Beyond Caffeine

I’ve been asked a few times over the years since I started writing this blog, why I decided to call it ‘Beyond Caffeine’ instead of … ‘The Website Style Blog’ or some other close connection to the main site.

The short answer is simple: I didn’t feel like calling it that.

The long version is a bit more intricate, and includes a somewhat eccentric fixation on coffee.

NOTE: If you’re not in the mood for a slightly musing and off-topic post, I suggest you stop now and read another article on the blog.

I had my first cup of coffee when I was about 6 years old - it was a latte, with more milk than anything else and plenty of sugar - pretty much the same as drinking a coffee flavored milk instead of chocolate milk. But in spite of the fact that there was very little coffee in it, I loved the unique taste instantly, and began asking for that more regularly. Of course, as time went on I started to make my own with a decreasing amount of milk as the years past.

Counting back years based on how I made my coffee is starting to sound a bit like T.S. Eliot when he said:

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

But that’s only the background on my initial love for coffee, because years later it would mesh in perfect harmony with my love for technology. When I got into technology as a hobby and then a career, it was most certainly acceptable (perhaps even expected) for me to be a caffeine junkie (whether coffee or soda).

Back somewhere around late high school and early college… with late nights, lots of studying and hanging out with friends, drinking coffee became (for my so-called ‘yuppie-tech generation’) a combination of personal like, a need to stay awake until I chose to go to sleep, and also a social activity. My friends and I didn’t go to bars or clubs - we went to coffee houses. We spent hours pouring over ideas, thoughts, and random other things while enjoying an endless cup of coffee.

After years of that practice, I started to relish the habit of sitting down with a cup of coffee and thinking. It’s almost a meditiative thing in many ways. When you have developed a extremely strong tolerance to coffee, it’s not necessarily just about drinking coffee because your body won’t function without it (although that’s part of it). There is another aspect, for someone who truly enjoys something, to turn it into a very contemplative act. Whether it’s the ritual of drinking coffee at a quiet table in the morning, or something else, it can be a time to think while you engage in something you enjoy.

That is what comes when you move beyond the caffeine, when you aren’t drinking something, but are actually taking part in a ritualistic behavior that allows you to relax and let your mind work.

One of the founding fathers of realism, Honore de Balzac, once said:

When we drink coffee, ideas march in like the army.

I cannot agree more. I’ve had some of my most interesting and inspiring technology business ideas while sitting on my back porch, relaxed and sipping on a cup of coffee.

It doesn’t have to be coffee for all people, and I’m not suggesting to others that they develop an addiction to coffee so that they can ‘gain clarity of thought’ or whatnot. I’m simply saying that the idea of creating some simple, monotonous ritual, something that takes no actual thought but that you enjoy, can provide a period of ‘clear’ time for you. When your mind can wander while you do something pleasant, and perhaps… you’ll have some inspiration.

I think that balanced, relaxed, and contemplative few minutes is essential to staying sane in the midst of a world that is focused on time and how quickly something can be done. I believe that it’s a good practice and a pleasant task to set for yourself. You know, Bertrand Russell said once…

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.

Perhaps I named it Beyond Caffeine because maintaining that ‘level’ is what I’m aiming for.

If you’d like to see some of the beautiful meditative coffee photos that I’ve added to my SXU lightbox, feel free to take a look - you’ll be seeing them on here soon anyway

~Nicole

I’m getting caught up on a few things, having been kept busy with life lately and neglecting the blog a bit.

I’ve been doing all sorts of lovely things this summer, but they are all keeping me quite busy.

A few things I’ve been up to…

Went to the coast and took this (as well as many other) photos:

Finished taking a class on Film and Literature. It was allright. It forced me to watch a few movies I had never seen before and consider them from the point of adapted works.

I’ve also just gotten in playing WoW (yes, I fought against it for years), and now both my daughter and I are hooked on the game.

The game seriously has a dangerous addictive quality.

They need to create support groups or something. But I’m loving it.

And finally, I’ve been working on my CSS layout book.

This is, of course, all the non-client work things that have been keeping me entertained. I also judged a CSS/WordPress contest and got to see some great new designs come about.

Today seems like it will be one of those ‘productive’ days because I’m going to go pick up my glasses (been waiting a MONTH for them to be fixed) and buy a new computer (unfortunately I can’t find what I want without Vista installed, but ah well, I’ll deal with it.) Annnnddd.. it’s around that time to take my daughter for ‘back to school’ shopping. I’m putting it off and seriously considering ordering online to avoid the crowds.

So, there you go. A relatively busy summer has kept me from writing on the blog as much as I should. It will start to pick up again soon

~Nicole

Introduction
So you’ve got your website published on the net? You have your own great domain name and the design is so perfect. Your site couldn’t look better - and is just as good if not better than you’re competitors. But your missing the vital ingredient: traffic! In this tutorial I will explain how you can get those visitors literally flooding in!

Promotion methods

There are lots of different ways to promote your site, in this article we will look at the pros and cons of some of the different methods of website promotion. We will cover:

• Online Advertising
• Offline Advertising
• Link Exchanges
• Purchased Links
• Articles
• Directories
• Search Engine Submission
• Forum / Email Signatures

Online Advertising
There are lots of different methods of online advertising, PPC (pay per click) is the most easy to manage model, as you only pay for the visitors you get. Let’s say I run a flower website, and I convert roughly 1 in 10 visitors into a buyer, also my average order converts to $10 profit. Then if I pay 50 cents/click, that is $5 for each order. So even though I am paying 50 cents for each visitor from my PPC ads, my business is still profitable as on ever 10 PPC visitors I make $5 profit. ($10 profit - $5 PPC costs)

To find out more about internet advertising, I suggest you read this article: http://www.affiliatesrated.com/article.php?article=cpm_cpc_or_cpa

Offline Advertising
You can advertise your website with flyers, in magazines, on billboards, on television and on the radio. Although it is harder to monitor how profitable your advert is, it is important not to forget that these adverts can be just as effective as internet campaigns and often more effective. For example if I run a website selling bike parts, and advert in a cycling specialist magazine would be the perfect way to target my advert to my chosen audience.

Link Exchanges
These can be very beneficial, but only in certain situations. For example, if I run an internet shop selling PCs, and my friend has an internet shop which sells PC games, then a link exchange could be mutually beneficial. My visitors who are buying a new PC might decide to buy some new games from his site, and his visitors who are buying new game might decide it is time for a new PC so they can play the latest games and buy one from me.

Link exchanges are no longer of any real benefit from a search engine point of view, and so should only be used with the intention of getting more visitors, and not for getting higher search rankings.

Purchased links
There has been an increasing trend in purchasing links from other websites. This is because the benefit here is two-fold. Firstly, assuming the website is targeting the same market as your site, then you get a new stream of targeted visitors. Secondly, search engines see the one-way link as a vote of confidence in your site, so you can get a search engine boost. You will need to weight up the cost of the link with whether or not you think you will get a significant boost to traffic as a result.

Articles
As should be clear by now, I am a keen advocate of articles as an excellent means of website promotion. Firstly, by publishing them on your site first, you get unique website content for your site. Secondly, then by submitting it to an articles directory other webmasters will post the article on their site providing you with tons of one-way links back to your site. Although the glory days of articles are over, they are currently an under-rated method of promotion, so if you are a good writer, and have knowledge about topics related to your site which others might not know, get writing!

Directories
Directories have really frustrated me. Time and again I have submitted my sites to directories and I have only been disappointed. Firstly, it often takes ages to submit your listing, and once submitted, your listing may take ages to be accepted. Also, the benefit of directories has been hyped up, hardly anybody tries to use a directory to find what they are looking for, they use search engines. Some promote the idea that search engines use directories in calculating rankings, especially the ODP, as far as I can tell the ODP is pretty much dead with a backlog of 1000s of site submissions and editor submissions and is old news. So are directories. Conclusion: don’t waste your time on them.

Search Engine Submission
Search engine submission is the process of going to the search engine and telling them about your website by hand. I would recommend doing this for msn, yahoo and google but only when you first launch your site and they don’t yet know about it. If your site has been around for a few days and has some links from other sites indexed by these engines, this won’t be necessary as your site will already be indexed by these engines. The other search engines aren’t worth your time or effort, they will make it their business to find your site so don’t waste your time on them.

Forum / Email Signatures
Why don’t more people do this? It’s such a simple method of promotion, and it’s free! All you do is put a link to your site in your forum signature and that could mean hundreds or thousands of new links to your site depending on how often you chat in forums. With the email signatures, lets say I send a funny email to a friend, and they forward it to all their friends, all of a sudden lots more people could find out about my site. Don’t overlook this promotion gem!

Conclusion
I bet you hadn’t thought of all these different ways to promote your site! And even if you had, I’m sure you learnt something new. I hope that the article has helped you find new ways to promote your site. To find out more about promoting your website I suggest you look at http://www.affiliatesrated.com/affiliate_tips.php

Written by: Benjamin Wigoder

About the Author:
Benjamin Wigoder is a website designer, programmer and entrepeneur. He has been using affiliate programs for years and his new (affiliate programs directory) allows webmasters to see affiliate programs rated and reviewed as well as categorized to make choosing suitable programs easy.

The next time you visit a website, take a moment to stop and ask yourself “Why am I visiting this website?” Chances are your answer is going to have something to do with the content. The fact is, content is king. Having the most unique and informative content that is relevant to your genre of website will greatly increase user retention. We’ll discuss some key components to keeping your website content fresh and keeping it relevant!

Choose a Topic You’re An Expert In
Consider this. You have just discovered the world of online affiliation where you can make money through advertisements placed on your website. You see advertisements on just about every web page on the net these days, mostly in the form of Google AdSense. “Open a Google AdSense account and start earning commissions today!” Sure, it sounds great and it can be very profitable, but the mistakes many new webmasters will make is choosing a market that they feel will make them a quick buck rather than choosing something they are passionate about. The result of this over-enthusiasm for capital gain is typically a website that lacks originality, style, and quality content. You’ll find that the key to success is providing users with a quality site where content is your main focus. Once you’ve established a niche that you feel comfortable in and can showcase a strong knowledge on your subject matter, content will come easy.

Enlist The Help of Ghost Writers
Writing quality content can be time consuming. The more ambitious your site is, the more quality content you’ll need to provide. Don’t be afraid to enlist the help of Ghost Writers to help you fill those empty pages. As long as you enlist the help of others who are experts in your chosen website category, you’ll be well off with the additional content writers. Try asking some colleagues if they’ll write an article or two, post messages on forums stating that you’re looking for a content writer. Of course not everyone is willing to help without some form of compensation. If you site offers services that users typically pay for, try offering those services to a select few friends or colleague for free in exchange for articles and content.

Be Your Own Worse Critic
When it comes down to the quality of your content, be your own worse critic. Be nitpicky about every little nuance and aspect of every sentence you write down. Read it several times over, making sure it’s relaying effectively the message you’re trying to get across. When in doubt, have a friend or co-worker read through your content and get their honest opinions. You only have a few seconds to make an impression on your users, so never publish anything that is less than perfect. Your goal is to make sure your content contains useful and quality information without error before being seen by visitors of your site. Also, make sure to run your article through a spell check (such as with MS Word) before publishing it.

Add Something New Each Day
A website that remains static will not retain users. It’s fact. For your website to keep generating repeat traffic, you need to give your users something new each day. They will need to see constant changes, new articles, and up to the minute news and information so they will be intrigued in coming back. Never fall into a comfort zone where you feel you can “wait another day” to update your site. You can be sure of one thing, if you’re not on top of your website, the competition will be!

Write Your Content For Users, Not Search Engines
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is important to search engines, content is important to users. Do not confuse the two. Content should be written with the user in mind, without thinking about how it will impact search engines. Content written for search engines usually are comprised of keyword stuffing (repetitiveness of key words), which more often that not will make the content neither useful nor particularly enjoyable to read. You will be doing a disservice to yourself and your users if you write your content for search engines.

By focusing on the user you’ll soon reap the benefits of quality content that was written with passion and knowledge. Over time you’ll find that you’ll receive residual traffic as other webmasters link to your site, users post your URL in forums, and word of mouth spreads. Although content is just one component to generating traffic to your site (you still need to apply SEO), it will ensure that the traffic you do get keeps coming back for more.

Written by: David Nicolosi
About the Author: David is a Senior Programming consultant and SEO expert with over 10 years experience in the IT industry. David currently owns several successful websites, including Free Links Direct, a free SEO service that provides one-way links and quality SEO articles and tips.

The Road is Long and the Path Filled with Boulders

A bit of an update as I am trucking through, slowly but steadily on my book. I can surely identify what has been the largest difficulty for me in the past two months. On a good note, I can also say that I have (I believe) overcome that difficulty.

Primary Problem - Organization

The organization of how I want to present the information kept repeatedly coming back to me as I was writing. It simply felt… off. I kept having a recurring feeling that the more I wrote, the more I was going to have to later fix. It just wasn’t feeling well organized.

It has been an element of extreme importance to me for the book to be easily readable, but in that, one of the most vital aspects is for it to be well organized. I want people to be able to flip to the section they want without any question. Was that happening… well no. I realized that I was writing it more in the way of a desktop reference. Listing things out, and that was not what I wanted to do. So… some changes had to occur.

A Bridge Across

I feel like I’m getting closer to being caught up in changing what I had already written to increase the readability. I definitely do not want to make the book complicated to find information in. But, at the same time, I don’t want it to be just a desktop reference. I think (’think’) that I have reached a solution to it.

Primarily I decided that I’m going to use the approach of how I would explain it (such as the order I would address it were I using a lecture format) and try that method. So far, it is seeming to be significantly better and flow together much nicer.

Hopefully, that will continue. On the downside, getting prepared for organizing a seminar is also putting a bit of a roadblock in my time, and some of the volunteer projects I’m working on are also taking a bit of a bite. I’m sure that it will all work out in due time, and I am definitely on the road to getting this moving along at a better rate now.

~Nicole

Well, it looks like I have been able to come up with some very good finds for the research I was working on.

There are excellent websites out there, and they will be coming soon with reviews.

Today I do not feel like reviewing the code of a website. It’s very late for me, and I’ve been thinking about things that are completely different. I’ve been browsing the internet doing some research. Usually, when one of these needs to research hits me, it lasts a bit, so bear with me.

I plan on making a few posts on the things that I find. I’m looking, right now, for research material regarding the topics of science (specifically the Volcanology - an area of Geology), and classics (such as latin and greek resources).

I’ll post what I find, then go back and review them (code wise) as time permits.

~Nicole~