So why did I give them a try? Out of curiosity and to see if it would work for my websites. If you try to make money online and linkworth combines several ways to earn from your site: Text link advertising with or without a description, paid posts like this one, linked words in your content, and for your search engine marketing they help with article directory and directory submission services.

The company is new, but they have a lot of ideas they implement faster than I can keep reading about it all. As a publisher you have the choice between two payment schemes, either the standard partner option where revenue is split 70/30, or you become a preferred partner, get only a 50/50 share but LinkWorth puts some more effort in selling your ad space.

One of the huge advantages is that you as publisher set the price for ads o your page. We all want to earn from our websites, at least get the cost for domain and hosting back, and the space on you site is limited .

What I like:
- I have control of what is displayed on my site.
- Support is quick with answers to my questions.
- I can set my own price.
- Low minimum payout: 25 US$

What I don’t like:
- LinkInText is too much work right now. You have to add every individual page by filling in a form. Can you imagine doing that for hundreds of pages, me not. Support told me they work on a better solution, but so far I decided to wait until this is in place.
- The control panel is a bit confusing.

A recently implemented use of robots.txt file is also to tell search engines where you store your sitemap file by adding a line like this:
Sitemap: http://www.mydomain.com/sitemap.xml

Unfortunately it is also a good source for hackers to gain information about files and folders on your web server. Robots.txt is in not to keep files hidden. For this you would need to use a .htaccess file on your server or other techniques.

What does a robots.txt look like?
These three lines would keep out all robots that obey the rules out of the temp folder:
# Exclude all robots from temp folder
User-agent: *
Disallow: /temp/
Line 1 is a comment line, # starts a comment. This line is optional.
Line 2 lists the robots for which the next line’s command is valid: A wildcard (*) here means all robots.
Line 3 specifies the file or folder you want to exclude. If you just write Disallow: , you allow everything. Be careful here. Don't forget to add a file or folder name.

There is a command 'Allow' exists but it is not supported by all robots, so better play it safe and use 'Disallow' even if it is more work.

For a folder you write
Disallow: /foldername/

for a file use
Disallow: /filename.html

Only one folder or file per line is allowed. If you want to exclude several folders, use one line per folder/file.

If you only want to exclude a certain robot, use it’s name instead of the wild card (*):
User-agent: Robotname
Disallow: /temp/

Where to place the robots.txt?
The robots.txt has to be in the same folder as the entry page of your domain. I.e. http://www.mydomain.com/robots.txt

After you created the robots.txt on your computer with notepad or a similar tool (do not use a HTML editor), name it robots.txt (lower case!) and transfer it with your favourite FTP program using the ASCII transfer option.

More information about robots.txt

I started with the US shop, I already have and thought, hm, I could easily just copy the categories and fill with the same items. Wrong! Not only that they each sport a different category system, they also contain very different items. At least if you go for the non-books section.

I haven't decided yet if I just forget the whole idea or set up country targeted shop with reduced items.

It's sometimes a little bit tricky to only get the items you look for:
If you select First aid and Safety as your keywords (in the UK ashop) one of the first item is a vibrator. Could be considered a First aid item I guess, but would not be the first one I think of.

What are your experience with setting up an amazon store? If you have tips, please leave a comment.

I find some really anoying sites linking to Thai-Experience, a site for volunteering in Thailand, from time to time. This organization does not want to be linked from any sites that advertise Thai girls or adult content. Google alerts notify me each time when new links pop up and I can have a look.

What is Google Alerts?

Googles Definition: "Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic."

How to set up Google Alerts?

1. Go to Google Alerts

2. Enter the topic, URL, keyword etc. you want to know about

3. Choose between comprehensive or selective monitoring. This will determine where Google is looking for changes.

4. Choose how often you want the Google Alerts to be sent to you. To monitor backlinks "as-it-happens" is the best option.

5. Insert a valid email address. This is the address all you Google alerts will be send to, so make sure you check it regularly, otherwise the whole procedure is useless.

If you get too many unrelated google alerts, you might need to fine tune your keyword. Don't use something general like "travel" unless you want to spent hours sorting and deleting. I can tell you.

It's also a good way to find related blogs where you might leave a comment with a link back to your site.

Just copying something from another web site is no option. There is a copyright on photos, even if it is not explicitly stated. Sometimes you might get lucky to stumble upon a nice picture on the web and the owner lets you use it on your site, especially if you credit the photographer and provide a backlink.

So far I was lucky, I had travel photos for all my sites from former journeys. But if I continue to build new sites for countries I haven't beento recently, it may became a problem. So I did a quick search and choose these two sites to bookmark.

Browsing the web I stumbled upon this site, where you can download royalty free photos for free if you provide a backlink. The photos are mostly taken by amateurs, resolution is low but sufficient for use on the web. Quality is an issue here, but if you are on a real low budget, try it. Bigphoto

If you need high quality photos, check Bigstockphoto - photos for about $2.50 or so each - certainly a huge savings off the typical $50 stock photos you are probably used to at other sites. This month (March 2007) they have a special promotion: 100 photo credits for 100 US$; normally, if you only buy a few credits, you pay 2.50 US$ per credit.

Update:

Great free photos mostly by amateur photographers can also be found at stock.xcgn . Downside: The photos have different usage options and the license requieres you to 1. submit a review (that's the easy part) and 2. also to get the photographer's permission via the site. That can take any time from a few minutes to forever. Be carefull with photos that show people, there is usually no model release on the photos. You need to get it from the photographer if you want to avoid potential legal trouble later.

But it is worth a try.

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Microsoft Word can drive you nuts. It piles on features few people need, plagues you with annoying auto-corrections and just generally acts like a pain in the ass. No more. It's time to take back the word processor, to put Word in its place and make it your ally instead of your adversary. Follow these tips and you'll be a much happier writer.

read more | digg story

Dotster.com: MyPR, the online PR service from Dotster, is giving away one free press mailing per customer for your press releases.

Best of the Web Directory: Promo Code: 4LEAFCLOVER
Save 20% on new:

• Directory Submissions - Save on both the annually recurring and/or the one-time review fee.
• Blog Directory Submissions - Save on the one-time review fee for blogs.
• Monthly Sponsorship Ads - Discount the monthly rate for all new sponsorship ads.
• Blog Advertising - Discount the monthly rate for all new sponsorship ads in the Blog Directory.

Promo code may be used multiple times for multiple products and services during the month of March. Remember - the code will expire on March 31, 2007.

A great ressource is the list maintained by Dan at http://info.vilesilencer.com/
The list also has a section for niche directories. This comes in very handy for your travel site. Many of the directories in the list are still very new and have a low pagerank, but I can tell you from my experience with the directory at guiding-stars.com, this will soon change. This list drives a lot of traffic to directory sites and the consequence is a higher pagerank soon.

Another place to look is directorycritic. You will find free directories, a listing of niche directories and more.

More ressources:

webdirectory-index

Directory Tracker - here you can also keep track your submissions