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Being a webmaster of your own sites can be daunting. You actually have to DO most of the work yourself or find someone else who can do it for you. Some tasks are easier to do using the right software and some are easier using a service.

Using Amazon Mechanical Turk is one of the more brilliant ways to outsource. Of course you have to think about tasks that are easy and quick to work on but still need human intelligence. After funding your account, you create Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs for short) and submit them to the Mechanical Turk. After a surprisingly short time you get results coming in from workers around the globe.

I am just starting to experiment with the possibilities but already find this extremely useful.

Example - using the Advanced HIT tool:

Title: Do You LOVE your Digital Camera?

Description: Give us your quick view on it.

Keywords: digital photo,digital camera,nikon,canon,olympus,pentax,minolta

Expires in: 100 days

Provide Detailed Instructions:

• Go read the example at: http://i.digital-photo-web.com/Olympus-Digital-Camera/Olympus-E500
• Tell us in your own words (100-500) about your own digital camera.
• What brand and exact model is it?
• What do you like about it the most?
• What tasks do you use it for?
• Where would you like to see improvements?
• Thanks in advance for taking the time and giving your input.

Select an Answer Format - Free Text Answer

And finally I pay for my HIT: 100 assignments for $0.05 each.

Yeah - you read that right. I get plenty of results for only 5 cents per completed task!

A few examples with minor editing:

• Canon Digital Ixus 430
• Canon EOS 40D
• Canon ixus 860s
• Canon Powershot SD850 IS
• Canon PowerShot SX100 IS
• Canon PowerShot TX1
• Canon Rebel XT
• Canon XTi

All the results I have got are usable and many give valuable insights.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Google is working hard on a simple plug-in social networking solution for smaller sites. This looks really promising. Basically you can use the login features of the bigger social sites and have your readers contribute and add friends with the help of sites like FaceBook.com, Yahoo.com, Orkut.com and other sites that support OpenSocial standard.

This is all done with small code snippets, much like AdSense, that you generate easily without any programming.

The end result should help in attracting more visitors and added social features that visitors are expecting.

The idea is explained very well in this Google Friend Connect video:

From Google Friend Connect:

Everyone wins in a friend connected web:

• You, the site owner - Google Friend Connect gives you a snippet of code that, when put into your site, will equip the site with social features, including the ability to run third-party social applications. Moreover, it enables your visitors to log in with existing credentials, see who among their friends is already registered at that site. It also gives them one-click access to invite friends from their existing friends lists on other sites, such as Facebook or orkut.
• Your site’s visitors - Visitors no longer need to create a new account or develop yet another friends list just to use the social applications on your site. We create the infrastructure that allows one login to be used across multiple sites and the ability to reuse existing friend relationships that the visitor has already established elsewhere.
• OpenSocial developers - With Google Friend Connect, any website on the web can become an OpenSocial container. Their social applications can now run on social networking sites and anywhere else on the web that uses Google Friend Connect. By placing these applications on sites where users already visit, these application will be seen and used by more users more often.
• Social networks - With Google Friend Connect, social networks thrive as hubs of activity while giving their users more opportunities to bring their friend relationships to other websites while simultaneously bringing their friends and activities from outside the social network back in — with people having the ability to publish their activities across the web into the activity streams of their social networks.

To read more about this development or take part in testing it you can visit:

http://www.google.com/friendconnect/

Popularity: 17% [?]

Outsourcing is the current buzz around the net.

I’ll start you off with some pointers in how and what I do - just get some details down and add some meat to the bones…

Lets be clear about the fact that I am no expert in outsourcing. But simply running my daily live I outsource a lot of tasks, sometimes without noticing. You do too. Buy a pizza or take away chicken and you have outsourced COOKING.

Here is a list of a few outsourcing routes I have tried:

www.Need-An-Article.com - I use them for article writing when I don’t feel like writing it myself from scratch. Using the service is pretty straightforward - you get reasonable quality and can ask for one revision. I had one writer that was not up to par but most are ok and I found one that was very good. It is important to get your own voice into the article and make minor adjustments. The cost is a little over $5 for each article as well as a monthly fee of $10.

Example:
http://www.digital-photo-web.com/madame-tussauds-museum-london.html
(took the photos myself)

www.AbsoluteCovers.com - Ovi Dogar is a very capable and quick graphics designer. I used his service for the graphics for creating my eBook cover. The result was very professional. In addition to the cover he made the graphics for the sales page from a photo I sent and some text. Can’t recall the cost but it was less than $200 for the whole package.

Example:
http://www.4×4offroads.com/book.html

www.SubmitEdge.com - I recently started using their services. For $15 I can get 100 one way links from directories. Pretty hard to do that by hand for less. I also am trying out the “Basic link building package” for $79. So far so good - except the first article I just got back is not acceptable. I am just now asking for a rewrite on that.

Photo Journalists hired - I currently have one guy who is writing articles for me on a regular basis. I asked for submissions in my newsletter and got a few responses. The cost per article is fixed and is of course way higher than NAA but the quality and relevancy is also much higher. This way I can have original and interesting articles from places where I can’t be. I am looking for more photo journalists (of both sexes) to take the website even further.

Example:
http://www.4×4offroads.com/off-road-adventure-romania-easter.html

Hope that this list gets someone inspired to try some tasks. Like most webmasters I am sometimes a little too convinced that I am personally the best man for each job. However I think outsourcing is vital for healthy growth to increase profits and safe time.

Popularity: 34% [?]

As you may know I am a great fan of Ken Evoy of SiteSell. His clear thinking and especially his way of transferring those ideas to the people around him is mindboggling. Ken likes to shake up things and get you to look deeper than before.

This time Ken set forth a direct attack on the blogging craze.

Blog or Build? With Site Build It!…
You Actually Do Both Automatically.
Beyond That, Is Full Blogging Right For You?

Should You Full Blog? For Most Small Business People…
“Full-Blogging” Is the Wrong Choice To Build a Business
Blogging. Everyone’s doing it.

And that is a financial mistake for most small businesses. Few make much money at blogging because it is usually the wrong way to grow an online business. That’s important if you want your Web venture to be more than just a hobby (”an activity or interest pursued for pleasure and not primarily for income”).

What is blogging, exactly? Well, after you strip away all the hoopla…

Blogging is merely a different way to build a Web site. Its content is organized by the date/time of its “posts,” which are what blogs call “Web pages” (even the word “posts” suggests time-sensitivity).

The points he makes are well thought out.

Of course his statements have caused a stir in the blogging world. Rosalind Gardner got all angry and wrote what I consider to be a less well thought out response:

http://www.netprofitstoday.com/blog/blogging-is-a-massive-mistake-huh/

Andy Beard takes a much more balanced route and admits he has learned a lot from Ken and understands his point.

http://andybeard.eu/2008/04/ken-evoy-attacks-blogging-wordpress.html

I think the main point Ken is making is that for the average business a full blog is simply too much work for the actual results it will produce. Taking the long time view will make the blogging posts of little value.

Some are talking about the technical aspect of blogging vs. building. SBI is not really a technical solution it is a marketing strategy along with a handful of tools to support the growth.

For me - as a technical thinker and doer - I chose to create this one blog to link all my sites and to have a place where I can express my views on a number of things - small and large.

My recommendation:

Choose WordPress if you are willing to spend more time and cost or are willing to take on the steeper learning curve. You will have to learn about the more technical sites of hosting like upgrading the software and handling technical challenges. Outsource these things and the cost goes even higher.

Choose SBI if you want to drive your business safely to a set goal. My SBI sites are the core of my strategy of building an “online empire” (sorry if that sounds like a used phrase).

In the end it is all a matter of delivering value to your customer and making the world a little better.

Popularity: 24% [?]

I was working on 4×4Sale.net and wanted to give an easy access to all 4×4 trucks within a particular US state. I needed a zip code within the state to make searching possible through the BANS system. Since I couldn’t find a single source for this I went through the trouble of collecting this information myself.

Here is the result and please don’t hesitate to link to this page to help others in similar situations.

List of all US states, their capitals and a ZIP code within the capital:

Nice blogs about Zip codes:

100 Top Foreclosure Zip Codes and Cities
The 25 Coolest Free Websites for Non-Techies
Profit Week: Using Zip Codes To Improve Profit

Popularity: 21% [?]

Generating new ideas out of thin air is a continuous tasks for you and me. You can get ideas from a variety of sources and from all your different senses, like seeing, listening and feeling as well as smelling and touching. To that I can add reading words that are drawn from different directions.

Idea2Do.com is a brand new website I have just created. It provides a number of ways for you to generate fresh ideas on the fly.

1. A random combination of three words are displayed in the header. They are from the categories: SUBJECT, PREDICATE and MODIFIER and make a strange sounding - and thought provoking - sentence.
2. Images from Flickr based on these same words occupy the left column beneath the menu structure. The picture give visual stimulus - especially when you want to design something two or three dimensional like a logo, painting or even a house!
3. The main content is filled with related products from eBay. This serves twofold purposes. One the one hand it gives you ideas for things you can make yourself and on the other hand you always just buy what you find!

In addition you can use the menu on the left side to get more specific in your idea selection process.

Take a look for yourself and see if this website can help you in your idea generation for your next project or gift.

Idea2Do.com:

• Game Ideas
• Gift Ideas
• Anniversary Gift Ideas
• Best Friend Gift Ideas
• Birthday Gift Ideas
• Christmas Gift Ideas
• Family Gift Ideas
• Holiday Gift Ideas
• Homemade Gift Ideas
• Romantic Gift Ideas
• Unique Gift Ideas
• Unusual Gift Ideas
• Newborn Baby Idea
• Project Ideas
• Stocking Stuffer Ideas
• Tattoo Ideas

Idea2Do is the newest member of my series of BANS - Make Your Own Niche Store sites.

Feel free to make suggestions for improving this idea generating tool…

Idea generating ideas from the world of bloggers:

Eureka!
Quantity Breeds Creativity
Genius IQ in How To Generate New Ideas
The Power of Brainstorming

Popularity: 25% [?]