DakotaDN Discussions

Go out and scare up some fun tonight!

This is a domain registration scam alert!

I found two emails today in my spam filter that looked interesting. One claimed to be from Network Solutions Tech Support, the other simply from Network Solutions. The email from NS Tech was titled, “Please, renew your domain” while the other was more alarming with the subject, “Your domain will be deleted today.” That’s interesting, I thought. I don’t register my domains through NS. Instead, I use Domain Discover. So you can imagine my initial confusion.

Those of you who know me should recognize that last statement as pure sarcasm - KO

Of course, once I looked deeper into the emails, I noticed a few oddities. Let’s examine them.

Here’s the body of the emails in question (both were identical):

Dear Network Solutions Customer,

We recently notified you that the registration period for your Network Solutions domain name had expired. As a benefit of having previously registered a domain name(s) with Network Solutions, you are eligible to receive a percentage of the net proceeds that were generated from the renewal and transfer of the domain name you chose not to renew. Since you have chosen not to renew the domain name listed below during the applicable grace period, we were successful in securing a backorder for this domain name on your behalf and it has been transferred to another party in accordance with the Service Agreement.

Renew your domain now - http://www.networksolutions.com

You must click on the following link, enter your domain name, and confirm your contact information in order to claim these funds. If your contact information is not correct, you must enter Account Manager and make the appropriate changes prior to clicking “submit” from the confirmation screen. If you do not do this, you will be confirming inaccurate information and will not receive any payment. Checks will only be made payable and mailed to the Account Holder of record.

Sincerely,

Network Solutions® Customer Support

Of course, I’ve made some rather careful ammendments to the email so as to avoid posting the real web address of the url.

What’s wrong with this scam?

• For starters, I’m not a Network Solutions customer.
• Second, it has been years since I did any affiliate work with them.
• Thirdly, if this is legit, why send me an email about it.
• And last but not least, how can I be eligible to receive payments from domains of which I an no longer the registered owner?

This is the definition of scam. The sender hopes that the alarming nature of the email, in conjunction with heavy jargon use, and topped with the promise of sending you a check will in essence turn off your brain. Don’t fall for it.

And now, let’s turn technology against the scammer and reveal the truth behind the message…

Since I like to turn on the lights when things get dark, let me flip the switch for you. Here’s the domain info for the actual location that the scammer is trying to get you to access:

Domain ID:D4384643-MOBI
Domain Name:SYS42.MOBI
Created On:27-Oct-2008 00:32:43 UTC
Last Updated On:27-Oct-2008 00:36:45 UTC
Expiration Date:27-Oct-2009 00:32:43 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:Xiamen Bizcn Computer & Network Co. Ltd. (471)
Created by Registrar:Xiamen Bizcn Computer & Network Co. Ltd. (471)
Last Updated by Registrar:Xiamen Bizcn Computer & Network Co. Ltd. (471)
Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Status:TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Registrant ID:orgsl25067557607
Registrant Name:Sam Lloyd
Registrant Organization:Sam Lloyd
Registrant Street1:81313 po box
Registrant City:New York
Registrant State/Province:NY
Registrant Postal Code:10016
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.8827729829
Registrant FAX:+1.8827729829
Registrant Email:supportnewest@safe-mail.net
Admin ID:orgsl25067558222
Admin Name:Sam Lloyd
Admin Organization:Sam Lloyd
Admin Street1:81313 po box
Admin City:New York
Admin State/Province:NY
Admin Postal Code:10016
Admin Country:US
Admin Phone:+1.8827729829
Admin FAX:+1.8827729829
Admin Email:supportnewest@safe-mail.net
Tech ID:orgsl25067558845
Tech Name:Sam Lloyd
Tech Organization:Sam Lloyd
Tech Street1:81313 po box
Tech City:New York
Tech State/Province:NY
Tech Postal Code:10016
Tech Country:US
Tech Phone:+1.8827729829
Tech FAX:+1.8827729829
Tech Email:supportnewest@safe-mail.net
Name Server:NS1.XWHLWWW.COM
Name Server:NS2.XWHLWWW.COM
Name Server:NS3.XWHLWWW.COM
Name Server:NS4.XWHLWWW.COM
Name Server:NS5.XWHLWWW.COM

Why am I not shocked to see that the registrar is in China?

Let’s take a quick look at the recent domains registered to Xiamen Bizcn Computer & Network Co. Ltd. that have been added to an email black list shall we…

http://rss.uribl.com/nic/XIAMEN_BIZCN_COMPUTER_NETWORK_CO_LTD_.html

In case you’re coming to this post late, I’ll also post the recent results…

And just so you can see another red flag or two, here are the headers for the emails:

Received: from abqo61.neoplus.adsl.tpnet.pl ([83.8.82.61] helo=SpeedTouch.lan)
 by moosh.net with esmtp (Exim 4.63)
 (envelope-from <mtooskxmar@bonfiredesign.com>)
 id 1KvWNB-0006j3-Gd
 for kevin@moosh.net; Thu, 30 Oct 2008 06:11:35 -0600
Received: from [83.8.82.61] by mx0.123-reg.co.uk; Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:11:19 +0100
From: “networksolutions.com” <customerservice@networksolutions.com>
To: <kevin@moosh.net>
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:11:19 +0100
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
 boundary=”—-=_NextPart_000_0006_01C93A90.FFABCA80″
X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook, Build 11.0.5510
Thread-Index: Aca6Q5994ZO7YIIJ7E8OUNGTGCHAKJ==
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1807
Message-ID: <01c93a90$ffabca80$3d520853@mtooskxmar>
X-SA-Exim-Connect-IP: 83.8.82.61
X-SA-Exim-Mail-From: mtooskxmar@bonfiredesign.com
Subject: *****SPAM***** Your domain will be deleted today

and

Received: from [85.173.216.249] (helo=aa0d361dd20843e)
 by moosh.net with esmtp (Exim 4.63)
 (envelope-from <kewurpjmy@borgonovopublicidad.com.ar>)
 id 1KvW24-0006XJ-M2
 for kevin@moosh.net; Thu, 30 Oct 2008 05:49:47 -0600
Received: from [85.173.216.249] by mx00.1and1.com; Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:49:44 +0300
Message-ID: <01c93a9e$bef8f400$f9d8ad55@kewurpjmy>
From: “networksolutions.com Tech Support” <NSCC0+1386777487@networksolutions.com>
To: <kevin@moosh.net>
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:49:44 +0300
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
 boundary=”—-=_NextPart_000_0007_01C93A9E.BEF8F400″
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.3790.1830
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.3790.1830
X-SA-Exim-Connect-IP: 85.173.216.249
X-SA-Exim-Mail-From: kewurpjmy@borgonovopublicidad.com.ar
Subject: *****SPAM***** Please, renew your domain

That’s interesting, neither email appears to have been generated on, or even passed through a Network Solutions email server. Fascinating! So as you can clearly see, these messages aren’t even remotely related to Network Solutions.

Pay attention and don’t let yourself get scammed.

Technorati Tags: domain, registration, scam

Cross posted at KorpG.

They say that when you say what you mean, you’ll always mean what you say. And to paraphrase; when you do what you love, you’ll love what you do.

I look at the total number of postings to my blogs, the amount of time I’m online checking out my stats and referrrals, the sheer time spent in my hobbies and online ventures, and I must admit that to an outside observer, I probably appear obsessed.

I’m sure my wife thinks so. And who’s to say I’m not? - KO

But the real reason behind this furious desire to explore rpg rules, to discuss online ventures, to expand my online footprint is simple. I love this stuff.

• I get great pleasure out of crafting my own view of how roleplaying should be moderated.
• I love how it feels to harness that entrepreneurial spirit in myself and bet on me.
• I take great pride in DakotaDN’s success.
• I love taking a little bit of what I know, a little bit of what I’ve learned, a little bit of what I’ve been taught, and combining it into something that I can teach.

In short, I love what I do. And when you love what you do, doing it is the easy part.

…makes Jack a dull boy.

In keeping with my own advice on stepping away every now and again, as well as trying to keep myself focused (contradictory desires I’m sure - and a difficult balanace to boot) and yet trying to be diversified in practice as well as income streams, I’ve been spending a bit of my time adding content over at my gaming site: Korp G.

What have I been doing there you ask?

I’ve been cathartically exorcising my roleplaying game geek demons blogging about crafting KORE, a new set of tabletop rpg rules. Though still in what can only be described as infancy, I none-the-less recommend you come over and take a look.

And if that’s not of interest to you, perhaps you should just kill some time playing a few online games.

Over at Wired, Paul Boutin has prophesized the end of positive blog-related results for you. Even to the point of actually recommending that you pull the plug on your current blog or refrain from starting a new one.

As an aside, the fact that Mr Boutin used a blog format to do this is a possible identifier that this is really nothing more than good link-bait. If so, then let’s treat it like all good bloggers and assume the post is serious enough to attack the bait to our best abilities. - KO

While I find the article interesting, and the subsequent comments even more enlightening, I also find the asumptions to the premise downright fascinating. For a good discussion, I’ll identify the assumption first, then cite the text. I won’t identify all the assumptions here, but if you want, post others in the comments and we’ll deal with them as they are found. But first, let’s detail a few of these assumptions and see where analyzing them leads us…

And just for the record; Even though I’ve cut and pasted portions of Mr Boutin’s post, I don’t feel that I’ve changed the nature of the content in any way. In short, I don’t believe I’ve taken these comments out of context. The context is simple; You should be blogging. - KO

Assumption #1: Blogging is impersonal.
Citation:

If you quit now, you’re in good company. […] Impersonal is correct

Assumption #2: Just because you can’t break the Technocrati Top 100 list, you’re destined for failure in anonymity.
Citation:

Scroll down Technorati’s list of the top 100 blogs and you’ll find personal sites have been shoved aside by professional ones. […] A stand-alone commentator can’t keep up with a team of pro writers cranking out up to 30 posts a day.

Assumption #3: If you can’t be at the top of Google’s search engine rankings, you’re destined for failure in anonymity.
Citation:

When blogging was young, enthusiasts rode high, with posts quickly skyrocketing to the top of Google’s search results for any given topic […] Today […] The odds of your clever entry appearing high on the list? Basically zero.

Assumption #4: Only trolls are left to comment on personal/small press blogs.
Citation:

 […] your blog will still draw the Net’s lowest form of life: The insult commenter.

Assumption #5: You can’t compete with professional bloggers.
Citation:

A stand-alone commentator can’t keep up with a team of pro writers cranking out up to 30 posts a day. […] Bloggers today are expected to write clever, insightful, witty prose to compete with Huffington and The New York Times. Twitter’s character limit puts everyone back on equal footing. It lets amateurs quit agonizing over their writing and cut to the chase.

Wow, those are some strong assumptions we can glean from the text of his post. Let’s analyze them.

Assumption #1 contends that the medium of blogging is to textual, and doesn’t lend itself to more personal interaction. So is blogging really any more impersonal than the other social networking media? Perhaps, but if we really analyze the thought, we find ourselves faced with other questions. Namely why are Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, et. al. more personal than simple blogging? Do the social networking sites offer a greater view into the personal life of an author? And do you want that level of personal contact/context in your blog? I for one think that walking the line between the level of personal context that the social networking sites offer can sometimes be a dangerous road to travel.

As another aside, I should in full disclosure identify that the only social networking site I use is LinkedIn. And a large number of friends who use Facebook, MySpace, et. al. are often turned off by corporate/business ventures invading what they consider to be personal sacred ground. Consider that when you think your company needs a MySpace page. - KO

Assumptions #2 and 3 claim that only popular blogs are successful blogs. Is that true? Is “unknown in the top 100″-style anonymity really failure? Hardly. Popularity isn’t the only measure of success blogging.

Since I don’t consider myself in competetion with other bloggers, I find Assumption #5 to be an argument without much merit. Perhaps competetion between bloggers is something only these so-called “pro bloggers” do. And beacuse of my “amateur” status, I just don’t get it.

You may have noticed that I didn’t respond to one of the assumptions. I’m not even going to justify Assumption #4. Doing so would only prove that I’m an apparent troll and insult commenter. Instead I’ll choose be a nameless, failure of an author doomed to an eternity of low Google and Technocrati rankings until I finally wither away into the cold and impersonal obscurity of the net’s past fad.

Stumble It!

Q: How do you build a business model and strategy that can earn money in spite of an economic downturn?

A: Diversify your income streams and minimize your expenses.

Silly, I know. You already knew it too didn’t you. It’s common knowledge, right? So why am I bothering?

Because once again, it appears that common knowledge isn’t all that common.

Investors used to know this golden rule, but apparently greed got the better of some of them and they eschewed age old wisdom for the quick buck. Diversification is critical to success in any business. Diversification will allow you to gain from a larger market, expose you to less risk by requiring a greater number of nails to finally shut the coffin on your enterprise.

Minimizing your expenses doesn’t mean cutting a budget to the bone. I’m not advocating budgeting your business out of existance. Rather, I’m saying that if you spend money wisely, with an eye to ROI, then you’re assured of making sound business decisions.

Here’s a brief glimpse into some of the things we do to make a buck here.

• Domain Sales - 73%
  Anatomy of a successful domain name sale
• Website Building - 10%
  Oedekoven Angus Ranch
  The Art of Warren W. Adams
  KorpG fun and games
• Advertising - 8%
  Bidvertiser
  Text Advertising
• Domain Parking - 7%
  Sedo
• Affiliate Programs - 1%
  Inboxdollars
  AdlandPro
  Domaining Manifesto
  000webhost
  Internet Business Promoter
  FreeViral
  DomainDiscover
  Bidvertiser
  Quiet Light Brokerage

As you can see, we generate wealth from a variety of sources. And by keeping to our belief that small investments can and must yield substantial ROI, we’ve been quite successful in avoiding any economic downturn.

Technorati Tags: common knowledge, Diversification, risk, ROI, Domain, Sales, Website, Advertising, Domain Parking, Affiliate Programs

Stumble It!

I got to looking back today and noticed that I haven’t been very good at posting as often as I should (or at least as I might like.) Sadly, I don’t have a single post for the months of July and September. While I did spend that time actively making money for DakotaDN, that’s still not much of an excuse for my lack of dedication.

Which bring us to this post and the question du jour. Namely:

Are you treating your business like a hobby?

Well, let’s examine a few of the differences between a business and a hobby. Surprisingly, at least to me, there is little surface difference between the two.

First point of discussion is:

• Dedication

What’s the difference between the required dedication to a hobby and the necessary dedication for operating a successful business?

I’ll skip over the required dedication to operate a failure as a business. I’m willing to guess that most of you aren’t interested in my thoughts and advice on how to fail at your venture. - KO

Dedication to a hobby is transient and intermittent. It can afford to be flexible and loose without risk of poor ROI. Take as examples my interests in Neverwinter Nights, amateur woodworking, and tropical fish keeping. If I neglect any of them (and arguably have done so for NWN) the worst that can happen is some dead fish and a loss of current knowledge on a subject.

Neglect in NWN only lessens my credibility in the forums, leads the people who have downloaded my custom content to wonder if I’ve dropped off the face of the Earth, and leads to me having to remember how to do and make certain things happen in the Aurora Toolset. But none of that will really cause me to loose sleep over lost opportunities.

Neglect in my amateur woodworking only leads to me feeling guilty for having a garage full of tools that don’t get used enough.

Neglecting my fish will at worst lead to the death of my fish - something that would be horrible, costly, and a setback of my fishkeeping ego, but also something that isn’t likely to happen since they’re sitting in my office. As an aside, apparently they’re getting just the right amount of dedication and interaction considering I’ve been successful in getting them to breed. So much so that I’m about to need to find an outlet for my guppys.

Anybody know someone who might be interested in some tropical fish in the Rapid City, SD area? - KO

In sharp contrast to these hobbies, dedication to a business must be structured and rigid. Neglect in business has considerable consequences. The addage, “Ignore your customers long enough and they will go away” is quite appropriate here. Lack of dedication may cuase you to lose out on both customers and an income stream.

So you’re ready to give the business the required dedication, then welcome to…

• Investment

In business as with hobbies, you must be willing to sacrifice to be successful. That sacrifice is your investment of either time or money or both. In hobbies, the investment is usually small and isn’t spent with expectation of anything more than the enjoyment of the activity. In other words, the ROI expected from a hobby is the pleasure of the hobby itself. That may make you think that the investment in a hobby can’t by definition be a sacrifice. But I would beg to differ since anything that vies for your resources in competition with anything else is what I consider to be a sacrifice.

Contrast the investment sacrifice of a hobby to that of business, where the investment can be large (although we advocate small investments untill some measure of success is realized) and is always expected to provide some return. But expectation of the return is what drives the desire to sacrifice the investment. Without sacrifice of investment, no return can be expected.

Wow, I think I just defined another first business principle. Was anyone paying attention? - KO

That investment is a demonstration of…

• Commitment

Defined as the act of binding yourself to a course of action, commitment is critical to success. The binding that ties you to the course of action is the investment that you’ve sacrificed as dedication to an expected return. And that’s where the real line between hobby and business becomes more clear. Where the previous discussion points were vague and could apply equally well to either business or hobby, commitment is what designates the divergent paths of the two.

For the hobbiest, there is little binding you to the course of action. Why? Because success isn’t tied so intricately to sacrifice. The expected return from your hobby requires very little input to acheive the output. Whereas in business, the return is so critical, that commitment is almost a crucial requirement of success. The inputs are so vital and key to the outputs that failure to commit to their sacrifice is a recipe for possible failure.

That is of course unless you have so many resources to throw at failure in order to stumble blindly into success. Not really something I’d advocate. - KO

So how do we assure that we’re not treating our business like a hobby?

We commit to dedicated investment in the business. We force ourselves to look at all our transactions with the business through the lens of ROI. Be they time or capital or skill, we invest these things with an expected return. We spend no capital without some sort expectation of gain. Doing so will help us make better decisions.

Technorati Tags: business, hobby, dedication, sacrifice, investment, time, money, principle, commitment, ROI

Blog Action Day ‘08 is here. And the requested task is to blog about poverty in some form or fashion. So here goes…

First, a few groundrules:

1. Be nice. I’ll state my opinion, and so long as you do the same in a civil manner, I won’t see fit to remove your comments.
2. This isn’t a political blog by any means - however, because of the nature of the topic, I understand if the post and any possible subsequent comments might stray into the political field. I’ll try to keep things civil without being heavy-handed.
3. I’m not generally what you’d consider a “socially-conscious-minded” individual by action. That said however, I am not so hard of heart that I’m not moved by the plight of those who suffer.
4. I’m a HUGE fan of personal responsibility. I believe in the “Teach a man to fish” concept.
5. I’m not a fan of Governmental involvement - nor do I believe that Governments can solve social problems.
6. I’m an American citizen and can only address poverty in America. I know that by global standards we have the highest level of wealth in our system. But while that should be a clear indication that Capitalism is better at fighting poverty than any other form of government, that simple fact seems lost on the wealth-redistributers of the world.

Okay, with the housekeeping out of the way, let’s start things off by defining our topic.

According to Wikipedia, poverty is defined as follows:

Poverty (also called penury) is deprivation of common necessities that determine the quality of life, including food, clothing, shelter and safe drinking water, and may also include the deprivation of opportunities to learn, to obtain better employment to escape poverty, and/or to enjoy the respect of fellow citizens.

As a quick aside, since I’m only really (and tangentally at best) familiar with American poverty, I’m going to make a Grand Assumption in my discussion. If you comment, please make sure you’re starting on the same page with me. - KO

The Grand Assumption: In America, an individual is not prevented from opportunity by any reason they themselves cannot overcome - should they decide to do so. This assumption is based on the following facts:

• We provide free education that far surpases the formal learning opportunity of the vast population of the world.
• Jobs are not only plentiful in America, but (due to OSHA, Fair Labor Laws, etc.) are a lot better than the jobs in a number of other Countries.
• Our healthcare system (both capability and capacity) has no rival.
• Few other places in the world make it possible for an individual to go from poverty to wealth in a single generation as America.

Let’s tackle this topic in two parts (a short one that deals with the tangables and a longer one that is more of a thought process.)

Part 1 of the defintion - The lack of necessities to determine the quality of life

I’m not going to discuss this part of the definition. I’m sure the countless other bloggers will tackle this part thoroughly, and in my opinion neither is it the best (meatiest) part of the defintiion, nor is it the more difficult to discuss. So let’s move on to the real topic.

Part 2 of the definition - The deprivation of opportunity

I see this portion of the poverty definition akin to the weeds in the garden, neglect in the key recources of water, fertilizer, and pruning tends to result in an unwanted harvest. Like the garden, which requires the tiad of resources to flourish, my personal opinion is that poverty is the result of a lack of a different triad of resources:

1. Opportunity - without which hope and self esteem cannot leverage success and result in poverty reduction.
2. Hope - without which self esteem withers and dies and no amount of opportunities will result in the possibility to acheive success.
3. Self Esteem - without which hope dwindles and opportunities are neglected.

I know some of you are thinking…

“But isn’t self esteem the same as hope?” you ask.

I think the two are interconnected, but different enough to discuss seperately.

Hope is the belief that something good will occur should events play out the way you expect. Hope is an expectation that the Universal deck is stacked in your favor - that you’re somehow lucky. When you’re hopeful, you perceive youself capable and likely to acheive success.

Self esteem is perception of value of one’s worth. If you have self esteem, you see yourself as intrinsicly worthy of something. When you’re self esteem is high, you might even perceive that success is guaranteed.

But neither hope nor self esteem is enough to overcome poverty. Opportunity must be present to reinforce self esteem and build hope. Think of success as the positive feedback loop in the poverty/wealth equation. As success is realized, hope has the possibility of flourishing and self esteem may rise. When opportunities are removed from the equation, no positive feedback can occur which will ultimately drive self esteem and hope into the ground.

So one great way to eliminate poverty is to provide repeatable easy successes to individuals and that’ll insure the generation of the positive feedback that in turn builds wealth. Right?

Unfortunately, no. Life is an intriguing enigma. Success that fosters the positive feedback must be earned, not just given. It’s a function of the human spirit that challenges must be overcome for them to provide meaningful results to the nature of self. If you want examples, I’ll cite the welfare state that we’ve created in America. Without any reason to overcome meaningful challenges, hope and self esteem wither.

And that’s where the Governmental solution fails. No beaurocracy can gauge the necessary “hand-out/hand-up” ratio to prevent the spirit from being destroyed. Give too much to easily and you’ll crush an individual’s spirit. Provide too little asistance and it doesn’t matter how many hands-up opportunities you provide.

Am I advocating for not helping others? No. I’m advocating helping by providing opportunities that are meaningful, nuturing of hope and self esteem, and when achieved also result in the basics of human need.

That’s how to fight poverty.

Paraphrased from http://www.blogactionday.org/

On October 15th bloggers everywhere will publish posts that discuss poverty in some way. By all posting on the same day the aim is to change the conversation that day, to raise awareness, start a global discussion and add momentum to an important cause.

I advise everyone with a blog to join. So are you in?

Stumble It!
Part 5 of the series “How To Make Money with a Website” deals with that all-important Search Engine and Web Directory magic.

Actually, it isn’t so much magic as a formula. Like a complex chemistry equation you’re trying to balance.

Which is probably a lot more like magic than actual magic to most of us. - KO

The equation looks a lot like this: The number and quality of inbound links is directly proportional to the chances of being indexed on a given search engine.

“Wait just a second,” you cry, “I thought we were talking about Search Engine submissions, not linking!”

We are. But as can be seen from the equation, the two are so intricately intertwined that severing their relationship even for purposes of this discussion isn’t giving the subject matter the best handling possible.

The basics of the methodology are as follows:

1. You need to get your site listed on search engines and in directories to hopefully drive traffic to your location.
2. You can’t possibly know all the search engines/directories on the web.
3. You don’t have three months to investigate and manually submit your site to an exhaustive list of sites that may or may not drive someone to you.
4. The more links you have to your site, the better your chances of getting traffic to visit.
5. Search Engine spiders (or bots or whatever) are just another form of traffic - albeit a specialized form, but traffic none-the-less.

You see, the key to getting listed on search engines is to provide ample ways for the spiders to get to your site. Those pathways are the inbound links you generate. The more inbound links you have (and the higher the quality of sites linking to you) the greater the chance of being indexed (or crawled.) You have a choice of “priming the pump” by telling the spiders where you are, or allowing the process to happen naturally by letting them “discover” your content. So what do you do?

Well, as I see it, you have a few options:

1. You could do (next to) nothing. Which isn’t entirely as foolish as it may sound. So long as you’re actively advertising your site in other means (we’ll get to this in a bit) then eventually one of the major players will identify your link and might just crawl your site and add you to the searchable content. This is without doubt the least difficult thing to do, and is considered the most natural form of search engine submission.
2. You could just submit your site to a few of the major players by hand and hope that the other “lesser” engines and directories will eventually pick up on your site’s existance. I’d argue that this is really no different than Option 1, it just speeds up the process a bit.
3. You could pay to be included/have you site submitted by a third party. While a viable option for sure, remember that we’re trying to make money, not spend it. And besides, there are few things that the thse third party providers can actually do for you that you can’t do for yourself. Granted you might need to do some investigating and spend a bit of your time, but that’s to be expected anyway.
4. You could just do a search for “Search Engine Submission” on your favorite search engine and see what comes up. That’s what I did, and what follows was the result.

After ignoring the “Pay us to have us submit your site” sites, I found a couple of good sites that provide free automated site submission tools. Here’s a couple examples of free submission sites I’ve used:

http://www.addpro.com

http://www.nexcomp.com/weblaunch/urlsubmission.html

How does it work? Well, just follow the steps on the site… Submit your site via their tool and wait.

This will lead to getting a few emails requesting confirmation - so be sure to use a real email address if you intend to confirm any submissions. Some directories and engines requre that you respond with an email in order to assure that you’re a real submitter.

You can either do this or not, depending on your desires - I recommend you do confirm the submissions, but don’t sign up to any of the third party’s offers. Remember, we’re trying to make money, not spend it.

And that’s it. You’re listed (or will soon be) and didn’t spend a dime.

Surprised? You shouldn’t be.

Too easy you say? Perhaps, but that depends on how difficult you want it to be.

Of course, most “SEO Experts” will surely want you to think it’s too difficult or too hard for you to do yourself. They’re trying to capitalize on your ignorance.  But we’ve got a different plan. In our plan, ROI is king.

Some of you might get the pun, others ne sera pas. - KO

But it’s not really rocket science, it’s more common sense than anything else. Remember, I’m not giving away any State Secrets here, I’m just putting it all in a nice easy place for you to find.

But wait just a minute, what if you want to go the au natural route identified in Option 1?

Well, gentle reader, if you want to go the natural route, you’re going to have to be dedicated and patient. How is it done? Participation and community involvement. Confused yet? Then just bear with me a sec, it’ll all become clear in a moment. The process isn’t really that hard. In fact, you’ll be doing quite a bit of it anyway (some of you are probably already doing it quite a bit), so I might as well explain how participating in a community can improve your chances of naturally getting a link to your site.

Here are some brief ideas on how to create pathways to your site:

• Are you a member of a forum? If not, find one and become a member and become active on the ‘boards. Most forums allow you to include a signature to your profile. If you’re allowed (and make sure to check the rules on this), include your site url in your signature and profile.
• Are you a member of LinkedIn? If you are, invite me to join your network. If not, join. Then invite me to join your network.
• Have you answered any questions at Yahoo Answers? If not, go register and start answering. Add your site to your signature and profile.
• Do you know anyone who has a website? Don’t answer NO. Instead, email me and I’ll consider exchanging a link with you.
• Start responding to articles and other people’s blogs. You can start by responding to this post.
• Create an easy way for others to link exchange to your site - do almost all the work for them - like I’ve done on our links page here.

And that’s how you generate natural links to your site.

“Okay,” you say, ”but other than you, nobody’s going to link to me if I don’t have a site worth getting linked to.”

Known as the chicken or egg argument and bad grammer to boot considering you ended the sentence with a preposition. - KO

Stay tuned, in part 6 we’ll identify ways of generating these inbound links from sites other than Dakota Domain Names.

Technorati Tags: Money, search engines, traffic, SEO, ROI, link exchange, chicken or egg argument