Slide-in windows are those pesky 3×4 windows that slide into the screen as you are viewing the home page of a web site. They are annoying, but guess what: They work! We once quadrupled newsletter sign-ups for a client simply by adding a slide-in window that offered an enticing giveaway. Be sure to ask your programmer to code the window so it appears once per day, per IP address. This way a viewer will only see the window once a day, which is a lot less annoying.

Offer something of value to your visitors—something that is unique to your area of expertise that they will love (and will want to share with others). Some of the most successful give aways are the most simple. The key is that they need to hold value for your readers. Think of magazine headlines when you develop your give-away. People love tests, quizzes, how to articles, top ten tips and secrets. Think back to something that was simple, but also provided you with an ah-ha moment when you started to doing research for your book. Chances are your readers will appreciate it to and will want to know more.

If you are offering something of value to your visitors, but they just aren’t biting, try moving its placement—sometimes a simple change to your site will make all the difference in the world.

One of the best ways to drive traffic back to your web site is to network, socially—online. But, can you overdo it? With so many people using social networking sites to advertise and market their products, social networking sites like Digg and Twellow are keeping a close eye.

Are you in danger of being blacklisted? The answer can be yes, but only if you abuse the system. These sites are interested in protecting the value of their service. If they suspect you are abusing the system, they will shut you down. Here are five tips to help you build your credibility and strengthen your valuable social networking campaign.

1. Personalize your account. In other words: humanize yourself. You will gain trust more quickly if people know that you are a real person and not a fake-profiler (someone pretending to be someone else). Fake profilers do exist, and those people who are sincere social networkers will know right away if you are not on the up-and-up. Remember it’s okay to sell yourself—just be subtle. Make sure you include your photo, a personal bio, your hobbies, your real age….

2. Participate often. If the only time you logon to your account is to blatantly sell yourself you will never gain a following. If you follow lots of other people, but no one follows you, you could be sending out a red flag that could get you banned. Equal participation is important, so get involved, make friends, ask for advice—be real. This goes a long way to ensure your place in the world of social networking and build your online fan base.

3. Slow and steady. If you build your account too quickly, two things will happen: First you’ll get burned out, and second your sudden flurry could be misinterpreted as SPAM, especially if you are selling something or linking back to your own site with every post.

4. Mix it up. It’s okay to include links back to your site, and you should!! However, if you include a link in every comment, you might call the attention of the social networking police.

5. Be consistent. This will ensure your success, will gain you a following, added exposure, links back to your site and the forces that be will love you too. Remember, if you give something away, if you offer value, you will be successful with your online marketing plan. All you need is ten minutes a day and patience.

So what is a tag cloud?  In basic terms it is a graphic representation of your content. Frequently used words within your content are given more importance: they appear larger, sometimes bolder, and in a stronger font within the cloud.

Here’s an example of a tag cloud generated from Monkey C Media’s home page content:

This helps you in two ways:

1. Your reader gets a visual representation of what you offer.
2. Search engines spiders can easily scan your content for keywords, thereby ranking your site for those keywords and hopefully giving you a higher ranking.

Check it out, you can create a tag cloud for yourself at this site: TagCrowd

This can help you visualize what emphasis you have placed on your content. As we write content for the web, we sometimes forget to analyze it in terms of searchability. A Tag Cloud gives you a visual that may help you restructure your content by simply adding keywords or terms more frequently within the body of your text.

If you decide to utilize a tag cloud within your site, be sure to link the words within the tags to the pages within your site that include those relevant keyword. Then everybody wins. You attract the search engines and your readers get a quick road map to what they are looking for.

Video sharing continues to be the fastest growing social networking act on the Net.  This is especially cool, because online book videos are still catching on (meaning the competition isn’t too stiff—yet) and Monkey C Media is one of the few full-service design companies offering quality book videos that target the reader!

In September, 2008, Comscore released the following statistics from July 2008 findings:
75 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.

• Americans spent a total of 558 million hours watching online video during the month.
• The average online video viewer watched 235 minutes of video.
• 91 million viewers watched 5 billion videos on YouTube.com (54.8 videos per viewer).
• 51.4 million viewers watched 400 million videos on MySpace.com (7.8 videos per viewer).
• The duration of the average online video was 2.9 minutes.

If you read yesterday’s post, you might recall that Yahoo! Japan was ranked as the tenth most popular web site world wide.  According to ComScore, Yahoo! Japan received more than 46 million monthly visits in August, 2008.  In fact, Yahoo! Japan is worth almost as much as Yahoo! period.

Google is still biting at Yahoo!’s heels in terms of popularity, ranking number one in India and Germany, 14 and 15 on that same list, respectively. Over the past years Google has been slowly catching up to Yahoo!

Until early this week Google and Yahoo! were discussing a partnership, but it seems that the parties may be walking away from the negotiation table according to a Wall Street Journal aticle I read today. It will be interesting to see how  this plays out.

Among the incomprehensible number of web sites out there—have you ever thought about which are the most popular?  I have.  In fact, I did a search on Alexa.  Keep in mind that findings vary from site to site, and from day to day.
With this particular list, I was surprised to learn that Yahoo! is number one and Google is number two.  I often prophesize of the world domination of Google, but apparently my rambling of this takeover is still fiction (stay tuned).
Here’s the List:

1. Yahoo!
2. Google
3. YouTube
4. Windows Live
5. Facebook
6. MSN
7. MySpace
8. Wikipedia
9. Blogger.com
10. Yahoo! Japan

Employing Organic SEO techniques means your site gets listed with the search engines and your audience finds you.  Here’s an SEO tip that every author should be aware of:  Load Time.
Google, specifically, will ding your search ranking if your home page takes too long to load.  So, optimize your images.  Web images and photographs should be no more than 72 ppi (pixels per inch).  If you do not own image-manipulating software like PhotoShop for instance, you can use the tool at this Web Photo Resizer site.   As an example, you can take a 356 KB image and downsize it to 23 KB without losing any perceptible resolution, and it will load much more quickly.

Now anyone with a Google login will be able to submit an article and, if they choose, have ads displayed through the Internet search leader’s marketing system.

read more | digg story

Amazon sure stirred up a hornet’s nest with the POD world. Now, if you want them to sell your independently published book you’re going to have to use Booksurge.

Read more:

at Amazon’s press release page

Blogging Stocks

Publishers Weekly

Google News about Amazon (changes constantly)

Social networking is an important part of getting added exposure for your book and often calls for the need to upload an image like your picture and or your book cover.  Or perhaps you upload images to your newsletter or your blog.  Then you’ll want to be sure and optimize those images.  This can be an issue if you do not have some type of photo editing software like PhotoShop or PhotoShop Elements.   There is an easy-to-use alternative that anyone can use from anywhere:  Webresizer.com

Check it out: this nifty photo resizer allows you to reduce your image size, crop photos, sharpen an image, and much more.  This is one tool you’ll want to add to your bookmarks for future use.  have fun!!

Tip offered by Jeniffer Thompson, author of Web Site WOW, Turn Your Web Site Into Your Most Powerful Marketing Tool.  Jeniffer Thompson is the president of Monkey C Media, a full-service design house specializing in author web sites and book cover designs.