All Entries in the "Other Websites" Category
What Happened to ThePhantomWriters.com and LinksAndTraffic.com ??
Stillwater, Oklahoma — May 7, 2009 –
ThePhantomWriters.com, in business since 2001, launches ThePhantomWriters.org to survive the greatest threat to its survival yet – even greater than the threat of the recession on the economy.
In April of 2009, its domain registrar had its license to sell domain names terminated by ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), due to its failure to pay its registration fees and to keep clean WHOIS records. Now that ICANN has terminated its contract with the domain registrar, where ThePhantomWriters.com was registered, Bill Platt, the owner of The Phantom Writers is unable to complete a needed DNS (Domain Name Server) update, resulting in his domain appearing to be shut down.
Platt said, “It is very frustrating, because it looks like we have gone out of business, when we have not.” He continued, “We knew the DNS update was coming, so we did everything that we were supposed to do to be prepared for it. Three weeks before the old DNS server was shut down, we went to our domain registrar and processed a DNS update.” But, when the old server was shut down, Platt’s websites (more than three dozen websites) went offline.
Platt’s web hosting provider had migrated his websites from one server to another more powerful server, and as a result, the old server was scheduled to be shut down May 1st. He had every reason to believe that the appropriate measures had been taken to ensure that the server migration was to go smoothly – until he and his customers were unable to access his websites on May 1st.
Platt said that repeated attempts to contact his domain registrar for support have resulted in his registrar telling him that he should refer to the ICANN termination notice: http://www.icann.org/correspondence/burnette-to-valdes-09apr09-en.pdf
In response to this crisis, Bill Platt has registered two new domains with a different registrar to give his customers access to his two primary domains:
Platt suggested that “I did everything that I was supposed to do to ensure a smooth transition, and now I face the possibility of losing all of the credibility that I have built over the last seven years. I did everything I was supposed to do, and I did it right, but now I have to find a solution to this problem, somehow, some way…”
Platt wanted to reassure his customers that he is actively trying to reach someone at ICANN to help him fix this problem. To the best of his knowledge, he will regain control of his domains, once ICANN completes the process of moving his account to a new registrar – the only question is how long that will take.
In the meantime, both of his primary websites can be found on mirror domains. The Phantom Writers can be found at http://www.thePhantomWriters.org/ and his Links And Traffic SEO Service can be accessed at http://www.BackLinksAndTraffic.com/
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Bill Platt can be reached for comment at: 405-385-7038
How A Microsite Can Make You Money (With Articles)
A microsite is a great tool for any business. You don’t have to sell an e-book or offer a free download to profit from using a microsite. You can build a microsite for a small business, drive traffic to it with articles and profit handsomely. Here’s how:
- Build a site consisting of 3-6 pages, including an About page, Contact page, Privacy Policy, and 1-3 pages of good sales material
- Write an article a day and send it out to at least 10 article directories every day
- Do this for a full year and watch your traffic grow along with your links
- Make sure your microsite is well optimized and closes the sale
- Install analytics code on your microsite so you can track the traffic.
It’s really simple. And it’s also magical the way you can build a good list of prospects using a microsite that is targeted to a specific niche within your niche. Build a microsite for every aspect of your niche and dominate your business industry.
Article Marketing: What Can (Should) You Promote With Articles?
You’ve heard that article marketing is a good way to market your business. But what should you promote with articles exactly? Well, I can only think of two things that you should promote with articles. Anything that falls into the realm of web property that you own and affiliate sites that you’ve joined, but there is a danger in one of those.
Under the Web property category, I see two types of properties:
- Static Websites
- Blogs
If you own the static website or blog then they are great properties for promoting through article marketing. Don’t hold back. Be aggressive.
When it comes to affiliate marketing, you can promote companies for which you are an affiliate through article marketing, but I would recommend setting up a landing page for that affiliate that you are trying to promote and capturing a list. If you promote your affiliate products directly and send traffic to companies you want to promote and someone makes a purchase, you’ll get a paycheck, but that is all. You won’t get any information that you can use for future marketing. Quite frankly, future marketing opportunities are a lot more valuable than one-time sales. Unless the company you are promoting has a lifetime commission on customers you send to them, you stand to lose out on future commissions if that customer makes other purchases.
A better way to promote your affiliates is to set up a landing page for each specific product or service you want to promote and drive traffic to those pages with your articles. That way, you can capture e-mail and contact information for future marketing efforts before the customer makes the purchase on the company’s website.
What NOT To Promote Through Articles
There are some things I would not promote through articles. Here are some things you do not want to promote through articles:
- Social Media Profiles
- Other Articles
- Websites Where You Hold A Membership
- Product Review Sites
- Pages That Feature Your Ads
- Any Property Owned By Someone Else No Matter What Benefit You Get
- Your offline business
You are always better off promoting your own properties with articles. The problem with promoting sites where you are a member or have set up a profile is this: Any time you ask people to click a link you will lose some of your audience. Not everyone will click the link. So your profile or membership page may link to your site or landing page, but you will be much less effective than if you link to the landing page directly from your articles. Fewer clicks for your target audience = greater effectiveness.
Another thing, you want to build link popularity for your properties, not someone else’s. If your articles link somewhere else then you are essentially pay that other company for your work. Even if you make a commission on sales, you are paying through link popularity benefits. Build those links for you, not someone else.
Reputation Management: The Importance
Of A Multi-Tiered Approach
If you Google my name, you’ll find that there are more than 2 million search results for Allen Taylor. In the interest of fairness and full disclosure, I’d like to say that not all of them are me. There are thousands of people in the U.S. with my name. I’m just one of them.
But the interesting thing is that out of 10 page 1 results on Google, four of them are me. The No. 1 listing is my personal poetry blog. As a published poet who has been blogging daily for 11 1/2 months, I’ve got quite a following on this blog and I’ve managed to move it up to No. 1 for my name. Given that my name is a very common name, that’s a pretty good achievement.
In position No. 4 you’ll see our sister site, Blog Content Provider. No surprise since I am the manager of that side of our business.
Two steps down is my profile at EzineArticles, where I am an expert author. Though I do not have as many articles published at EA as I’d like, I’ve got enough there it seems that just by Googling my name you’ll find me there.
Fourthly, all the way down at the bottom of the line, is a link to an Internet radio show where I was interviewed by Belinda Subraman for creating my poetry toolbar.
On the next page you’ll find my StumbleUpon profile.
The Importance Of Reputation Management
I share all of this not to boast of my accomplishments, but to illustrate how important it is to do some reputation management on your name (as well as your corporate brand or small business identity) and to use social networking, article marketing, and blogging as search marketing tools. I use them all every day and you can see the results I get.
Now, will people search for my name? I think maybe some of them will. It depends on what they want to know.
As a published author and poet, potential publishers may want to know a little more about me. They’ll be able to find it easily. If I’m ever unemployed (God forbid) then future employers will want to do a background check on me. Employers are now Googling applicants’ names to see what they can find. Potential clients, too, might have an interest. They’ll want to know just who they are doing business with and if they find something they don’t like, it could be a deal killer. Or how about potential creditors? Hmmm?
All of this is to say that if you have not started your reputation management strategy yet, now is the time. Don’t just approach it from a single mindset. Articles are good; I recommend them. But don’t rely on them alone. Use a multi-tiered approach to SEM and reputation management and monitoring to move your personal name and your company brand to the top of the search results so that you promote yourself in a positive light and keep the reputation killers out of your field. You want to be in control of your own image – no matter what business you are in.
5 Ways To Use Your Articles You Probably Haven’t Thought Of
When it comes to article marketing, there’s more than one way to get it done. Here are some ways to use your articles you likely have not thought of:
- Read your article into a digital recorder and upload it to your website as a podcast. Distribute it to podcast directories.
- Talk your article in front of a video camcorder and upload it to YouTube.
- After distributing your articles to your favorite article directories, start a Blogspot blog and use your articles to link back to your website.
- Start a Google Knol and use your articles, linking back to your site.
- Post your articles to a Squidoo lens or HubPage and link back to your website.
Article marketing doesn’t always have to be done through article directories. It pays to get creative.
