the shortcode into a new post or page using one of the following formats. Make sure to replace the URL or ID with the one you are using.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/240975%5D

or

[vimeo 240975]

The default width and height of the embeded video is 400×300.

Additionally you can specify the width and height, ex:

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/240975 w=500&h=400]

Google Strikes Back at Rupert Murdoch!

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, strikes back at Rupert Murdoch in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal (which is owned by Rupert Murdock by the way). Before we get to the good stuff I’ll quickly explain who Rupert Murdoch is for those who don’t know.  He owns lots of media outlets (Newspapers, Magazines, Radio Stations, TV Networks, Cable & Internet Companies etc.) He is the founder, a major shareholder, chairman and managing director of News Corporation (News Corp).  He’s been in the news lately because he wants to ban Google from searching his sites and has been trying to make an agreement with Bing (Microsoft).  I don’t think he should be able to control the message people can and cannot hear.  I think and I hope he loses big on this!

With dwindling revenue and diminished resources, frustrated newspaper executives are looking for someone to blame. Much of their anger is currently directed at Google, whom many executives view as getting all the benefit from the business relationship without giving much in return. The facts, I believe, suggest otherwise.

Google is a great source of promotion. We send online news publishers a billion clicks a month from Google News and more than three billion extra visits from our other services, such as Web Search and iGoogle. That is 100,000 opportunities a minute to win loyal readers and generate revenue—for free. In terms of copyright, another bone of contention, we only show a headline and a couple of lines from each story. If readers want to read on they have to click through to the newspaper’s Web site. (The exception are stories we host through a licensing agreement with news services.) And if they wish, publishers can remove their content from our search index, or from Google News.

here’s even better stuff:

It’s understandable to look to find someone else to blame. But as Rupert Murdoch has said, it is complacency caused by past monopolies, not technology, that has been the real threat to the news industry.

Kudos to the WSJ for running the piece—assuming some editor didn’t lose his or her job for doing this. I just can’t wait to watch Google and News Corp go at it.

I Can’t believe this is a WordPress site!

I found these sites on http://wordpress.org/showcase/ (the WordPress Showcase)

http://www.modelinia.com/ < Amazing, not because of the woman, but the source code is actually WordPress!

http://www.rwm.com.au/ < I thought this was good use of a WordPress site for a Real Estate application.

Best Blogging Tips (How to Increase Traffic)

I’m going to be sitting with a good friend of mine this weekend about starting a blog.  In preparation I thought I would take a minute and do a little extra homework for our conversation.   I thought I would share some of my finding below, as I think they are fantastic resource for blog development.

56 Tips on Blogging

by: Seth Godin

1. Use lists.
2. Be topical… write posts that need to be read right now.
3. Learn enough to become the expert in your field.
4. Break news.
5. Be timeless… write posts that will be readable in a year.
6. Be among the first with a great blog on your topic, then encourage others to blog on the same topic.
7. Share your expertise generously so people recognize it and depend on you.
8. Announce news.
9. Write short, pithy posts.
10. Encourage your readers to help you manipulate the technorati top blog list.
11. Don’t write about your cat, your boyfriend or your kids.
12. Write long, definitive posts.
13. Write about your kids.
14. Be snarky. Write nearly libelous things about fellow bloggers, daring them to respond (with links back to you) on their blog.
15. Be sycophantic. Share linklove and expect some back.
16. Include polls, meters and other eye candy.
17. Tag your posts. Use del.ico.us.
18. Coin a term or two.
19. Do email interviews with the well-known.
20. Answer your email.
21. Use photos. Salacious ones are best.
22. Be anonymous.
23. Encourage your readers to digg your posts. (and to use furl and reddit).Do it with every post.
24. Post your photos on flickr.
25. Encourage your readers to subscribe by RSS.
26. Start at the beginning and take your readers through a months-long education.
27. Include comments so your blog becomes a virtual water cooler that feeds itself.
28. Assume that every day is the beginning, because you always have new readers.
29. Highlight your best posts on your Squidoo lens.
30. Point to useful but little-known resources.
31. Write about stuff that appeals to the majority of current blog readers–like gadgets and web 2.0.
32. Write about Google.
33. Have relevant ads that are even better than your content.
34. Don’t include comments, people will cross post their responses.
35. Write posts that each include dozens of trackbacks to dozens of blog posts so that people will notice you.
36. Run no ads.
37. Keep tweaking your template to make it include every conceivable bell or whistle.
38. Write about blogging.
39. Digest the good ideas of other people, all day, every day.
40. Invent a whole new kind of art or interaction.
41. Post on weekdays, because there are more readers.
42. Write about a never-ending parade of different topics so you don’t bore your readers.
43. Post on weekends, because there are fewer new posts.
44. Don’t interrupt your writing with a lot of links.
45. Dress your blog (fonts and design) as well as you would dress yourself for a meeting with a stranger.
46. Edit yourself. Ruthlessly.
47. Don’t promote yourself and your business or your books or your projects at the expense of the reader’s attention.
48. Be patient.
49. Give credit to those that inspired, it makes your writing more useful.
50. Ping technorati. Or have someone smarter than me tell you how to do it automatically.
51. Write about only one thing, in ever-deepening detail, so you become definitive.
52. Write in English.
53. Better, write in Chinese.
54. Write about obscure stuff that appeals to an obsessed minority.
55. Don’t be boring.
56. Write stuff that people want to read and share.

Blog Project: 30 Traffic Generation Tips

by Daniel Scocco

1. Sridhar Katakam
Keep track of blogs and leave comments on them. A good way to keep the conversation going is to install a MyBlogLog widget and visit the blog of people visiting your site.

2. Ian Delaney
Nothing creates long-term traffic more than value. Consider writing posts with resources or explaining how things work. Useful things get linked to and they get onto del.icio.us, which is far better long-term than a digg front page.

3. Scott Townsend
Inform search engines and aggregators like Technorati (using the ping functionality) when your blog is updated, this should ensure maximum traffic coming from those sources. (check the List of Ping Services)

4. Kyle
Simplify. Pay attention to complex issues in your field of work. It may be a big long publication that is hard to wade through or a concept that is hard to grasp. Reference it and make a shorter “for dummies” version with your own lessons learned and relevant tips. When doing this, I have been surprised to find that the simplified post will appear before the more complex version in search results. Perhaps this is why it results in increased traffic; people looking for more help or clarification on the subject will land on your blog.

5. Grant Gerver
Try to be polemic. I write obsessively about all-things political from the left-wing perspective in the form of humorous, sarcastic one-liners.

6. Daniel
A simple tip that will probably boost your page views: install a translator plugin. I decided to use a paid plugin for this, but if I am not wrong there are some free ones as well. The translation is not very good, as you can imagine, but it helps to attract readers that are not fluent in English.

7. Rory
Submit articles to blog carnivals (http://blogcarnival.com) that are related to your niche. Your article almost always gets posted, and it must generate a handful of visitors, at least.

8. Ramen Junkie
Newsgroups. I always see a spike when I post a review to a newsgroup.

9. Eric Atkins
Create a new design for your website. Not only will it be more attractive to your regular readers, but you can submit it to some CSS gallery showcase sites that feature great designs. This will give you exposure on those sites while generating a lot of traffic and backlinks from those types of sites.

10. Megan Taylor
Participate in conversations on related blogs. Start conversations on your own blog. Don’t just post about a story and leave it at that, engage your audience, ask questions and call to action.

11. Guido
Comment on blogs, write useful content and make good friends on forums.

12. Brian Auer
You must be active to generate traffic. I post comments on other blogs that are related to mine, and I post my site link in my signature at the forums. Spread the word about your blog and it will certainly attract readers.

13. Shankar Ganesh
Just browse around MyBlogLog.com and you will surely get visitors to your blog. Also try to join as many communities as possible that are related to your topic.

14. Andrew Timberlake
A great tip for generating traffic is off-line by including your url in all your off-line liturature from business cards, letterheads, pamphlets, adverts through in-store signage if applicable. I even have our website on my vehicle.

15. Cory OBrien
Read lots of other blogs. Leave trackbacks. Make sure your blog is optimized for search engines. Leverage social bookmarking sites like digg (both for new ideas and for traffic).

16. Jester
Leave comments on other blogs. If you’re already reading them, it takes
just a couple of seconds to leave a message agreeing or disagreeing
with the author, you get to leave a link to your site, and you will almost
ALWAYS get traffic from your comments.

17. Goerge Manty
Post 3-5 times a day. Use ping services like pingomatic or set up wordpress to ping some of the ping services. Engage your readers. Put up polls, ask them questions, give them quizes, free tools, etc. Make them want to come back and tell their friends about you.

18. Engtech
Community. It’s one word but it is the most important one when it comes to blogging. The only “blog metric” that makes sense is the vibrant community of readers it has. Building a community around your blog will bring you increased traffic, but how do you start? The boilerplate response to building traffic is always “SEO, social networking sites, and commenting on blogs” but it can be simplified to “be part of a community”. The easiest way to seed your blog is with an already existing community. But the only way to do that is to be part of the community yourself.

19. Chris
Squidoo Lenses are a good way to generate traffic. By using a lense,
you can generate your own custom “community” of webpages, including some
of the more popular pages in your “neighborhood.” Including your own
webpage in such a list is a good way of generating traffic.

20. Splork
I’ve had good success writing articles and submitting them to EzineArticles. Articles that have been written from well-researched keyword phrases and accepted by EzineArticles tend to rank very high in Google for that search term. Placing anchor text in the footer of those articles so the reader can visit my relevant website has always increased my site traffic.

21. Jen Gordon
I came upon some unexpected traffic when my blog popped up on some css design portals like http://www.cssmania.com and http://www.webcreme.com. If you can put some time into the concept behind and design for your blog, I’d recommend submitting your site to a design portal not only for
additional traffic but to build an additional community around your site.

22. Kat
I’ve recently gotten involved with several “MySpace-like” community sites that focus on my target audience. I share my thoughts in their forums, post intros to my real blog on their system blog and I’ve even created a group for my specific niche. It’s been very, very successful for me.

23. Inspirationbit
Well, obviously everyone knows that social bookmarking sites like Digg, del.icio.us, etc. bring lots of traffic. But I’m now submitting some of my articles to blogg-buzz.com (a digg like site for bloggers), and I always get not a bad traffic from there.

24. Mark Alves
Participate in Yahoo Answers and LinkedIn Answers where you can demonstrate your expertise, get associated with relevant keywords and put your URL out there.

25. Tillerman
Be the first to write a post about the ‘Top Ten Blogs’ in your niche. The post will rank highly in any general search for blogs in your niche and other bloggers in your niche write about the post and link to it.

26. Nick
Participating in forums is a great way to get loyal readers. Either link baiting people in your signature or posting great advice and tips will give you high quality traffic, which will result in return visitors.

27. Brandon Wood
A simple trick I’ve used to increase traffic to my blog is participate in group writing projects. In fact, that’s what I’m doing right now.

28. Alan Thomas
Don’t forget your archives. I just posted a roundup of all interviews I did over the past seven months. One of them generated a new link and a big traffic spike from a group of users that look like they will be loyal readers now.

29. KWiz
Write something controversial. I don’t think it’s good to write something controversial just for the purpose of getting traffic necessarily (especially if it’s only for that purpose and you’re being disingenuous), but it works.

30. Dennis Coughlin
Find the best blogs on your niche and contact the authors. Introduce yourself and send a link of your blog. This might help them to discover your blog, read it and possibly link to it.

State of the Blogosphere

Source: Technoarati (Day 4 of the Bloggers Convention)

More bloggers than ever are making money from blogs, however they are not the majority. Most bloggers who are making money from their blogs are generally doing so as entrepreneurs by hosting advertising on their own sites and by using their blogs to drive speaking engagements and traditional media assignments. Some bloggers are even reporting profits that place them squarely in the middle class, so the rise of the professional blogger is clearly underway, but still evolving.

72% of respondents are classified as Hobbyists, meaning that they report no income related to blogging.

Of those who have monetized their blogging to at least some extent:

• 54% are Part-Timers
• 32% are Self-Employeds
• 14% are Corporates

Because Corporates report working for an organization or company, while Part-Timers and Self-Employeds run their own organizations and companies, we asked the two subgroups different questions about how they monetize their blogs.

Part-Timers and Self-Employeds say that the main ways they generate revenue are through display and search ads, as well as through affiliate marketing links. 15% say they are paid to give speeches on the topics they blog about.

Among Pro and Self-Employed bloggers, 17% of the total respondents derive their primary income from blogging.

We asked Part-Timers and Self-Employeds who generate revenue through advertising (approximately 40% of such bloggers) to estimate their annual revenues from advertising.

51% of Corporates – 58 respondents – report receiving a salary for blogging. This result is highly directional, but given the small size of the overall cohort of Corporates, worth noting. Too few bloggers to report say that they are paid by the post.

Of course, advertising, salaries, and per-post fees are just part of the complex way in which bloggers are remunerated. Much blog-related revenue is realized in the form of speaking fees and payments for contributing to print media or participating in broadcasts. To account for this, we asked respondents to indicate whether they gained revenue from any streams not included in our questions – which many did.

Across audiences who make money from blogging, the main positive revenues (not including salaries) are as follows:

Of course, revenues aren’t all positive. Bloggers – including Hobbyists – also report significant annual investments in their blogs. As employees of companies, Corporates were not asked about their personal expenditures on the assumption that blog construction, hosting and maintenance would fall to their employers. Evaluating positive and negative cashflows, we see that the mean profits for blogs with reported revenues is $57,369.20.

Remembering that a substantial majority of the blogosphere is essentially hobbyist in nature is an important part of understanding why many blogs are not ad-supported.

The hobbyist ethos is even evident among many Part-Timers and Self-Employeds who generate revenue from advertising – 89% of whom believe that it is important that the advertising placed on their blogs align with their values.

The divide observed earlier featuring Corporates on one side and Part Timers and Self-Employeds on another, is particularly visible in each subgroup’s approach to managing advertising on their blogs. Part-Timers and Self-Employeds rely on self-serve tools to offer contextual ads or pay per click ads on their blogs, while Corporates mainly rely on dedicated ad sales teams.

Self-Employed bloggers are the most likely to sell their inventory through a blog-focused ad network, as well as to use afilate links. Self serve ad platforms are most popular with Part-Timers and Self-Employed bloggers – with more than 2 out of 3 bloggers using them. Overall, the number of bloggers using ad networks or blog ad networks to sell their advertising inventory has increased since 2008.

According to Lijit, comparing 2008 to 2009 there has been a 68% increase in the number blogs with ad tags installed. This indicates to that monetizing blogs is high on the priority list of most publishers. Last year Lijit found that Google Ad tags made up 67% of the tags found. This year that percentage has dropped to 47%, indicating publishers are experimenting with other ad networks.

Finally, when it comes to specific ad types, Rich Media ads have achieved levels of moderate penetration, while Interstitial and Pop-up ads are relatively uncommon in the blogosphere.

Brands in the Blogosphere

When it comes to brands, 70% of bloggers are talking about them. 46% of respondents post about the brands they love (or hate), while and 38% post brand or product reviews. Part-Timers, and Self-Employed bloggers are talking about brands at a much higher rate (80%), with one in three posting reviews at least once a week.

Company Blogging

Excluding hobbyists – who are not monetizing their blogging, and many of whom don’t wish to do so – 14% of respondents maintain a blog for a company.

71% of all respondents who maintain blogs for a business – their own or one they work for – report that they have increased their visibility within their industries through their blogs. 56% say that their blog has helped their company establish a positioning as a thought leader within the industry.

In addition to its positive business impacts, bloggers have experienced positive career impacts. 58% say that they are better-known in their industry because of their blog, and 15% say that they have more executive visibility within their company as a result of blogging.

 

 

Instant Domain Name Search

Most business people have done their fair share of domain name searches.  You can say almost every wise business person starting a business checks to see if there companies domain is available, here’s a site that should save you some ime by instantly showing if the domain is available as your type in the letters of your desired URL.  Check it out, it will save you time compared to conventional WHO IS look-up.

http://instantdomainsearch.com/

Embeding TED talks into WordPress

You can embed TEDTalks following these instructions

Visit TED and locate the talk you would like to embed in your blog.

Click on the red “Share” button at the bottom of the player window.

Copy the “Link to this talk” URL or the video’s ID number from the overlay window. Use that in one of the following shortcodes:

Publish the post or page.

Vist the support site if needed.

Happy Blogging, Son of Five Rivers

Business ER Hotline

Business BC Launches “Business ER Hotline”:

Economic Climate a Hot Topic for Small Business Sector

Vancouver – Small Business BC (SBBC) has launched the “Business ER (Emergency) Hotline” providing BC’s small businesses with the solutions and business strategies to deal with the current economic conditions.

The Business ER Hotline, 1-800-667-2272, will enable SBBC to quickly address and respond to crisis-related business issues.

In addition to a 1-800 number, clients can ask questions and access information via email, or they can go to the Business ER Hotline website, www.smallbusinessbc.ca/businessER, or visit the SBBC Vancouver office in person, 601 West Cordova Street.

SBBC Consulting CEO, George Hunter, explains the reason for launching the Business ER Hotline: “Our staff has noted a significant increase in questions relating to changes in the economy.  For example, people want to know what kind of training programs are available for upgrading skills, or, which sectors are showing promise for new business opportunities, such as BC’s healthcare sector.  There are many people newly out of work who are now exploring the idea of starting a business.”

SBBC also reports an increase in questions regarding financing options and business strategies for tougher economic times such as how to cut expenses and build revenue, as well as a significant number of inquiries regarding labour standards.

“The Business ER Hotline offers a direct way to get timely information out to business owners and their employees as well,” says Hunter, “The small business community is important to our economy and SBBC is pleased to be able to provide a link to current information and provide support as small business owners navigate a changing economic landscape.”

Hunter encourages small business owners to contact SBBC via the Business ER Hotline, or go to their website, www.smallbusinessbc.ca, to find out more about the comprehensive services SBBC offers, such as financing options and sources, government acts and regulations, one-on-one business counseling, market research and consultation, business planning services, business seminars, e-business information and an education and resource centre