Silicon Alley Insider -- a group blog focused on the New York startup scene -- published a post today titled Recession Winners: Web Designers, SEO. Nicholas Carlson shares a conversation he had with a web designer.

I ask one of the designers how's business, since, you know, everything blew up.

"Actually it's very good," he tells me. But I'm skeptical. How could it be? Everyone's hurting.

"Well, people are looking for cost-effective ways to market themselves and redesigning their Web site is a relatively cheap alternative," says the designer.

This makes perfect sense to me too. Spending one-time fees on spiffying up your website or making sure your website is search engine friendly is a great investment in your online business.

The SEO you can do on your site might even be free! Here are some SEO related tutorials to get you up to speed:

• 11 SEO Tweaks You Can Do Yourself
• Top 10 Search Ranking Factors -- Learn what affects your search engine rankings, and then spend your time and money on the most important factors.

Building a website:

• Step-by-Step Guide to Hiring a Web Designer
• Your Very First Web Host -- How to shop for a Web hosting provider.
  • Budget Web Hosts for $10 or Less Per Month
  • Overview of Different Types of Web Hosting Providers
  • Reliable VPS (Virtual Private Server) Web Hosting Companies
• Tips for Registering Your Domain Name
  • 7 Cheap Domain Name Registrars

Last month at BlogWorld Expo '08, I was interviewed by Abby Johnson of WebProNews.com on the importance of blog metrics. This was following my panel discussion on hiring professional bloggers for your business. Video after the jump....

Read more...

eBay's feedback system has undergone some major changes this past year. However, it still remains the most important part of a seller's reputation management toolbox. An eBay seller's feedback rating -- both the overall positive/negative ratio and the detailed seller ratings (DSRs) -- is instrumental in turning shoppers into buyers. A high positive feedback score gives buyers the trust they need to do business with you.

With that in mind, here are 18 tips for avoiding negative feedback on eBay. The article is broken down into three major sections:

1. What to do before a transaction is made to increase the chances of a positive feedback.
2. What to do when a sale is made to ensure your buyer is a happy, positive-feedback-leaving customer.
3. What to do if you get a negative feedback. It's not the end of the world, and in some cases, you may be able to get the negative feedback reversed.

Darren Rowse shares the story of how he increased the number of email subscriptions for the Digital Photography School newsletter from 40 per week to over 350! The secret was using the "Pop Over" feature from Aweber.

These Pop Over subscription forms are of course much more intrusive to readers than a sidebar form - this is the reason I resisted using them for so long. My fear was that they’d annoy readers, page views per visit would drop and that I’d end up with a lot of angry emails from readers.

But based on his test of a couple of weeks, it looks like the upside is well worth it. Check out this incredible screenshot of the daily subscriptions before and after using pop overs.

Read the full post: How to Drastically Increase Subscriber Numbers to Your Email Newsletter [Problogger]

The Google AdSense blog has announced the integration of AdSense data into Google Analytics.

If you're a website publisher that makes money from displaying AdSense ads, this is a long-awaited feature that will give you deeper insight on how your AdSense ads are performing.

Unfortunately, Google is slowly rolling out the feature, and so it is only available to a few publishers for now. If your AdSense account wasn't part of the first round (like me), check out the screenshots and a demo video after the jump....

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Google has introduced a handy new "canned responses" feature for Gmail. Here's their description of the feature:

Email for the truly lazy. Save and then send your common messages using a button next to the compose form. Also automatically send emails using filters.

If you're a Gmail user and you get a lot of the same questions emailed to you -- a common problem for ecommerce sellers, professional bloggers, and honestly, everyone else that works online -- you can now reply with a "canned response".

Read this guide to learn How to Setup Email Templates in Gmail.

Hat tip to Problogger.net

The Google Translate team has announced a couple of new features that help websites that serve a multi-lingual audience.

First, check out translate.google.com. You can enter a block of text or a website URL to translate. For example, here is this guidesite (onlinebusiness.about.com) automagically translated into Spanish from English. (Mouse over blocks of text to see the original English.)

Google Translate has been around for a couple of years. Today's announcements highlighted three features that help website owners control how their sites are translated.

Read more...

A new study on businesses and social media was recently released by Cone Inc, a consultancy. You can download the full 2008 Business in Social Media Study fact sheet, but it requires you to leave your name and email address.

The study describes social media as "technology facilitated dialogue among individuals or groups, such as blogs/microblogs, forums, wikis, content sharing, social networking, social bookmarking and social gaming."

Read more...

Lorelle VanFossen has written a fantastic series of articles on Blog Herald about the professional blogging industry. The series is helpful for both employers looking to hire bloggers and writers looking for a paid blogging job.

The paid blogging industry has exploded over the last few years as companies get on the blogging bandwagon. It's still a nascent profession, so a lot of the rules and conventions are still being written. Lorelle's series goes a long way towards establishing practices we'll be using for years to come.

• What is Your Ideal Dream Blog Job?
• Blogger Jobs: What Are They Looking For?
• Blogger Jobs: How to Apply For a Blogger Job?
• Blogging Jobs: How Much Are Bloggers Paid to Blog?
• Blogging Jobs: How Much is Blogging Worth?

After the BlogWorld Expo '08 conference in September, Lorelle added to the series by writing up three awesome summaries based on the talk I gave with Darren Rowse, Jim Turner, and Will Chen on Hiring a Professional Blogger for Your Business.

• What You Ned to Know About Hiring a Professional Blogger and Being Hired
• Hiring Bloggers: Let Your Blog Speak Well of You
• Hiring Bloggers: Know Your Performance Numbers - This one is a summary of my part of the talk. I also wrote it up as an article that complements Lorelle's excellent summary.

So if you're looking to launch your own business blog, read these articles first to get an idea of what you should expect and what you should be paying your bloggers. Good luck!

IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) released their Internet Advertising Report for the first half of 2008 this week. It shows online advertising spending increased 15.2% in the first half of 2008 versus the same period in 2007.

Couple of interesting charts from IAB (dollar figures are in millions):

1. Advertising Formats: search and video growing at the expense of classifieds and sponsorships.

	FH 2007	FH 2008
Search	41% ($4,097)	44% ($5,064)
Display Related:	32% ($3,198)	33% ($3,799)
-Banner Ads	21% ($2,099)	21% ($2,418)
-Rich Media	7% ($699)	7% ($806)
-Digital Video	1% ($100)	3% ($345)
-Sponsorship	3% ($300)	2% ($230)
Classifieds	17% ($1,699)	14% ($1,611)
Referrals/Lead Generation	8% ($799)	7% ($806)
E-mail	2% ($200)	2% ($230)

2. Pricing Models: performance deals growing at CPM's expense. That makes sense as advertisers demand more accountability for their ad budgets. More and more advertisers want to pay for action or clicks instead of just impressions.

	FH 2007	FH 2008
Performance Deals	50%($4997)	52%($6,007)
CPM	45%($4497)	44%($5,026))
Hybrid	5%($499)	4% ($477)

Here's a copy of the full IAB Internet Advertising Report 2008 Q2 (pdf).