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Chitika – Monetize Your Search Engine Traffic

One of the benefits of advertisement networks like Adsense is that their campaigns automatically generate related links based on your content, but what if you could place links to products or services based on what your reader searched to get to your site?

Well it is possible, and it has drastically enhanced the way people monetize from search engines.

A free pay per click ad network, Chitika, allows you to place ads on your site that will only show up to people who have reached your site via search engine. Moreover, the ads displayed are geared not towards your site, but the keywords the user was searching.

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Web Hosting Comparison

Lasted updated: May 14, 2010

There are only 2 things you need to run a website: a doman name and web hosting; however, as demand as increased more and more hosting companies are popping up everyday. With so many choices how do you know which hosting to use?

The truth is, unless you signed some contract, you are never attached to a single hosting. If your hosting is really not cutting it, then you can always easily change and transfer to another.

That being said, there are usually a few things to consider when determining the right web hosting (If you are just starting out, you don’t necessarily need all the bells and whistles yet. Start basic and you can add on later:

Space - These days it should be unlimited.
Domain Names – Do you get 1 free domain name (.com). Does the hosting company offer domain name management? How much?
Email – Does the hosting give you email management? How much?
Simple Install – Does your hosting have one-click install for popular web apps (i.e. WordPress)
Price – The cheapest is not always the best, especially for what you may need. Maybe you don’t need unlimited email address. Maybe you don’t mind installing WordPress on your own.

The key is to look for what you’ll need 1-2 years out. Remember you can always start low and add-on more as needed.

Web Hosting Comparison Chart

The following is a list of some of the more popular and stable hosting companies out there. You can’t go wrong with any of them. ASANT Media uses HostMonster for all its hosting needs.

Hosting Company	Space	Domain	Cost (monthly)
HostMonster	Unlimited	1 Free	$5.95
FatCow	Unlimted	1 Free	$5.50
Blue Host	Unlimited	1 Free	$6.95
HostGator	Unlimited	-	$4.95

Most hosting companies pay for any transfer fees.

If you want good hosting, any of the above will do. While GoDaddy is one of the most widely known web hosting companies, we feel for what it offers, their service is more costly and outdated, and DO NOT recommend it.

If you have more questions on selecting the right web hosting, then feel free to contact us.

Easy Way to Convert in Twitter

If you don’t know what Twitter is by now, then you must be living under a rock. While the obvious plus of the network is that you can converse with many people at one time, I believe the best benefit of Twitter is URL cloaking.

By url cloaking, I mean websites showing up as different URL’s than what they really are:

i.e. http://youraffiliate.com/yourtrackingid turns into http://tinyurl.com/jkdhfs

bit.ly For the most part, Twitter automatically coverts most URL’s into TinyURL format. The beauty of this is that, you are given the ability to easy cover your affiliate links and ids, which allows for higher conversion rates. Also people must rely more on your brief description than to know what they are clicking on by the URL address.

People are curious. If they can’t tell what something is by the address, then, at the very least, they will at least click on the link and see what it is. That is all you can ask for.

While you can’t go wrong with just using the default of TinyURL, there are better options. The key to online success is to track everything you do. Track clicks, where people are coming from, what they are seeing, and so on. Yes, TinyURL cloaks your URL, but it doesn’t track it.

A very useful service I came across called Bit.ly allows you to easily, cloak, share, and track your url from anywhere. So if you post the link on some other site than yours, you can still track the link. If you are really lazy, then you can also share your links to various social networks straight from the site.

Free to sign up and easy to manage. Check out Bit.ly.

Recommend WordPress Plugins

Below is a list of WordPress plugins that ASANT Media recommends and uses for most of its projects. Let us install them for you.

GoCodes – A great solution to cloak and track affiliate links. Turns your long affiliate link into yoursite.com/go/affiliate Download.

Wishlist Member – A simple plugin that will instantly turn your WordPress website into a full on membership site – easily syncs up with several different payment gateways and a host of other 3rd party scripts. Download

Feedburner – A simple plugin that automatically redirects all feed slots on your site to the one you really want to share (ie your Feedburner feed). Download

All in One SEO – Allows you to easily optimize each individual post and page for search engines. Download

SEO Smart Links – Automatically links keywords. A good practice to increase your SEO is to link to pages wihin your sites. This plugin allows you to set keywords of your choice to be automatically linked when they are written.

You can make it link to any pages and/or articles you may refer to in a post. Also, you can see that HostMonster is a link, but what you don’t know is that it did it automatically because I already set what I wanted it to link to in the settings. Download

Subscribe to Comments – Gives commentators the option to subscribe to comments for a specific page. Helps keep conversation flowing because people may leave comments and then never come back. If they are given an email when somebody responds to their comment, then they will most likely revisit your site. Download

Post Views - Enables you to easily show most popular post and such. A great way for new users to see what your website is about. Download

Yet Another Related Post - Automatically grabs related posts based on your criteria. Also has a function, so you can add it to your RSS feed too. Also comes with convenient tags so you can customize it and put it wherever you want. Download