“Reaction to Google News’ new layout has been resoundingly harsh. So far, Google isn’t offering an option to revert back to the old version, unlike it did with its last major Gmail update. It seems Google’s attempt to balance personalization and serendipity left fans of both unhappy.” ReadWriteWeb

“Google’s support forums are filled with complaints and many are saying that they are looking for alternatives to Google News. Up till now, Google has made it pretty clear that it has no intention to undo the changes or offer an option for the old design.” SoftPedia

If your goal was to send your loyal followers to Yahoo or Bing for their news, then the changes have been a HUGE success Google. Keep up the good work. If however you kind of want to keep us around, it might be time to actually hear what your readers are saying.

Sincerely,

A Former Loyal Google News Reader

V7N “Turn Up The Heat” Special

It’s almost summer time, and for a lot of sites, this means a little traffic slump. As things slow down, we’re turning up the heat at V7N… now is the time to get your directory listings and take advantage of our contextual links program to improve your search engine exposure.

We want to offer a short time DISCOUNT CODE that will save you $12.50 OFF of any v7n product, both contextual links and v7n directory listings!

Save $12.50 On All Contextual Links & Directory Listings
Promo Code: ALMOSTSUMMER (Click “Apply Code” before checking out)

This is a limited time offer that will end Monday, May 31st at midnight CST

• Buy Contextual Links
• Buy Directory Listings

WOW! Things have really been heating up in the forums too this last month with some serious quality topics! You will definitely want to jump in and add your thoughts or simply browse for new ideas and help.

• W3C Valid Code and SEO
• V7N’s SEO Tip of the Day
• Accessibility VS. Usability

We are also very pleased to announce the addition of a new forum dedicated to Google AdSense. There are already some incredible threads going to help with better ad placement and ways to increase your earnings.

• The Real AdSense Equation
• Best AdSense Placement
• Myths Behind AdSense Bans

Thank you for being a part of our lives and above all for allowing us to be a part of yours.

Cricket

- You can advertise your web related product or service free!

- It’s a great place to escape from the world for a bit.

- You can take part in the V7N SEO Tip Of The Day.

- You can get help with coding or tech issues.

- You can discuss marketing ideas with others.

- You can interact with other online small business owners.

- You can find multiple ideas for increasing webmaster revenue.

- You can get help with learning to write for the web.

- You can find forum management tips and ideas.

- You can visit with me!

Hey! When is the last time you stopped by the V7N Forums? I definitely recommend dropping everything to come on over for a visit. We have some absolutely incredible threads going on right now that you will want to be a part of!

If you are new to the webmaster world, you might want to stop by our Web Hosting 101 thread to get some help and ideas on the difference in the types of hosting available and how to choose a hosting company.

Are you an amateur or professional photographer? Or, do ya just like taking pictures? You might want to take a moment to stop by a few of our more popular threads right now, such as the V7N Worldwide 30 Day Walkabout Photo Challenge or our Share Your Pet Photos thread.

It doesn’t matter if you are sharing or learning, I think you will like our V7N SEO Tip of the Day. It’s a chance to share with others, or learn from some of the pros. Don’t miss out on these valuable tips!

Do you have webmaster related products or services to offer? We have a large and active Webmaster Marketplace where you can post your offers and maybe increase business.

Now if you just want to escape the world for a bit, you might enjoy the current debates in our Controversial Social Issues forum where you can discuss anything from topics about if Prisoners Should Have Internet Access to political discussions such as Messages To Obama. Sometimes it is just nice to run away for a while and have a place to share your opinions.

Look me up over there when you stop by!

J. Cricket Walker of CricketWalker.com

With the end of 2009 rapidly approaching, I can’t help but look back over this last year and see how very far the V7N Webmaster Forums have come over the last year. It has been so exciting to watch the steady growth as our members have come together to become not just another forum, but a true community. So many friendships have developed, along with a true desire to help others.

We have seen some changes that we are pretty happy about, including the addition of a few new forums, improved organization to help you find what you are looking for easily, and new features such as expanded profiles, social networking, and embedded videos. If you haven’t stopped by lately, we miss you. Come on over to check things out and catch up with old friends. We would love to see you! Make sure to visit our 2010 New Year’s Resolutions thread and share your thoughts with us too.

We do want to take this opportunity to thank you for being a part of our lives, and for allowing us to be a part of yours. We are so blessed to have the most incredible members and mentors, along with first class moderators who are absolutely determined to make the V7N the friendliest webmaster community on the net, while continuing to focus on providing quality discussions, tutorials, and answers to your questions. It just keeps on getting better.

Yeah, it’s true. We are not like most forums out there. We think that’s a good thing!

From everyone at the V7 Network, we would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We hope that 2010 will be your best year ever!

As previously promised, when we come across affiliate companies doing a great job, we are going to share them with you!

RevResponse is one that really seems to go above and beyond when it comes to communicating with their affiliate marketers. They offer close to real-time answers to questions with a forum and blog.

They will provide you with someone to help you find the best offer for your sites, and even recommend types of ads, along with the best placement for those ads. They truly WANT you to succeed and make money with their company!

The offer catalog does a beautiful job of laying things out in a simple manner to give you a good idea payout ranges, earning potentials and popularity of the offer. This can make a huge difference in your net results as a marketer.

Additionally, RevResponse provides their affiliates with widgets to help you promote hot offers. The creatives within the Ad Wizard are designed in such a way that should definitely see better conversions.

Why not go ahead and start making some extra money giving away magazines and white papers to your users?

Signup with RevResponse now!

Following are the transcripts from the 1:00 pm session of the V7Network RoundTable chat held on October 7th.

Please note that beyond removing some early chatter before and after that chat, I have made very few corrections, so you will be seeing all of our spelling and typing errors. I hope you are fluent at reading typonese! (grin)

How to Identify Problem Areas on Your Website

<Cricket>     has everyone viewed the preview screencast?

<gissen>       Where do we get it?

<Cricket>     http://screenr.com/mE7

<tumbleweed>       screencast is at http://screenr.com/mE7

<tumbleweed>       hehe

<tumbleweed>       very kewl firefox addons mentioned in the screencast

<Cricket>     Over the coming weeks I will be making a ton of these

<Cricket>     to help with areas that are easier to understand

<Cricket>     thru a screencast

*          tumbleweed thinks the screencast is very innovative. sometimes pictures can say 1000 words

<Cricket>     yeah I agree

<bobnelms>            screencast won’t play for me.

<Cricket>     should play in any browser

<bobnelms>            it’s loading, but it doesn’t show a play button.

<Cricket>     slow connection?

<Cricket>     okay for those who came in late and missed it, save this url for a screencast

<Cricket>     http://screenr.com/mE7

<ewramos>  very god…

<LOZ>         It would be nice if there was a way to re size the screen

<Cricket>     there is a button to full size it

<Cricket>     on the player

<bobnelms>            no, not a slow connection

<atnip>         nice and to the point

<Cricket>     okay for those of you that do not have those tools

<MyPreciousKid>   not working for me either, clicked play, get first screen and nothing

<Cricket>     later (not now) download them thru Firefox

<Groovin>   You’ll need the latest adobe flash player installed in your browser of choice

<gissen>       very nice~

<Cricket>     ?       Web Developer  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60

<Cricket>     This is the tool I use the most frequently when I am working on a page. Once you have it downloaded and installed, take the time to play with all different features. The following are the ones that I use the most.

<Texas>       I viewed it.

<Cricket>     ?       Search Status  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/321

<Cricket>     I install this one into the foot of the window in the status bar. If you right click on the icon after install, and select options, it will let you select placement of it within the window.

<Cricket>     ?       LinkChecker 0.61  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/532

<Cricket>     This one is a quick and easy way for me to check all the links on a page.

<Cricket>     ?       HTML Validator 0.8.40  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/249

<Cricket>     This one is installed in the footer of my window as an alternative validator, especially for quick checks. For this one, I have the preferences set to use HTML Tidy to double check pages.

<AmySueN>            Cricket – the chat will be available for future reference, right? I’ll want to go through all these one by one as I have time…

<Cricket>     yes, I am logging the chat

*          tumbleweed listens

<psylinx>     How do you feel about people using screen capture software to record this stuff?

<AmySueN>            thx

<Cricket>     not worried as long as it is not published

<psylinx>     Cool

<psylinx>     I’m a good boy

<Cricket>     okay folks now is where we have to determine where your exact troubles are

<psylinx>     …well sorta

<AmySueN>            (pats psylinx’s head)

<Cricket>     soooo many times people are working on seo, when their issue is marketing

<psylinx>     lol

<Cricket>     and visa versa

<Cricket>     the key is knowing exactly what your issue is

<Cricket>     as an example: someone tells me they have a HUGE bounce rate on a specific page

<Cricket>     this tells me a few different things

<Cricket>     (will go back and explain in a minute)

<Cricket>     Is it possible you are in the top 10 for a phrase

<Cricket>     that your page does not specifically address?

<Cricket>     of so, they are gonna bounce fast

<Cindy522>            Or a phrase with more than one meaning – ACK!

<Cricket>     exactly Cindy

<Cricket>     another

<Cricket>     is it possible they you have what they want

<Brandon>   good day everyone

<Cricket>     but the credibility of your site truly sucks?

<Cricket>     and there is no way they will give you their cc number?

<Cricket>     that is why you need a checklist of things to check on every page of your site

<Cricket>     ok lets move on this for a minute

<Cricket>     am I going to fast?

<Texas>       No

<drapersi>   no

<Cindy522>            no

<poetren>    no

*          tumbleweed is keeping up so far

<bobnelms>            no

<MyPreciousKid>   no

<Cricket>     Top placement in the search results is not enough to result in sales. If you are in the top 10 for a key phrase that no one searches for, it will not matter how hard you work on that page, it is not going to bring many visitors from the search engines.

<firecat>       no

*          SubWolf listens in a mo

<Cricket>     This is where you need to sit down and review each title of every page to determine if it is a phrase people are actually searching for.

<Cricket>     Although not perfect, the Google Keywords Tool for AdWords can be an effective tool to add to your research.

<Cricket>     I highly recommend using it

<AmySueN>            I miss the old keyword tool

<Cricket>     If you are not in the top 10 for a phrase, then it may be time to decide if you have selected too broad of a title.  After making certain that, the page is using all of the basic SEO, I then look at selecting a tighter niche, or add a clarifying phrase to the existing title.

<Cricket>     This one can tougher to evaluate because it is so easy to get in a rut of THINKING you have followed all of the steps needed to optimize a page, when quite often multiple pieces of the puzzle missing.

Read the rest of this entry »

Well, in addition to all the points covered in the Forum Management forum in the topic Do’s and Don’ts, I’m going to add another 5 points that you’ll need to keep in mind while in the process of building a website community.

• First, and this could very well stands as one of the most important things for any solid community, feedback. One of the topics that will pop around from time to time, possibly even frequently, is your site itself. People will mention things regarding the community, be it lack of features, discussing bugs, maybe even discussions regarding rules being broken around the site etc. Well, what better place for all this talk than a feedback section of the site, where the users get to discuss these issues in an organized manner, while also keeping the rest of the community complaint-free. Users want to be heard, and what better way to prove to them your willingness to listen and help and a feedback or support forum?




• It’s important that over time, you build a ‘loyal’ staff base, moderators, admins, support staff. You can’t run a forum of 30,000+ members single handily, that would be impossible. So either invite close friends to help you with moderation/administration. When you’re a dedicated consistent team, the overall work load becomes less to deal with and when a moderator goes offline for a long stretch, the site won’t suffer. Don’t worry, not all of us have friends willing to spend time on a community moderating, but that’s why you need to keep an eye out for regular members that seem like they could handle the position. Find someone unbiased, on good terms with most of the members and is constructive as well as valued in general on the forums.




• Trouble makers exist in the real world, everywhere, they also exist online, on communities. Here’s the thing though, one of the important things to keep in mind is ‘how to deal with trouble makers’ on forums. You have to confront these trouble makers as soon as you can, and you have to be careful when doing so. If you act with an iron fist swinging in the air, raging and being too harsh, you will probably turn that casual trouble maker into one of those driven-to-make-your-life-a-living-hell type of trouble maker. Who knows, they could be a hacker, and causing waves with one of those is never a good thing.Always start by emailing the person or PM’ing them, let them know they’re violating the rules even if it’s obvious, and let them know you don’t want to see them gone but that you would rather they go about things differently on your community. Don’t sound sarcastic, or threatening or angry in these PMs/emails, you should have a friend or fellow staffer review your email/pm, these trouble makers will usually stop when called on it in that manner.
  
  
  If that doesn’t work then it’s penalty time, don’t ban them outright at this point, take away some of their rights, maybe rights to post. Then message them letting them know of what you did and why, and remember to let them know how they can get this partial ban lifted. I can tell you from past experience, after running some of the biggest black hat seo/hacking forums, that trouble makers, when converted, make the most loyal members. Why? Well, they go around causing trouble and admins/site owners, all react the same way, ban, ban, ban. These trouble makers are expecting those actions, but when an calm and collected admin simply stops them and say something to the effect of, “hey, what you’re doing is pretty immature, but I think you could really add value to this community, that’s why I want you to take a time out and come back, add value to this community and become a valued member, because I believe you can be.”
  
  
  Banning, blocking their IP address or removing all their contributions from the forum is always going to spark more trouble than it will initially deflate. No one wins in the end, you lose a potential regular, make an enemy and they are annoyed when they’re banned. Just be nice with these trouble makers, try to convert them and do this as early on as you can.




• Try to highlight the best you community has to over, think of it this way, when someone makes cookies (bare with me here) and they burn them, but still need to serve them, regardless of what they taste like they’re going to serve them with the burnt side down, right? They’re not going to serve something that looks burnt…same thing with a community, put the best up top, in plain view, highlight and feature your most valued members. Wear them like medals, the more medals a forum owner has, the higher up on that rank chain they go. This will do several things; one main thing is it gives new members a sense of the forum standards, and something to aim for. You could even make this a community held event, have everyone pick the most valuable contributor, funniest member, friendliest, most helpful, most annoying just spice it up a bit. Build a sense of community to bring everyone closer together.




• Finally, I can never say this enough, a friendly inviting community that attracts quality users is not going to be easy to achieve. Building something from scratch into to a thriving, friendly, high quality community is immensely rewarding.

Above all, just have fun!

Toni Zova
Personal Site: www.tonizova.com
Twitter: @tonfue

We are always looking for more ways to help you monetize your websites and blogs. When we come across a solid affiliate company that we feel can help increase your income, you can count on the fact that we are going to share it with you.

Browsing through the Tatto Media site and affiliate program, it’s easy to see why they are now the world’s third largest behavioral advertising network (July 2009 comScore ). The quality services they provide for both their advertisers and affiliates are quite simply a cut above the rest.

Why Choose the Tatto Affiliate Network?

I spent quite some time reading the extensive information they offer affiliates in a very straight forward approach and found multiple benefits for choosing to work with this company.

Weekly Payments: With so many companies paying their affiliates either monthly or quarterly, it’s nice to see one offering weekly payments with flexible payment terms paid via check, PayPal or wire. Additionally, affiliates are given access to view and track payment history along with a dedicate account management team for support.

Self Serve System: This makes it so simple to find and choose exclusive offers with top brand name sites to maximize your revenues and provides instant updates with real time reporting tools!

Exclusive Offers: One of the most exciting things I noticed about the Tatto Affiliate Network is that they have such a wide variety of exclusive offers available, including gift cards, cell phones, health, finance, education, entertainment and more. This makes it easy for you to find offers relevant to your existing sites to get you making money quickly.

Advanced Reporting: Track and analyze performance in real time in the user-friendly Affiliates System interface. Use the SOAP interfaces to integrate live reporting in any application.

All in all, I have to admit I am impressed and would recommend to anyone looking for ways to increase their income to check out the Tatto Media Affiliate Network to see if it may be the solution for you!

What: V7Network RoundTable
Where: http://www.v7n.com/chat/
When: Wed Sept 23 at 1:00 pm CST
Discussion: How to identify problem areas on your web site.
Cost: FREE to all V7N members.

I cannot begin to tell you how excited I am to introduce the V7Network RoundTable live training chats to the community. These will be structured interactive text chats covering a wide range of topics for webmasters and small business owners, focused 100% on helping our members build a highly successful online presence. At this time, our plan is to offer this training 2-4 times a month based on the response from the community.

Our first live training chat is scheduled for September 23, 2009 at 1:00 pm CST. We will be discussing ways to evaluate your site (and the tools that I personally use) to determine what types of changes you may need to consider making in terms of SEO and marketing techniques. Afterward, we will be opening things up for questions and answers.

If what you are currently doing is working, please do not consider changing a single thing. In fact, you probably don’t need this type of training. If however you find yourself not getting the results that you have hoped for, then perhaps it is time to think about sitting down and spending some time with us at the V7Network RoundTable and see if maybe we can brainstorm through some ideas for you!

We will open the chat area approximately 30 minutes prior to the start of the training session. If you are not already logged in, you will need to log in using your V7N user name and password. I expect the training session to last 1-2 hours, based on the number of member questions.

Please let us know if you will be able to attend!