BlogSmall business, Marketing, Promotion and Web Design

There is a huge number of posts on this blog that have a very high chance of never being read again. There is also a very high need to increase a PR, Alexa rank, Compete Rank and so on. There must be a way to reuse the content, at least that part of it that could be reused. So far I came up with the following tricks:

• Posts that make sense apart from the blog – submit them to article databases
• Posts that make sense without sponsored links – repost them once sponsorship expires
• Posts that make sense apart from the blog – repost them to other web sites with backlinks to main blog. This could be guest posts or just reprints.
• Posts by certain tag – mix them with posts from other blogs of similar nature to create new content-rich site.

Well, I have couple of more ideas as well. I will try them with Zealus Community Forums and will report on the progress. Most of this will be automated, so I won’t have to spend huge amount of time on that.

Social media gets more diverse every time someone uploads the video on YouTube. It gets more popular every time someone watches that video. And, obviously it gets more social when you pass a link to or embed a video into your blog or web site. It’s hard to say who exactly came up with this idea (I think it is instinctive thing), but “do as I do” routine almost never fails.So every time some creative video gets out there, some other people think “hey, I can do that too”. And they try to.

Forget the reality shows your parents used to watch. WWF is a good stunt work. Next generation reality shows are going to be different. Studios still casting people who look good on TV, but that’s about to change. In the world where everybody can become his own video producer for less money than cost of a semester in a decent private college, next TV would be whole home-made. People increasingly watch videos online instead of regular TV. Ubiquitous broadband (including high-speed mobile), YouTube on your mobile device (hello, iPhone) and next-gen TVs with network hook-up will let you watch your favorite web site in your favorite cafe, in the comfort of your living room, on the go. Or upload your footage just as easy.

Just make sure you get that lens cap off before you start shooting.

Beginning this year I grabbed couple of special hosting deals with Netfirms. I was attracted by low cost and ability to run PHP4, PHP5 and .NET all under same account. As I spent more and more time trying to figure out why the heck a bunch of familiar and well-worked out scripts wouldn’t run on Netfirm’s hosting platform I came to know how messed up the whole deal was. Tech support responded to my e-mail after 4 days (I already forgot I filed a ticket). Performance was iffy at best – sometimes on par with my home-run server, sometimes way slower. ASP.NET application that runs without any tweaking on my company’s internal server failed to start in seemingly similar environment on Netfirms. You think I could use their tech support? Yeah, right.

So couple of days ago, as both my domain and account were reaching expiration date, I decided to move out. Transferring domain was the easiest, so I did this as soon as I have made the decision. Canceling account, however, is a much more difficult task. First of all – there is no way you can cancel from your control panel. And, there is no way of canceling via e-mail request to support. The only way to cancel the account with Netfirms is to call their toll-free number (I don’t want this idea to really get out, but I was expecting a 900- number) between 9am and 5pm EST and request the cancellation over the phone. Let me check what year is this? Right, still 2007.

Generally, I wouldn’t go over such a routine task as canceling some online service unless there was some incentive. Well, the incentive is as follows – nowhere on Netfirms’ web site nor in their knowledge base does it say how to cancel the account. While doing the digging I stumbled upon some blogs that describe exactly same problems with Netfirms I was facing – poor service, non-existent customer service, hard-to-find cancellation procedure.

However, I don’t see anyone at Netfirms to care. They seem to be overly busy taking new sign ups.