Building Links Naturally? Sometimes we all need a ‘little’ help

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linkpopcheckerWhile many bloggers are happy to blog in relative anonymity and obscurity, if you are seeking to attract a larger audience, monetize your blog, or develop contacts within the field of your interest, generating links to your blog is going to be a crucial task.

Why would you build links?
 Well, links are about relationships: relationships for traffic – visitors to the linked sites will click on links to come to your blog; relationships for PR – this will help to raise your profile with Google, thereby improving search results, monetization possibiliities; and link popularity is about building authority – if you have a substantial body of links to your blog, then you will be seen by search engines, Technorati, Alexa, and a plethora of newer Web 2.0 services as having authority.

So, serious bloggers need to pay attention to the importance of building your link popularity. The process of building natural links though is going to be quite slow, by nature. So, as an alternative to this slow process, an SEO expert like Submitawebsite can help supplement or even run link building campaigns by using fundamental link building strategies, such as text links, submitting to directories, publishing your press release submission, or even doing blog reviews.

So, if you are intent on developing your link popularity, you’d certainly be wise to concentrate on natural link building. There are some free tools that can help you to analyze your current link popularity at Submitawebsite.

Suggestions and links supported by Submitawebsite.

SanDisk Cruzer: 4GB and U3

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On a trip to Costco, I came across a really good deal for a SanDisk Cruzer® Micro 4GB. I have always been using two or sometimes three computers, so my data was always on the wrong computer. I am already a PortableApps user, so switching to U3 was easy.

I’ve linked directly to the item on SanDisk’s page for you to have a look at. I also managed to get it at a very good price, approximately $45.00.

It has 4GB of space, though in practice, with the programs installed it works out at a lot less. I added a number of U3 compatible programs for convenience, including Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice. There were a couple of neat features, including the internal links to the SanDisk download center and the internal browser that made installing a number of extra applications very simple.

cruzerbox

OK, when you connect your Cruzer, you get the loading information as usual, but then this little box appears on the bottom right of your desktop. Clicking on the screen loads the Cruzer Start Menu (very much like the regular Start Menu), in which you will find all the programs loaded on the USB drive.

u3start menu

In the drive below, you’ll see that I have loaded a number of popular programs onto my Cruzer, including Firefox, Thunderbird, Skype, and OpenOffice. All of these programs are available from the U3 website browser. To access this click on the words, “Add Programs” and you can be taken to the U3 store or download central, which I’m including below.

u3menu

There is just one thing missing in all of the programs that I can’t find, that’s a blogging client, apart form ScribeFire which runs in FF. Odd thing is, I’d have thought it would be one of the first things to be included.

I haven’t made much use of the device yet, as my PC at school ONLY is Windows 98SE, and I haven’t upgraded it. I can never find the time to do that! But I’d better…

September Credit Card Spending: Why no cashback spending?

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As credit cards become much more prevalent than before, we are finding that there are ways to use credit cards that were not possible just one or two years ago: travelling on the subway in Taipei, buying a cup of coffee (yes, I did that!), paying for doctor’s fees, paying regular bills, fees or memberships, and so on. Some of the ways get quite ridiculous, so it’s getting much harder to resist the swipe and forget reaction of credit card users!

Of course, online it’s possible to spend a lot of money using your credit card. You don’t have to worry about it till MUCH later. Seems ironic that we are actually using our own personal credit cards MUCH LESS than before, even though it’s easier to find ways to use them.

The September Credit Card statement arrived this week, and I have just paid it! So, you’re asking what was on it? Actually, the total this month was only half of last month’s, or NT$6300, a little over US$200.

So how did we rack up that NT$6300 in charges? Well, there was the usual $2000 insurance charge, a telephone charge for my mobile phone, and I recently purchased an annual subscription to EMusic.com, which cost about $3300. Somehow, though going to several nice restaurants, buying clothes, gasoline, books, and other knick-knacks, we managed to avoid swiping for almost all of these things in September.

If you’re really shrewd, though, it is possible to earn quite a bit of interest, or at least reduce your interest payments through balance transfers and through cash back credit cards which credit money to your account everytime you spend.

It seems dumb for me not to charge things to credit cards, when some cards are begging payments to be made through them, and offer 3% or 4% cashback. Now that would be a nice payment of nearly $189 or more on the money I spent! It’s getting harder to argue against using a credit card in those cases.