Internet is a library for all. It rates as the best and reliable source of information in all genres. However, for you to access this sea of knowledge, you need some nitty-gritty on computer knowledge and internet searches. Inbound links is the source for all this information.

For years, inbound links is used in network navigation but currently, technology has made it easier to increase traffic and hits for the website through this technology. Search engine optimization is a new form of websites advertising. This creates market for the websites depending on the keyword strength.

Whenever you need to advertise, increase website performance and increase more views to your site, you need to create quality inbound links. Below are the tips for you:

1. Article Writing:

Article writing is not a new journalistic term. It has been in existence for long but few webmaster and web-owners knew how to utilize this into website marketing. Article writing was more of a delicacy for publications and news website, but currently, it is the fast growing marketing strategy.

This involves use of innovative, creative and imaginative skills and talents to turn ideas into writing and post them in various article directories or in the website links. The service is worthy since you can multi-post the article in many sites which publishes them to increase the number of hits for your link or website.

Article writing is not hard, but it requires innovation. You can hire professional services to produce quality-marketing articles for your products or services. With this, you pay the services to market your website as well as offer you with links to your website.

Always have a link in every article or a section that provides relevant information. This can be comparison of the information, more updates on that piece of information or more details.

2. Reciprocal Link Exchangers

You wish to establish links to other websites, inbound links provides this. All you need is to search for websites that have similar information, services or products you sell and add their websites.  Have necessary and similar information in your website and then invite other websites with similar information to yours. They must add your website too.

3. Provide a Service:

This website marketing strategy includes providing a service to the user or the page viewer. You have seen websites offering free chat rooms, or post your resumes or create your profile.

I do not say you give free services, but these are examples of services that deliver high traffic for your website. Services offer best links. They are well accomplished in article writing, content writing and blogging.

4. Web Directories:

In this web marketing, directories offer the best services. They arrange websites alphabetically with similar products and services.  In this, website directories provide an inbound link to your website hence giving you a chance for more views.

5. Email Signature File:

Have you thought of an opportunity to tell every person you communicate to, your necessary information? Email signatures are inbound links that provides the best marketing services. You include a signature that harbors contact details and a link to your website, in every email you send. The recipient will click and navigate to your email.

6. Webrings:

Webrings, they have the right to advertise a website different from yours. Then, the website owner has to do the same for you; it is a give and take. You sign contracts and establish a relationship between that website and yours. You may or may not have similar information or line of business.

7. Post in Newsgroups:

Maybe, you have signed up in a newsgroup. If not, you need to since this is a way to reach millions of target group for your products or services. Join newsgroups that share similar information and provide links on your articles, blogs or any type of discussion.

8. Social Book Marketing Site:

Ever thought of making quality bookmarks? This is similar to website marketing. You make your advertisements in sought of bookmarks that help clients and viewers to see it. You categorize the bookmarks ion keywords form; hence increasing the website traffic.

9. Blogging:

Blogging is the most common used online marketing tool. Blogs are length information article that deal with a wide range of genres. They are web pages where you directly advertise your products and services inform of information to guide, teach, inform, or entertain.

There are a number of blog writing service providers who can write on anything within a fixed period. All you need is to get the topic, the required key word strength, number of words and deadline for the assigned work.

This will take some hours and you post your information to clients. You must update your blogs with new and competent information or materials.

10. Word of Mouth:

Since time immemorial, sales agents have used word of mouth to advertise or sell the products. Other than writing blogs and articles, many people tend to believe what they hear. Seeing is believing, and you remember 50 % of what you see.

You need to incorporate all these strategies in any website marketing to increase the number of hits, or better said increase internet traffic.

 

1. Send paperless greeting e-cards. You will find them free on many sites. Just type in Free Greeting Cards and you are off. Save yourself dollars and reduce the waste of trees.
2. You can save a fortune by managing your digital pictures at many free sites. Kodak Gallery is one site. Community Webshots is another.
3. One of the greatest websites for saving money is Freecycle. It is free and is the best way to get or give things away. Oodles of items are given away daily and you can post a wanted ad if there is anything you need.
4. You can trade media or books you already own at; Title Trade and Paperback Swap.
5. To compare multiple airlines, hotels, rental car companies at once, find your best price on the market at Travelocity or Orbitz.
6. You can find reusable coupons at specific manufactures or retail websites or specialty sites like SmartSource.
7. You can compare goods and services at customer sites like Epinion, in addition to feedback from others.
8. To keep tabs on what others say you owe, go to Annual Credit Report. This is a free credit report.
9. Instead of calling information, go online and search with Google. Save the price of a phone call.
10. Woot is an online store that sells cheap and focuses on selling one item a day really cheap.
11. Another website that has hundreds of items, mostly cheap and has lots to give away is CraigsList. You can also list your items for sale with them.

• Let’s kick off the list with one of my favorites: Media Master allows you to easily upload all your music onto their server, all for free with no limitations. Once the upload process is complete, you can access your music library from any computer with an internet connection. You can play music, and even publish a music player widget for your blog/website so that anyone can access it. Very useful.
  
• Next on the list is SplashUp. This is a great resource for designers who need to do some final, quick, simple edits on images that they are working on without bringing their laptop/desktop. Also great for people not wanting to pay for image editing software such as Adobe Photoshop. (You could always download the Gimp, too)
• Third and last on this short list is Zoho. If you’ve been around chances are you’ve heard of it. Similar to Google Docs, it allows you to create and edit Microsoft Office documents from your browser. Within a few clicks, you could have your entire office in your browser.

That’s it for my list. Thanks for reading!

Book Crossing

Make Useful Things

Although cutting into a book is not my favorite thing to do, this site offers many useful things you can do with your old books. You can make a holder for your iPod, bookends, child's flap book, table legs, clock, and lamp shade.

This is such a wonderful way to exchange old books, or make uses of them. Personally, I like Book Crossing's idea of leaving the book for other to find. It will be interesting to track down where my books travel to.

Paid surveys may seem like a great way to make money, but most of them never pay or force you to make 75 dollars to earn a payout. You may think it'll be an easy 5 bucks, but for the time these surveys take, it is not worth it. Finding an actual job at minimum wage would actually pay much more.

Ringtone Services

These Websites or TV offers make it seem like you send them your phone number and they send you one or five free ringtones with no strings attached. For those who don't pay attention to the fine print this seems like a great deal, but they lock you up and charge somewhere between $10-15 a month for something around the area of 10 ringtone credits. The only way to cancel is to send an abstract message to a random phone number which you would have to look up. These offers lock you up and charge a lot of money every month for things you probably wouldn't want and are very tricky.

Free Item Offers

Websites like these show you a Wii or an Xbox 360 and say all you have to do is give us your email (so they can spam you with hundreds of emails for "free" things) and your home address so we know where to ship it to and you'll be the proud owner of a new video game system. Before they send your "free" gift you have to complete bronze, silver, or gold offers. These offers are normally subscription services which require a monthly fee, after subscribing to these they will send you your free gift, but by giving them your home address, they will give it to partnering companies and spam you through the mail and your email address constantly. If you do realize this after sending them your email, they will still spam you until you tell them not to. After having to complete all of these subscription offers your "free gift" isn't actually free.

Offer Redeeming Websites Like TikTikCash

Some of these sites where you complete offers, like the free gift ones as I mentioned above, actually do pay you and you can earn some actual money from them, like Gangster Greed, but for the most part they do not. They are similar to the paid survey sites, they have a high payout threshold that you will most likely never reach, require you to complete offers like the free ones where they will spam your email address (I once got 399 in one day), and even if you do reach that payout some don't even pay. They also make you have your offers approved, which means the company has to tell the redeeming site that you completed the offer, and this may take weeks. The only worthwhile way to make money on the internet is Gangster Greed, from my experience they actually pay, but for the most part these sites are terrible and don't work. Again, like the paid survey sites, these sites seem like you can make some pocket change, but a real job again is better.

Sites That Make You Pay Them To Access Get Rich Quick Schemes

Some sites say "We have a site that will pay you 25-75$ per survey you take and each survey takes 5-10 minutes!" These sites may sound good, but they make you pay them for the access to these sites, which usually either don't exist or never pay you. They may seem like you can make lots of money working off of the internet, but you can't and you have to give them your credit card, which is never good.

I hope that after reading this article no one is sucked in the way that a lot of helpless Americans are, but if you just read the fine print and don't make hasty decisions, you can never fall into these traps!

Today, in this last article, I'm presenting a list of other great web services that, while not “essential” to everyone, are highly recommended and many people will find extremely useful in their own online organizers:

1. Payment Processor

   While not an absolute “essential”, payment processors are great for just about anyone because it can be used for so many different purposes. From paying a friend back for a split dinner to collecting credit card and EFT payments from sales of your home business's products, a good payment processor is easy, secure, and can be used by anyone. Of course, the number one payment service that comes to mind (and my personal favorite) is PayPal but there other great services out there that serve the same purpose.
   
   A few that you might want to check out are Obopay, Neteller, BidPay, and TextPayMe). Of course, always use common sense and be sure to read all of the terms and conditions before using any online payment option.

2. Project Planner

   Especially for business folks, a good online project planner should be easy-to-use, a cinch to read and understand, and support multiple projects and multiple ways of viewing timelines and tasks on those projects. They should rival more traditional software such as Microsoft Project and Primavera. Though I don't personally use a project planner very much, some of the really impressive ones I've seen include ViewPath, BaseCamp, and AceProject.

3. Quick Reference

   Everyone needs a quick answer to something once in a while. If you find yourself wondering “who is…”, “what is…”, or “where is…”, you need a good source to go to for quick, accurate answers. My favorites are Wikipedia, and Google. Often with either of these services, just typing in what you want to know instantly brings back exactly the information you need.

4. Notebook/Web Clipper

   Sometimes, while we're surfing the web, we come across a piece of information that's just too valuable to let sit. Or maybe we don't have time to look at an article now, but we'd like to later. A good web clipping service will let you do just that. Just select the article, right click, and viola! The entire article or information (images and all) is saved to your online web clipper, which you can organize, prioritize, edit, and read at your leisure. And, even if the information changes or is removed on the website that you clipped it from, the data in your web clipper/notebook never changes.
   
   A good web clipper is also a notebook, allowing you to store your ideas, notes, recipes, drafts, or anything else that you need to keep in electronic form. A few good ones are Google Notebook, Clipmarks, and Zoho Notebook.

5. Reminders

   Sometimes, you just need a reminder without cluttering up your calendar with all the reminders you've set. The web abounds with these services, but my favorite is Jott, because it lets you simply call a phone number and speak (yes, speak) your reminder - the Jott system automatically translates it and will send you both a text message and e-mail with the reminder at the set time. This is awesome, especially for on-the-go people who may not be in front of a computer at all times. Other choices for reminders can be found by simply Googling “reminders”.

6. Online Bookmark Service

   You have a computer at home and at work. You have a computer in the bedroom and your laptop is in the living room. How do you keep all of your bookmarks and favorite sites synced on all of these devices? Simple: you don't, you let an online bookmark service do the work. These services allow you to store all of your favorite site on their server that can be called up from any web browser and used just like the favorites on your computer. This way, there's only one set of favorite sites to keep up with.
   
   My personal favorite in this category is Spurl because of the handy add-on for your browser that puts your bookmarks in a separate pane to the left of your screen. However, there are many other great bookmarking services out there: del.icio.us, Backflip , and BookmarkAll are just a few. Google “online bookmarks” for more possibilities.

7. Virtual Assistant

   No matter how helpful they are, however, none of the services above can do what a person can (at least not yet): interact with other humans or make reasoned decisions. Sometimes, you just need another human to help you stay organized. Having a personal assistant used to mean big dollars and was only for big executives with six-and-seven-figure incomes. No more. Now, having your own human “virtual” assistant is more affordable than ever.
   
   For example, Sunday will, for just $29 a month, allow you to have a personal assistant perform up to 30 tasks on your behalf per month. “Schedule an oil change for me”, “Find a supplier for that new Elmo doll that has them in stock, place the order on my Visa and have it shipped overnight to me”, and “Find the number for customer support at XYZ company. Please call and when you finally get a live person on the line, transfer the call to me so that I can speak to them” are all tasks you can have your personal assistant do.
   
   Other companies that provide these same services (at varying rates) are GetFriday, DoMyStuff) - actually more of a "task auction" site, and TasksEveryDay. I found my personal assistant, Jill, at DoMyStuff and she has helped me loads already by taking away mundane tasks, organizing data, and leaving me more time to do what I love to do - write (you can use the link to check out her DoMyStuff profile - she has great rates and fast turnaround).

There you have it: my recommendations for your online life. Not every suggestion will be appropriate for everyone, but once you find that perfect mix of web services to save you time and keep you organized, you'll feel much more in control than you did before.

You probably have a few services yourself that I didn't mention that you use everyday to save you time and organize your life. You're welcome to give your personal recommendations in the comments section below.

It would be absurd to believe that the days of us heaving around physical organizers are not numbered. And it's equally preposterous to think that any one web-based service (or company) could reliably, effectively, and adequately serve the growing organizational, planning, and digital needs of the business professional or busy family today. It is probably best, then, to choose web-based services that do only one thing (and do it really well) for each category that we need covered in our online organizers.

Today's guide delves into what I believe are the “must-haves” - essential services that should be included in everyone's repertoire of online services, regardless of whether they are a busy, overbooked real-estate agent or a frazzled, overworked soccer mom. There are four services on my list of must-haves, starting off with what I believe to be the most important of all:

1. Calendar/Scheduler

   The cornerstone of any personal organizational system is a way to manage your time. An online calendar should be able to keep track of your time in a way that makes sense to you so that, at a glance, you know what's coming and how best to manage your day, your week, and your life. It should also be able to alert you via e-mail or cell phone text-message prior to events and to remind you of important tasks and allow for collaboration with other people on your team or in your family to set meetings and view schedules.
   
   My personal favorite in this category is Google Calendar (calendar.google.com) because of its strong collaborative features, beautiful easy-to-read design, the ability to create and combine multiple calendars, and feature-rich alerts - plus, it's free. But there are many more online calendars out there that may suit you or your situation better. For a few other ideas in this category, just Google “online calendar”.

2. Web-Based E-Mail

   Communication by e-mail is fast supplanting more traditional forms. Many non-critical tasks that you would normally perform by phone can be handled with more leisure via e-mail and with less room for mistakes because what transpired in the conversation is right in front of you in black and white.
   
   For best results from your e-mail, you need a web-based solution that doesn't tie you to one computer and gives you powerful options for managing your communications. You should choose a web-based service that has plenty of storage space for your e-mails, can pull e-mail from multiple accounts (work, personal, etc.), has a strong search function, a sleek and intuitive design, a strong interface for filtering and sorting incoming mail, and preferably one that does not append advertisements onto the end of every e-mail you send out.
   
   In this web mail category, Google once again shines. Their free GMail service (Gmail.com) does everything a web mail service should do and more. As an alternative, your ISP usually provides web mail of some sort to you and your family members at no charge - some of these are actually quite good.
   
   Other good, free, possibilities in this category include Yahoo! (mail.yahoo.com), MSN Hotmail (hotmail.com), and AOL (webmail.aol.com), or simply Google “webmail” for more choices.

3. Stand-Alone Contact Manager/Address Book

   Often, a very basic contact manager is included with your web mail service, but often these “address books” fall short of being able to supply a robust solution to your contact and addressing needs. Plus, if you ever want to or must change e-mail addresses, the fuss involved in exporting an important your web mail's address book can be a nightmare, not to mention that all fields may not be imported/translated to your new provider.
   
   A good online, stand-alone address book should save multiple physical addresses per contact, allow multiple phone numbers and e-mail addresses, be sortable, searchable, allow the creation of categories for your contacts, and store other important information such as birthdays, anniversaries, and notes.
   
   I, personally, use a stand-alone service for this part of my web organizer that does not require me to be logged into my webmail to use: Yahoo! Address book is my personal pick in this category. Although it isn't as pretty as the slick “Web 2.0” interfaces that are popular right now, it's functional, fast, free, allows multiple physical as well as e-mail addresses, allows you to create user-defined fields, and has contact printing, searching, and sorting, as well as the all-important Birthday, Anniversary, and “Notes” fields.
   
   Plus, clicking on an e-mail address in the address book automatically opens Yahoo! Web mail for sending an e-mail to that contact. Other contenders in this category include Plaxo (Plaxo.com) and Zexer (Zexer.com).

4. To-Do/Shopping/List manager

   Everyone has lists of things that need to be done, projects to be worked on, shopping lists to fulfill, even subtasks on other tasks that need to be completed. Rather than carrying around a pocket full of scraps of paper, a robust online service should be used that allows for multiple lists, subtasks if needed, easy organization, mobile access (it's a great convenience to be able to pull up your shopping list on your cell phone when you're at the store), and easy options for printing when needed. It should also be fully collaborative if desired so that multiple people can add, cross off, and modify lists when needed.
   
   I currently use a by-invitation-only service for my to-do lists, but my favorite for shopping lists is a new free service called Knotler (Knotler.com), which allows multiple users to be collaborating on a list at the same time and also has a mobile-phone version of the site for accessing your list while away from your computer. As for every-day type lists, popular choices are Tadalist (Tadalist.com), Remember the Milk (Rememberthemilk.com), and Todoist (Todoist.com). Choices for to-do lists abound, however, so you might want to try some out for a while until you find one that fits your lifestyle and tastes. Just Google “online to-do list”.

These four categories are the essentials. These are the services should have a prominent, separate, and easily accessible location in your “Favorites” folder, on your desktop, or on your links bar to give you fast, easy access to all parts of your busy life.

In the next and final article in this series, we'll explore some more services that are highly recommended but may not be needed by everyone in every situation...these are the “optional” recommendations for your online organizer. Until then, check out the services listed here and give them a try. You just might be the next to convert to a completely web-based lifestyle.

But times may be changing. According to a 2005 Report by Pew Research, more and more professionals may be moving away from using such physical devices and relying, instead, on services that can be found on the internet. Increases in the last 5 years alone in speed, reliability, availability, and cost of internet access has made it more and more beneficial to working professionals to move more and more of their important data online.

So it's not much of a stretch to say that an online (rather than physical) organizer may soon become the norm for most business professionals, not to mention busy families. But rather than a single, all-encompassing website that provides all of the functions of a physical organizer, professionals and families alike may find it both more cost-effective and relevant to have several sites serve this purpose. From professional contact managers and address books, to web-based calendars, to-do lists, web-clippers, feed readers, payment services that make your checkbook obsolete, online file storage and backup services, and shopping lists that can be collaborated on and shared between an entire family, the digital organizer may finally begin to overpower the more traditional binder in the last, and most important, category: user adoption.

My own physical day-planner sits neglected now on an ignored shelf in my bedroom, possibly reminiscing on days past when it stayed glued to my side, its leather nearly tattered from daily constant use. It might now eye my computer with envy from across the room, where sits amongst my internet bookmarks a folder called simply “Organizer” that contains bookmarks to all of my most important services that I use everyday to keep my life, my finances, and my sanity in order.

In Part 2 of this series, we take a look at some of these services and find out which ones your digital organizer should not be without.

1. Wridea

   Wridea helps people to organize their ideas, to-do's, shopping lists, projects, milestones and other similar things easily. Ever had an idea while you were slaving away at work only to forget it by the time you got home? Not only does Wridea let you make a note of any ideas you've had; you can also categorize them (wow!) and share them with your friends. Or, if you have no friends, you can e-mail them to yourself. They've really thought of everyone. What's more is at the click of a button, you can use the idea rain button. Basically, this shows all your ideas falling from the top of the page (like rain, hence the term idea rain). I couldn't really think of any use for this, but I guess it might come in handy for brainstorming if you had many different ideas. Even if you're not hit by ideas that often, I'm sure you could find some use for it, taking notes perhaps or maybe for storing information which you might need when you're abroad without access to your PC or whatever, you get the idea!

2. Buxfer

   Buxfer is a service that lets you manage your finances online. Once registered, you're set to go, but the great thing about this service is that you can use your Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Open ID or AOL login details instead of having to create a new set of credentials just to use with Buxfer. If you need to track your finances, Buxfer's great! True, there is a lot of software available to do the same thing, but the great thing about Buxfer is that it call all be done over the web and as with many web applications, it's collaborative, you can interact with your friends, reminding them to pay up and so on. In a nutshell then, you can manage your income, your expenditure and there's now even the function to import your bank statements. On top of this, all your data can be viewed in the form of a nice colourful pie chart so now you have no excuses for not keeping up to date with your finances!

3. Google Services

   Before you laugh and scroll further down, wait! If you're an average internet user, I can be almost certain that you're making use of more than a few Google services. A full list can be found by going to your local version of the search engine and clicking "More". However, some of my picks are:

   • Google Bookmarks :

     You can save Google bookmarks via quite a few methods and then they can be retrieved from pretty much any computer.

   • Google Calendar :

     You've probably used or heard of this before. However, what I like most about it is that you can opt for free SMS (text) alerts to reminding you of upcoming events. It's also great when you need to plan something with a group of people because you can just share certain events in your calendar so they know when you're busy and when you're free without the group having to discuss dates manually!

   • Google Documents :

     The Google document reader can presently read spreadsheets and word processed documents including Microsoft Word and Excel formats. It's not ideal for big documents, but for smallish documents without many advanced formatting features it's great, especially if there's many people collaborating on one document.

So, isn't it about time you started making full use of the net? New websites are always popping up, providing innovative, new services, often at no cost to the user it's down to you to go explore. The internet is like a vast expanse of ocean go surf it!

1. The reputation of the email service provider: Google , Yahoo and MSN are reputed companies that provide free email services.
2. The size of the mail box: While some free email services like Yahoo.com provide 1 GB email space, gmail provides 2GB.
3. Check the maximum size of the attachment you can send: Yahoo provides very less attachment capacity as compared to Gmail which is 20MB at a time.
4. Check the features available in it: Whether you can create folders and store images, files,etc.
5. Some free email service providers give offer to their customers. There is a trial period after which they start charging money for their service. Be careful of such providers.

Ultimately, Google and Yahoo are two major free email service providers which are most reliable ones and you can use them extensively for your needs.