The merchant account industry is a very aggressive niche and it is hardly unexpected taking into account that almost everyone today is making use of plastic. But this will create a problem for folks that are trying to get themselves the best merchant accounts, because many providers are not totally frank regarding their charges.Lots will in fact advertise very cheap introductory rates which sound really good when folks initially sign up, but soon after they discover that these prices are just available for an initial period or in specific special circumstances.Furthermore there may well be additional charges which get put on in peoples accounts as well as the interest rates. Those additional charges can consist of stuff such as transaction fees or statement charges.People have to sign up with organizations which can offer consultations rather sales patter. For people who would like to have an idea about those things they should be searching for in the industry then people might try putting in something such as Merchant warehouse fees when they are searching for the recommended merchant accounts. This is going to permit these people to obtain an extremely strong knowledge of what specifically they should to be shopping for.
Global communication is now available from our households - and so this is reflected in the burgeoning number of weblogs written by backpacker-types around the globe reporting from the nation they are currently residing in.
From tales about Ho Chi Minh’s Cho Ray Hospital to flower festival of Hiroshima, Japan, there seems to be no topic that isn’t published by these hardy travellers.
Such blogs- often called “travelblogs” - are read by like-minded backpacker-types and individuals who’ve already been to the country they’re reporting from. Also, travelblogs provide an insight for those thinking of travelling in the future, so they serve a purpose as giving them a snapshot of what to anticipate if they do choose to journey there.
Nowadays it’s normal to find such travelblogs, and so it’s sometimes not sufficient to simply provide your views on the country you are currently residing in. Now there’s a clamour for blogs that pinpoint niches in the country they reside. For instance, a travelblog regarding photos of Lumphini Park in Thailand, or a travelblog that details the wedding ceremonies in Laos.
The majority pen these travelblogs as a hobby, and maybe to draw in a readership, but there are bloggers who make a living from blogging. Be it money via advertising on their website, or for writing for other websites and receiving money for such work as they are travelling. If you’re living in a country that has a very low cost of living, this can actually be sufficient to maintain all your expenses - though you do have to have a reserve of cash and not have your site be your only method to supporting yourself.
In summary, it’s good to write a blog about what you’re getting up to while you’re on your travels - as something to refer back to, while also giving others an uncommon insight about corners of the globe less known.
The engines, namely Google, are striking back at sploggers and their malevolent creations, the splogs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splog
According to media reports Google has taken measures to impede those attempting to use its Blogger service to create and maintain fake blogs. http://www.marketingvox.com/archives/2005/10/24/
google_trying_captcha_to_obstruct_sploggers/index.php
Blogger’s official corporate blog mentioned the “spamalanche” that has search engines, blog search engines and net advertisers in a tizzy. http://buzz.blogger.com/
They are now working together to eliminate the economic incentive for splogs by identifying them at their source - by domain - and not indexing them.
Can CAPTCHA Stop The Spamalanche?
The “CAPTCHA” test is a method by which automated programs that post or create blogs can be foiled–where the user is asked to type in a sequence of letters from a line that people can read, but computers can’t decipher.
Blogger is currently working on ways to reduce false positives and ensure that once a blog with word verification has been established as legitimate, the blogger will no longer need to solve the CAPTCHA.
Why Create Splogs In The First Place?
Splogs generally fall into one of two categories, notes Mediapost: Link farms, which pack hundreds or even thousands of blogs with gibberish or recycled content, and contain multiple links to a particular Web site, which allow them to game Google’s PageRank algorithm, creating artificially high organic search rankings; and spam blogs that simply recycle content with AdSense or other advertising on them in the hopes of making money from errant users clicking on the ads. http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=35418
Splogs most often get their content by scraping - the process of sending an electronic copying bot to take everything it sees, recreating it on an unlimited number of instant documents, writes Jim Hedger. http://news.stepforth.com/blog/2005/10/splogs-scraping-adsense-fraud.php
Literally millions of instant sites have sprung up over the past twelve months, most of which are free-hosted Blogs, containing content scraped out from the original sites.
Why Splogs Are Evil
An article in the Wall Street Journal notes that the splogs are a big source of frustration for several search-engine start-ups that focus on blog searches, such as IceRocket.com LLC, Technorati Inc. and Feedster Inc. http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB112968552226872712-h37m_YUT3BqCvLRfhl6rqzKObnE_20061019.html?mod=rss_free
Jim Hedger makes some excellent points about why splogs are a menace to genuine bloggers, notably that:
- Splogs are content thieves and can cause honest webmasters to get caught up in technical and financial issues by losing search engine listings and advertising revenue
- Splogs use up blogging resources, especially those of Blogger and Blogspot
- Slogs clog up the search results with crappy and irrelevant sites.
- Splogs devalue the legitimate uses of blogs as communications and marketing tools
- Splogs might lead future blog readers or users away from the growing blogosphere.
Pete Blackshaw, chief marketing officer of Intelliseek, a firm that monitors and searches blog content, said that spam blogs make it harder to convince companies to blog. http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=35418
What Can You Do About Splogs?
It’s not just the engines that are fighting back. There are a few knights in shining armour out there, like Frank Gruber, a blogger in Chicago who became frustrated while encountering splogs in search engines, and recently launched a site called SplogReporter, reports the Wall Street Journal. http://www.splogreporter.com
SplogReporter lets anyone submit the Web address of a suspected splog. Gruber has created an index to rate how “spammy” a blog is, and is building a database of splogs that he may share with search engines.
Google engineer, Matt Cutts, provided tips on how to report spam to Google on his blog. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/update-jagger-contacting-google/ Use his tips to report spam and do your bit to clean up the blogosphere.
I first wrote about spam-blogs here, and recommended that instead of using blogs for spam, marketers must focus on building content-rich sites and getting high-value links to them. http://www.blog-maniac.com/spam-blogging.htm
Don’t restrict yourself to just the SEO benefits of blogging. Appreciate the value that blogs can add to your marketing and public relations strategy and use them the way they were meant to be used - as cutting-edge and “cool” tools for communicating with your target audience.
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Priya Shah is a partner in the search engine marketing firm, SEO & More and writes an online marketing blog. Request the whitepaper Boost Your Search Engine Visibility With Blogs And RSS.
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