How to Prevent Bandwidth Theft

Note: This article was originally published on the Omnistar Etools website.

One problem every webmaster should be aware of is bandwidth theft. Sometimes, malignant webmasters who like your images may decide to hotlink them, effectively serving your images (using up your bandwidth) on their site. While it may not be a problem ordinarily, all it takes is one time: if a blog with a large readership hotlinks your image, you may use up your monthly bandwidth allowance in the space of a day.

As with most problems, the best way to solve this issue is to prevent it from happening in the first place.

There are a few of ways you can stop hotlinkers from showing your images:

• Denial of Access
• Alternate Image Served
• HTML Document Served

Each of these methods requires modifying the .htaccess file associated with your site. Your .htaccess file protects all files in the same directory as the .htaccess file as well as all files in subdirectories of that folder. When modifying the .htaccess file, remember that it must remain in ASCII format, so use Notepad or any other plain text editor.

The denial of access route is the most common method used. It basically consists of refusing any domain other than the ones you specify to show the image. The modification to your .htaccess file should include the following lines of code:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://yoursite.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.yoursite.com [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(gif|jpg|swf|png)$ - [NC,F]

Make sure that each line is unbroken, and remember to replace yoursite.com with your actual domain name. Notice that this code refuses hotlinking of gifs, jpgs, pngs, and flash files.

Alternately, you may wish to try and gain hits from unwanted bandwidth theft. By serving an alternate image, you will still be serving up images, which causes you to lose bandwidth, but instead of the image the hotlinker requested, you may show an image that states: "To see this image, please visit YourSite.com" or something similar. To do this, simply replace that last line of code (the Rewrite Rule line) with the following:
RewriteRule .*\.(gif|jpg)$ http://yoursite.com/hotlinked.gif [R,NC]
Please notice that in this case, the image replaces only gifs and jpgs with your custom image.

The last method is rarely used, because it takes much more effort to implement, and requires php. But the last method has the added benefit of allowing people to link to your image, which the aforementioned methods do not allow. For example, if someone likes your image and decides to link to it, when the page loads, it will show the referrer as the page that linked to it–which means the RewriteRule from above takes effect, and the above code will deny or replace it. Yet you may not want to deny viewers from seeing your image in such a situation, since the person linking your image is not stealing it for their own use, but is actively referring their visitors to your content.

The idea is to change all requests for a picture file to instead serve an html file that shows the image requested. If someone hotlinks this image, the request will fail, because what your site will serve them is an html file, and browsers will be unable to render the file, and instead will show the generic image placeholder. But if someone links to the image, they will silently be redirected to an html page which will not only show them the image they wanted, but also provide links back to the rest of your content! So with this method, you disallow hotlinkers, and yet provide image linkers with the image they wanted, plus additional content that you specify.

There are two drawbacks to this final method: first, you must be using php; second, you will not be able to serve up an alternate image to hotlinkers. For an in-depth description of how to implement html document serving on image requests, see Thomas Scott’s excellent article on AListApart.

A Short Introduction to Brane Theory

[EDIT: This entry was never finished, but I'm publishing as is anyway. I apologize in advance for poor formatting and conceptual editing. At some point, I may revisit the topic.]

In this short introduction to Brane Theory, I will be looking at what the many theories deaing with branes that theoretical physicists are currently working on is all about, so that when I speak in future entries about branes, you won't be completely lost. Space as we see it is three-dimensional, meaning that there are three fundamental 'directions', or in a technical sense, that three is the minimum number of co-ordinates required to specify a point in space. Okay, so you realize that space as we see it is 3 dimensional, and time is an additional, yet different dimension, in that it flows in only one direction, and that the universe seems to have a distinct preference for one direction over another. 6:15 PM Einstein showed that space and time are interlinked to such a degree that they complement one another perfectly in just such a way as to make the speed of light constant; if time is dilated, space is lengthed by just enough to keep the speed of light (c) constant. So instead of speaking in terms of 3 dimensions, it is clear that time is extremely similar to the rest except in the respects pointed out above. 6:17 PM Gravity, according to gen rel, is a feature of spacetime geometry itself. It is not so much a force in the classical sense, nor even in the quantum mechanical sense, as it has to do with the geometry of spacetime rather than the propulsion of intermediary particles. 6:18 PM So far, I think you're already very conversant in what I'm saying. But the next step is a recent development, and I'm not sure if you've heard of it. Have you heard of brane theory? Dorek: yes it is a theory of the origin of the universe, as far as i know 6:19 PM i don't know much beyond that me: Yes. It involves extra-dimensionality that isn't kaluza-klein. I'll explain, but stop me if I start on something you already know. 6:20 PM Typically, whenever extra dimensions are thought about, it follows the kaluza-klein theory: that is, that extra dimensions are so small that we can't ordinarily perceive them. It is like a garden hose: from a great distance, it appears one-dimensional, though it's surface actually has two (and volume has three). 6:21 PM A Kaluza-Klein dimension is a fourth spatial dimension that is curved in upon itself (such as a garden hose's surface curves in on itself in one of its two dimensions) but is so small that we do not actually see it. 6:22 PM It is just a theory of course, but if kk dimensions exist, they would have to be on the order of less than hundredth of a millimeter, since extra dimensions would have noticable effects with gravity, and we have verfied general relativity up to a hundredth of a millimeter. Dorek: hold on it's dinner now 6:23 PM but i am interested in hearing what you have to say i will be back shortly me: Okay. Take yout ime. I'll be here awhile. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8 minutes 6:31 PM Dorek: ok me: Back already? That was quick. Dorek: i'm back 6:32 PM me: Must have been a short dinner. Dorek: it lasted from 5:23 to 5:32 6:33 PM me: Where was I? Oh, Kaluza-Klein theory.... Did I give a sufficient idea of what that means? 6:34 PM Dorek: yes me: Keep in mind, of course, that talking about extra-dimensionality is a step away from what we know to a very high degree of likliness is true, and goes into theorizing that won't be experimentally verifiable until the large hadron collider opens in CERN, switzerland, in late 2008. 6:35 PM Then again, superstring theory is completely unverifiable until we get particle accelerators that are a trillion times more powerful than we currently have, and yet superstring theorists get NOVA PBS specials and all kinds of good press. But I digress. 6:36 PM Dorek: those damned liberals and their public tv 6:37 PM me: As recently as the mid-nineties, a new theory of extra-dimensionality came into (second-place) prominence (always after superstrings, of course): brane theory. 6:38 PM The idea is that there are extra spatial dimensions, just like KK theory. But in this case, there are objects within the larger spacetime continuum that have a very peculiar property: 6:39 PM They restrict the movement of certain particles upon the 'surface' of the brane. To explain, let me mention a historical note. 6:40 PM The reason kk theory developed (1920 or so, I think) is because gen rel seemed t work really well in five dimensions. But it is obvious to everypne that there is no fifth dimension: if there were, we could see it, since, presumably, photons would go in that direction, and bounce back tio hit our eyes. 6:41 PM So Kaluza proposed (and Klein later mathematically showed) that the fifth dimensioncould be really small, and we wouldn't be able to detect its existence. Of course, kk theory in terms of gen rel made predictions that turned out to be false, so we know of it now as a failed theory. But this is beside the point. 6:42 PM If you have a dimension big enough, we should be able to see it. So if you propose a new dimension, there has to be a way to keep it invisible to us. Brane theory does this. 6:43 PM In a larger spacetime continuum, there is (presumably) a brane that happens to have three spatial dimensions. On its 'surface' (I use the word in a technical sense), certain particles are trapped. 6:44 PM Thus, if I shine a flashlight, its photons can never leave the brane. This applies to all particles that physics has discovered: leptons, bosons, and gauge force particles. 6:45 PM At first, it seems to be just a weird way of describing reality, since we could be on a 3-brane and not even know it--it seems, at first, to be identical to living just in 3-space. 6:46 PM But it has a distinct difference: gravity is determined by the shape of space, not be intermediary particles. So gravity in a 3-brane in X-space is fundamentally different from just a 3-space. 6:47 PM In fact, if you determine the properties of gravity sufficiently, that will be the only way we now know of directly understanding the shape of spacetime beyone our brane. In this way, extra-dimensions can be as large as you want, and we still would not have found them already, since almost all of our methods of detection would use particles thatare trapped on the brane. 6:48 PM So far, I'm just repeating what brane theorists have been working on for the last ten years. They were a distinct minority until 2001 in the physics community because the superstring theorists were dominating the field. Dorek : hmm so it is less of an attempt at explaining other possible dimensions rather than an explanation for why we can't see more than 4 6:49 PM besides of course that there might be no more me: Well, it's a model for a universe that could exist, and that has ramifications that, if it were to exist, would be verifiable by experimentalists. 6:50 PM There are many such models that have been accepted and later rejected in physics. Dorek : oh i see me : One thing that goes against simple 3-space with no extra dimensions is that the standard model of physics has 30-something constants that we can't explain nor otherwise account for. 6:51 PM Many of these constants could be explained, if there were extra dimensions to account for the math. 6:52 PM The standard model is accepted as gospel because it works tirelessly: it predicts outcomes to an unprecedented degree of accuracy. But the standard model is just a chart of numbers: there's no explanation, for example, of why the numbers are as they are. 6:53 PM Using extra-dimensionality, theorists are trying to explain these numbers in terms of far fewer constants: string theory, for example, has only one constant, from which every other constant is derivable. 6:54 PM That's what made string theory so beautiful and enticing to many physicists, and it also explains why although year after year more and more evidence accumulates against stringtheory, the physicists still hang on to it, almost as a crutch. 6:55 PM Of course, in 2001, it turned out that string theory is mathematically equivalent to a specific kind of brane theory, and so since then everybody's been working on branes. But string theory limits itself to a very peculiar sort of brane theory, which I am not conversant enough in to go into detail about. 6:56 PM Anyway, I've tried to give a short, somewhat generalized description of brane theory as it stands today. 6:57 PM Obviously, there's much I didn't go into, such as the realization that with brane theory, the dramatic difference in power between the fundamental forces can be explained, and other ideas. But this is enough to start you onto where I had a thought, and explain what I've been working on lately. 6:58 PM So starting here, I'm going to be talking not about what others have done, but what I'm considering. As such, if you have questions, or if you notice inconsistencies, please let me know. 6:59 PM Symmetry has long been an important figure in physics. Symmetry across time, space, rotation, etc. are all fundamental to understanding what we already know. 7:00 PM So much so that when a new type of symmetry was discovered possible, many physicists actuively believe that it is in fact reality. 7:01 PM Supersymmetry was discovered as a possible concept in the eighties, and its predictions cannot be verified as true or false until the LHC comes online in 2008. Yet many, many physicists believe in it actively already. What I thought about was a new kind of symmetry. A dimensional symmetry. 7:02 PM We live in what appears to be 3-space, with three spatial dimensions. 7:03 PM If I wanted to be pedantic and describe something quite meaningless, I could instead say we live in 6 dimensions, but that there are three pairs of symmetric directions. Instead of left-right being a dimension in 3-space, I could instead say that there is left as a dimension in itself, and right as a dimension in itself: but that they are symmetric. 7:04 PM Specifically, when one increases, the other decreases, and by the same amount. Effectively, it is exactly the same as 3-space, but you get the idea, right? Dorek : ok 7:05 PM me: I'm sure many had this thought before, but didn't go anywhere with it, because it doesn't do anything different. But now we have brane theory. So a new thought arises. When you look at each of these 'half-dimensions', you notice certain peculiarites. First, they are direction-specific: in each case, they are always increasing. The slope is always positive when graphed versus time. 7:06 PM This is reminiscent of time as a dimension: it is also uni-directional. 7:07 PM So I thought: what if these half-dimensions are the true reality, and they're all perfectly simliar and symmetric. Yet time's counterpart happens to not be on this particular brane. 7:08 PM The idea is that we are actually in higher dimensional space, and time's symmetric counterpart is not on this brane. But the implication is strong: _this would explain why time is considered different from lateral dimensions_. 7:09 PM The idea is that it wouldn't matter what dimension you plot against, so long as you only plot against one single 'half-dimension', so a definite direction can be shown. Now that you get the basic idea of my premise, I'll explain the math of it, and show you how far I've gotten with it. 7:10 PM In gen rel, time is treated as a special dimension, and in every equation where other dimensions appear as variables, time always appears alongside c^2 and some other stuff. 7:11 PM Without this, the equations don't work. So I've started to work out combinations of variables such that we can rewrite x^2 + y^2 + z^2 + c^2t^2 as: 7:12 PM f(x1,x2)^2 + (f(y1,y2)^2 + .. etc. 7:13 PM The idea is to come up with a mathematically valid way of rewriting the equations such that each instance of a dimension can be written instead as a function of two dimensions that look similar to how time looks all on its own. 7:14 PM I admit that finding such would not be ironclad proof by any means, but if such a matematical expression exists, then it would at least allow the possibility of my idea to be true. 7:15 PM Once the math is found, then it will be easy to point out that my idea follows the rest of physics exactly in most every respect, while introducing a new symmetry, and it also would have an observable consequence. 7:17 PM If true, and time does have a counterpart, and if that symmetric relationship is identical to the relationship between lateral dimensions, then gravity must 'flow' toward those directions as well. 7:18 PM In other words, if you looked at gravity in a 5-space world with a 4-brane (spacetime), you'd see a peculiar effect of gravity that isn't possible unless we really are a brane in 5-space. 7:19 PM Similarly, if we looked at gravity in a 6-space with a 4-brane, you'd see a similar, but quantitiatively dfifferent peculiar effect of gravity. When the LHC comes online in 2008, we will be able to actually measure this peculiar effect. 7:20 PM Brane theorists today hope that the measurement (if it occurs at all) will correspond to the dozens upon dozens of different dimensionalities that are proposed today. Whichever it agrees with will be what physics has to rely on, because we have to follow what experiment tells us. String theorists are hoping, by the way, for evidence of 10 or 11 dimensions, because one of those is required by string theory. So here's the thing: 7:21 PM I want to work out the math on this, and quick, before the LHC comes online. Afterward will be too late. If it happens to be true (probably not, but whatever), then its strength as a theory depends on whether or not the resultsa are predicted before they are obtained. 7:22 PM I need to work out the quantitative peculiar effects before the LHC experimentally shows us what they are. 7:23 PM Presumably, the quantitative effects for my idea would be in-between the effects seen for predictions of a 5-space or a 6-space, because in my idea, there would actually be 5.5-space or 6.5 space, owing to the extra half dimension of time. But I don't know enough math to determine such effects yet. 7:24 PM Dorek : hey sorry my foot just hit the reset button accidentally me: No prob. 7:25 PM Dorek : the last thing you were saying is that you need to work this out before the experiment comes online me: I need to work out the quantitative peculiar effects before the LHC experimentally shows us what they are. Dorek: yes me: Presumably, the quantitative effects for my idea would be in-between the effects seen for predictions of a 5-space or a 6-space, because in my idea, there would actually be 5.5-space or 6.5 space, owing to the extra half dimension of time. But I don't know enough math to determine such effects yet. 7:26 PM Dorek: ok me: And it's pointless to even try if there is no way to rewrite currently accepted equations as functions of two 'half-dimensions'. Why go through all the work of finding out the quantitative predictions if the idea can't work in the first place? So I need to verify first that it's at least _possible_, in theory. 7:27 PM Only then would I start on working out the quantitative effects, in order to predict possible results that we may get in 2008. 7:28 PM me: The thing is: this idea could have occurred to any number of physicists already, yet they're not saying anything publicly. So either they haven't worked out the idea enough to make a prediction yet, or it's not even possible in theory, so they've discarded it. Or, I guess, as a distant possibility, I may have been the first to think of it again since brane theory developed. 7:29 PM Either way, I need to do a lot of work to get this done, and it's been what's preoccupied my time for the last week or so. Even if it's completely wrong in reality, if it's workable in theory, then it will be enough to actually publish in a journal. 7:31 PM At this stage, I'm just looking for ways to translate all the accepted equations involving dimensions into equations involving half-dimensions, such that at least one of the halves is similar to how time is treated in the equation. The problem is I can't use c, since it's in terms of space per time. So I have to create an analog of space per space, which sounds weird at first, but is perfectly doable. 7:32 PM It's just that no one's ever done it before. At least not that I've researched. So... Any comments? Dorek: hmm 7:33 PM i understand what you are seeing 7:34 PM but unfortunately my background in physics and mathematics are not good enough to grasp the idea of putting the concept into mathematical formulas 7:35 PM i guess i would first need to know the current accepted formulas 7:36 PM me : Not counting the math, then, do you feel like the idea is conceptually sound? No glaring difficulties that I haven't noticed? 7:38 PM If I were to send you a list of accepted formulas involving dimensions, would you be interested in looking at them thoroughly enough to where you could help with my project? I haven't talked to anyone else about this yet... Dorek: no, in fact when you first expressed time as being a simple half-dimension that is located outside the dimensions that are located fully within our space it seemed pretty ingenious 7:39 PM if i understood what you were saying correctly sure i'd help you me: That sounds great. I was hoping that the first time I told someone about this, I'd get a positive response. 7:40 PM I was afraid to go to an actual physicist first, because I hadn't done any of the math yet, and they could easily pre-empt my idea. Dorek: if you send me the formulas, i'll study them me: But if you're willing to slog through the math, I'd really like to coauthor a paper with you. Dorek: also, if you could give me any material that would catch me up to you, in terms of physics and possibly math i'd like to look at that as well me: Sure... Dorek: books, or anything 7:41 PM me: For a historical treatment of brane thoery from one of the physicists that worked on during the surperstring years, written in a good style, I might recommend... hold on, I forgot the name of it. one sec. 7:45 PM Warped Passages by Lisa randall, published 2005. 7:47 PM For a broader view, so you can get to know physics from a philosophy of science point of view, I recommend: The trouble with Physics, by Lee Smolin, 2006. 7:48 PM These are not textbooks, so you should have little difficulty getting through them. 7:49 PM As for explaining the math, what I'll do is send you a collection of accepted equations that involve dimensions, and for each one, I'll tell you where it's from, and what it means. 7:50 PM All that has to be done with them is figure out a way to rewrite them so that every dimension term is separated as a function of two half-dimension terms that are inversely proportional to one another. 7:51 PM AND at least one of these half-dimensions must look similar to how the time dimension is treated in that same equation, so we can make the argument that we could restructure the whole equation in terms of any half-dimension we so chose, as long as it's complementary dimension is not in this brane. 7:53 PM You know enough math to realize that there are probably an infinite number of ways to restructure an equation in terms of whatever the hell you want, but some restructuring can't be done, like arithmetic with infinity, or division by zero or some other such thing. And since this involves inverse proportionality, I'm mainly worried about avoiding division by zero in the restructuring. 7:55 PM Once that's accomplished, the next part will be the really hard part: we'll have to make quantitative predictions using methods that I don't yet understand that brane theorists are currentlyutilizing to make their predictions. 7:56 PM But once we've shown that it can be done, I think that will be enough motivation to go out there and start learning what's needed to do that next step. And even if it turns out to be nothing more than a neat mathematical trick, it'll still be a fun and interesting way to spend our free time. (Or at least that's how I view it.) 7:57 PM Dorek: it sounds like quite a task 7:58 PM but i've been recently thinking that i've not been utilizing my free time productively enough i'll read up on the material you send, as well as the two books i may need more than that, but i'll start with what you given 7:59 PM me : Excellent. I'll be sending along those equations soon; I'd rather not have to type them in, and I don't have access to a scanner, so I'll do go back to my original sources to find a few webpages that will give them to you. I'll make sure to make it explicit where on the pages they'll be located. 8:01 PM Hopefully, the local library may carry those two books; if not, I'm sure you can find them at B&N, if you care to sit in the cafe while reading, or you might just buy them altogether. Dorek: awesome me: At worst, you could use an intelibrary loan. Dorek: also, if you could cut paste and email me the text of this conversation i lost half me: You can see the text in chats, on the bar on the left side of the screen. Dorek: i was going to go to bn tomorrow afternoon anyways

Welcome to the Weblog of Eric Herboso

The start of a new blog is always a momentous occasion for me, but I think that this time it is even more special. Because along with starting this new blog, I am starting my new life.
I suppose I should introduce myself, since this is my first entry. I always have problems with self-description ( I get flashbacks of Gödelian-self reference), but I suppose I can quote a short essay I wrote back in 2005. It does the job fairly well, I think.

At heart, I am a philosophy person with a pronounced bent toward mathematics and logic in general. Yet I possess a strong sense of right and wrong that is not justified, but only felt. It is this moral sense that predominately guides how I live my life.
I also have a strong passion for writing. It is only through the written word that I am fully able to best express myself; due to a slight speech impediment and an infamous knack for forgetting suitable synonyms unless I am seated w/ a pen in my hand, I will never be much of a speaker, however well I may write speeches.
Despite these quirks, I remain a hopeless romantic--a lover of love itself--constantly looking forward to the day when my hopelessness will be disproved by counterexample.
I am vegetarian, with aspirations toward veganism; I am a fervent pacifist, with ideals far from what is practical in today's world; I am socially liberal, with leanings toward a Tolstoy-style anarcho-socialism; I am a determined skepticist, a strict agnostic, and a beleaguered instrumentalist; I am argumentative, painfully outspoken, and dreadfully afraid that my subconsciousness is but temporarily hiding a closet capitalist nature, fully bent on rugged individualism and the justice of the capable serving above and without the worthless.
I am Eric Herboso. I am me, and no other. I am.

And with that out of the way, I'm looking forward to a productive blog full of experiences and thoughts, rants and teachings. I hope you'll join me for the ride.

55 Best Ways To Advertise Your Website

This entry was originally posted on the omnistaretools.com blog. It is reposted here for reference only.

55 Best Ways To Advertise Your Website

There are lots of great ways to promote your website, but it always helps to have a handy list of topics you can get ideas from. That’s why we’ve compiled this always-growing website promotion tips page. Hopefully it will get you motivated to do one or two small things that you haven’t thought of before to get your site more and more traffic over time.

So, without further ado, here’re a few website promotion tips to give you the ideas you’ll need to increase that all-important traffic.

1. Start an Affiliate Program

I am always amazed at how many businesses go without an affiliate program. Really, it is completely beyond me as to why a business would think that using affiliates would ever be a bad thing. Just think of all the money you spend on advertising, and consider that you pay for ads whether or not anyone responds to them. The difference with affiliates is that you only pay for this kind of ad when you actually get a sale from it. Affiliate ‘advertising’ is quite literally the best advertising you can spend money on for your business. The real reason why most businesses haven’t caught on to the whole affiliate idea yet is not because the idea is flawed, but instead because affiliate technology has traditionally been overcomplicated and difficult to manage. Thankfully, we here at Omnistar realized this a long while back, and created OSI Affiliate as the most user-friendly affiliate software available on the internet. With its powerful features and easy-to-understand interface, it proves itself time and time again. After all, we use it ourselves every single day. Watch this video to see how easy it is to create an affiliate program for your business.

2. Publish An Article

Write a good article in your niche and e-mail bloggers in that niche to let them know. You’ll be surprised at how many may link to you. Just make sure your article is good, or you may get some bad press. (On the other hand, even bad press still ups your pagerank, unless they link with a nofollow tag. But really, who takes the time to do that?)

3. Make a Sig Link

Make sure your signature has a link to your site, whether it’s your email sig, forum sig, or even just a chat profile. (This includes any posts you make in Yahoo! or Google groups.)

4. Post in Newsgroups

Post in Yahoo! or Google groups. Just don’t get addicted to it, or you may never finish going through the rest of these suggestions.

5. Go Web 2.0 with Social Bookmarking Sites

Submit your best pages on major social bookmarking sites like digg and stumbleupon. Just be aware that while social bookmarking sites tend to give high traffic, they usually don’t convert that well, so only submit content that you know is good enough to catch at least a few visitors onto your rss feed.

6. Be Active in the Blogosphere

Comment on blogs! Most bloggers love to see new comments, and if you comment on their blog with a link back to your blog, they’ll be sure to return the favor. (If you’ve got a good eye for which blog topics might support a large audience, you may want to check the upcoming section in digg for blog posts that are about to receive a lot of traffic.)

7. Be In the Blogosphere

That reminds me: start a blog. Having a blog for your site is a great way to train yourself to create new content on a regular basis, and you can later mine your old blog entries for ideas that you can turn into fully-fledged articles for your site. (Just remember not to duplicate your own content!)

8. Be Opinionated

If you notice a blog entry or forum topic where the majority opinion seems to be wrong, be very opinionated on letting them know that you hold an opposite opinion. You may get a few links back saying that you’re wrong. (In fact, why not just hold the opposite opinion every time, even if they’re technically right? In the SEO world, any link back is a good link back.)

9. Answer a Question

Answer some questions in your niche on Yahoo! Answers. Just keep in mind that answering a few questions in depth is much better than giving a lot of single paragraph answers. It’s also best to answer recent questions, since you have a better chance of being voted up that way.

10. Make a Creative 404 Page

Make your 404 page really useful by including links to your most popular content. More than likely the user was looking for this content anyway, and, even if not, they may very well become interested in it by seeing a teaser line when they hit your 404 error page.

11. Tempt Fate with Opt-In Forms

Consider trading links with a company in a similar industry that doesn’t compete with you. Better yet, if you can stomach it, experiment with the idea of trading the creation of a small opt-in form on each of your confirmation pages. That way anytime someone buys from this other company, the purchaser will have the option to sign up for your newsletter, or something else equally innocuous. The drawback being, of course, that you will have to submit your customers into dealing with the dreaded opt-in form on your confirmation page. You might consider minimizing the negative reaction by putting the opt-in form on the very final page, so nothing is lost if the user just closes the window at that point.

12. Review Products

Do a review column in your blog where you review products or companies on a bi-weekly basis. If your review is positive, e-mail the company in question and ask to be featured in their press section. But don’t forget that having nothing but positive reviews is a big turn off for most readers, so mix it up a bit.

13. Publish Articles (part 2)

Compose articles in your niche and submit them to article directories. Just be sure to make the articles you submit top-notch; otherwise you’ll have info dispersed on other sites under your name with no way of correcting any errors in the article. And remember not to duplicate content!

14. Go Public with a Press Release

Write a newsworthy press release and submit it to PRWeb. If it’s genuinely newsworthy, the release may get picked up all over the place.

15. When All Else Fails, Just Pay for Traffic

Use payperclick services (like adwords, adcenter, ysm) to get traffic. But make sure the keywords you sign up for are worth the cost. Just because a keyword costs a lot doesn’t mean it’s a good value—and it similarly doesn’t mean anything if the keyword costs very little. Do a bit of research on which keywords are worthwhile before going the payperclick route. But once you’ve found the right keyword combinations, it can be a good source of supplemental incoming traffic.

16. Start an RSS Feed

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a great way to get subscribers to see new content on an ongoing basis. Once you have an RSS feed, subscribing is easy for web visitors, and generally gets a stronger sign up ratio than email subscriptions. Just make sure to advertise your feed in a good place, so it’s easy to subscribe to. (If you’re looking for a good syndication service, try Y! Pipes.)

17. Start a Mailing List

While getting people to signup for an email newsletter is generally more difficult than getting them to subscribe to an RSS feed, the extra difficulty means that when you do get subscribers, they’re generally good targets for conversion. Just keep in mind that email newsletters have specific laws that pertain to them, and noncompliance can land you in deep trouble. Thankfully, if you use Omnistar Mailer for sending your newsletter, we offer a free ebook that details the specifics on how to market with emails the right way: Email Marketing for Beginners.

18. Include a Bookmark-This-Page Link

Reminding your visitors to bookmark your page is a great way to make sure they come back in case they leave prematurely. Of course, if they’re anything like me, then they have a gazillion bookmarked sites—so make sure to make your bookmark stand out with a well written title and a good favicon.

19. Create a Great Favicon

A good favicon image accomplishes so very much: it increases brand awareness, makes your site stand out from the crowd, and gives you that street cred that comes along with every well-made favicon file. Just don’t make it animated gif style—you may think it makes you stand out even more, but users have been known to delete a bookmark or close a tab solely because of an animated favicon. Just don’t do it.

20. Submit Your Site to Internet Directories

Internet Directories are an excellent way to get high quality linkbacks with just a little investment of time. Thankfully, we here at Omnistar recognize this, and so we’ve compiled a list of the best internet directories to be listed in, each sorted by pagerank. If you’re just starting out, I’d recommend concentrating on the free ones first.

21. Submit Your Blog to Blog Directories

The great thing about blogs is that you can submit them for links both in site directories AND blog directories. Meaning you get twice the linkbacks! Unfortunately, this also means you’ll have to actually submit them twice as many times as your main site. Believe me when I say that it gets pretty tiring around the thirtieth submission.

22. Advertise on Craigslist

If you haven’t heard of craigslist, then it’s time you got out from behind that rock you’ve been sleeping under since the twentieth century. You can publicize your site on craigslist for free—but it’s only worthwhile if you make your posts interesting enough to go viral. A well written craigslist ad consists of a catchy title, a funny and/or mock-serious body, and a well-keyworded link back to your site. But whatever you do, don’t spam with pointless ads, because you just won’t get a return that’s worth your time.

23. Use a Tell-a-Friend Script

By including a ‘tell-a-friend’ link on your site, every visitor you get will potentially advertise your site to a few of their friends. And then each of those may in turn tell their friends, and so on and so forth. This is actually a pretty powerful tool, especially if you use software that follows up the note with a well designed marketing campaign.

24. Submit Your RSS to Feed Directories

You thought I’d forget about this one, didn’t you? I guess I fooled you by making 21 and 22 on non-directory topics. In fact, now that I’m really thinking about it, number 24 should probably be about just submitting to whatever directory you see, for whatever reason.

25. Submit to Whatever Directory You See, For Whatever Reason

In other words, if you sell widgets, make sure you’re listed in the widgets directory. And also the doodad directory, if you can link doodads to widgets in some believable manner in the short description you provide for your link. Remember: every link is a good link.

26. Teach a Class

No, really. If you possess a higher education degree of any kind, you can probably find a part time position teaching a night class at your local community college. It won’t pay very well, but if you can invest in teaching on night a week, it will really help to get your name out in the local community. Colleges love to have teachers who run real businesses because the fact that you run a business at all is enough to legitimize you as an expert in whatever field you’re in. And since most of your students will be adults working in the business world that are interested in taking the class you’re qualified to teach, you will be making contacts left and right. Plus think of the resume building opportunity—when you’re trying to sell yourself to potential clients, it never hurts for them to conveniently notice that you’ve actually taught classes in the field they want to hire you for. You just can’t lose with this one.

27. Create a Cartoon Mascot

Cartoon mascots can be great when they’re used in an appropriate setting. Cartoons attract all kinds of people (not just kids), and studies have shown that the eye tends to gravitate toward cartoon characters more often than simple logos. Of course, not everyone is agreed that that is a good thing; some people make the point that a residual background logo that doesn’t attract attention is more appropriate for your main website, since you’d really rather have readers checking out your content. But others argue that an eye-catching logo is essential to building brand, and more than makes up for the fact that it takes viewers eyes away from content temporarily. Plus, if your visitor happens to have a kid in the vicinity, the child may prevent the user from clicking away from your page too quickly. Of course, this effect will be minimal, but every bit helps, right?

28. Host a Game w/ Your Mascot

Games drive traffic; that’s just a fact. You can actually get a pretty good game made with minimal investment by holding a contest for people to come up with the best game that includes your cartoon mascot. Just make sure to advertise the contest on a site where gaming programmers visit often, and you should get lots of entrants. Right now, flash turret defense games are all the rage, so you may want to try one of those, if it’s appropriate for your business. Oh, and don’t forget to submit your game to game directory sites when you’re finished.

29. Sell on eBay

Selling on eBay not only gets you an additional avenue to hawk your wares, but also means you get lots of additional incoming links for linkback purposes. Of course, only your profile page will be a permanent page, but if you are able to consistently make sales via eBay as well, then keeping some extra links back to your site from there can also work really well for you. eBay is one of the sites that are spidered by google multiple times each day, so you can always be sure that your links will count toward your pagerank. (Not to mention the whole new audience you’ll reach via eBay!)

30. Use Facebook & MySpace

Creating a MySpace and Facebook account can do good things for your business, but be careful. A badly run MySpace page can be a magnet for people to leave negative feedback, and experience has shown that the creation of a Facebook account is a permanent procedure that you really can’t ever take back. Nevertheless, if you can oversee these accounts to make sure they’re always a positive thing for your site, the linkback as well as traffic generation can be quite useful.

31. Create a Facebook App

While we’re talking about social media sites, I can’t neglect the idea that creating a good facebook application can easily go viral. But I must stress that it MUST be well made. If you can manage it, you might be interested in noticing that you can run the application on your site as well. The best apps do something unique for the user and includes high levels of interactivity.

32. Use Business Cards Aggressively

If you don’t have at least ten business cards in your wallet right this very second then you are seriously lacking in your marketing efforts. But if this is the case, don’t opine; instead, look at it as an opportunity, because you’ll be able to see dramatic returns just from getting well-designed business cards made and passing them out anytime you go anywhere. And I don’t just mean at trade events; if you have a really good card made up, then handing out cards will turn from a chore to a conversation starter. And after all, that’s what you really need from a business card. Just don’t forget to put your website address on them.

33. Cross-Promote Your Pages

The bald advertisement for one of our products in tip #32 serves dual purposes: not just is OSI Affiliate a great way to promote your site, but also you should always remember to promote your sites on other sites you control. Cross-promotion can be very powerful, since most people who visit one part of your site will likely never see the other parts. By making sure that every page you run gives links to other pages that offer content a reader would likely be interested in, you will get high-conversion leads. After all, since they came to the page from another of your pages, they already trust you as a source, plus they’re directly interested in the page that was linked. Think about it: maybe only a small percentage of you actually clicked on the link to our OSI Affiliate. But of those who did, the vast majority probably went on to purchase the software. The moral here is that targeted advertising is important.

34. Purchase Misspelled Domains

If you have a few main competitors in your niche that are doing well, consider purchasing misspellings of their domain name and having it redirect to your site. This does not mean that you should pretend that you are that other company—that would be quite illegal. But it does mean that you’ll get hits from people who can’t quite spell rite. This technique is especially useful if you can grab the ‘.com’ version of a competitor’s ‘.net’ (or other) address. If you want to know which misspellings are the most common, you may want to check out the stats on how many google searches were made for certain misspellings, and use it as the basis for an educated guess on which misspellings were most common in people’s address bars.

35. Review a Book

Or anything else for that matter. A well written Amazon review will be prominently placed on a moderately high pagerank site, and a strategically placed link back to your website can do wonders for you. If you need some ideas on how to write a good review, see what others have done for a bic pen or a gallon of milk.

36. Advertise on Bulletin Board Sites

Find boards where individuals who fit into your target market congregate. These are the perfect place to advertise your site, just make sure you aren't violating the site's spam policies. An especially effective technique is posting discount codes or special offers for the board members to use.

37. Donate time or resources

Charities are a great way to help promote your site, simply provide them with services and they will be able to help you, with a mention in their mailer or a link on their site. This kind of promotion is invaluable.

38. Offer web appliations

Build small web tools for your customers, these applications will keep them coming back to your site. This content can also get you listed on indexes of web apps.

39. Develop mobile applications

The advent of the iPhone and iPod touch have made developing applications for mobile platforms a booming business. You can bring in traffic by making apps specifically for mobile users, guaranteeing that traffic keeps comming back to use your product.

40. Partner with other sites

Synergy in advertising is important, and by partnering with another site to offer your services in tandem, you can gain access to each other's customer base, as well as benefiting from the buzz that comes with a partnership. These special deals can help put your product in front of new customers, virtually the best kind of advertising you can get.

41. Go Viral

Viral marketing is popular for a reason, by comming up with clever ways to get your customers interested in your product you reap the benefit of free advertising. This means participating in contests that drive traffic, giving things away, and usually trying to interact with your customers, allowing them to participate.

42. Think Locally

While the convenience of the web allows you to do business arround the world, your local chamber of commerce and other organizations can help drum up local business for your site. These relationships can be really helpful because it tends to also lead to networking with your peers in the area.

43. Update Regularly

Using blogs and podcasts to drum of traffic only works if customers are subscribing, and that means regular updates. How often? You usually want to shoot for weekly podcasts and daily or as close to daily as possible for blogs. Each post doesn't have to be long, but you need to be providing regular content, as that is what the typical subscriber is looking for.

44. Sell Clever Swag

No matter what your business does, it likely will benefit from selling gear with your logo on it. The number of sites selling articles of clothing and other accessories has multiplied greatly, and you can now easily sell your own gear through their sites, with no work besides designing the logo on your end. Cafepress.com is one such example. By offering products with a clever tag line you can promote your site, make a little money, and benefit from free advertising anywhere that product is worn.

45. Hire a Marketing Specialist

In the end, it sometimes takes a professional to take your site to the next level. As your company grows, marketing becomes more important, so you may want to hire someone with marketing knowhow to work solely on improving traffic, allowing you to improve your content. After all, your site has a lot more to it than just how you get visitors.

46. Publish to News Services

There are a lot of sites that want content without generating it themselves, which means sites like ezinearticles.com can provide you with an avenue to provide your content to other sites and recieve links back in return.

47. Join a trade group

Collaborate with people running sites in the same field, advertise with each other, and network to provide customers with better service. Trade groups provide a great opportunity to improve your site!

48. Offer special deals to your customers

You can get great advertising out of your customers by giving them benefits for bringing in new customers. You can also bring in returning business by offering special discounts.

49. Optimize your site for search engines

Search Engine Optimization or SEO has become one of the quickest and easiest ways to drive traffic to your site. Most web browsers are using search engines to find websites. If you focus on optimizing small things on your site, like using keywords and meta tags properly, you can notice a fast improvement in your rank on sites like Google and Yahoo!

50. Hire an SEO specialist

Once you have exhausted your own knowledge of SEO, it may be necessary to hire a specialist who can advise you on how to proceed with your site's search engine needs. They tend to have a greater knowledge of details that will help get your site higher.

51. Break a Record

It may seem like a gimic, and it is, but breaking a world record of some kind is a great way to get your website traffic. News agencies will pick up a quirky story about a site going for an obscure record, and even if you fail you get the benefit of press.

52. Ask your customers

Your customers know one thing, what they want, so get their feedback about what would bring them back. Customer feedback is guaranteed to give you ideas.

53. Look for niche markets

Targeting small groups with dedicated members is a great way to increase your site's traffic. Find a group you would like to market to, read other sites associated with them, then create content aimed at these users and promote it on their sites. This is a great way to expand as well.

In Conclusion…

Hopefully these ideas have given you the impetus you need to get started on promoting your site. If you have a great idea that we don’t have listed here, why not let us know? If it’s useful and/or funny enough, it may just make it in. (With a link back to your site as compensation for contributing, to boot!)

Dr. Shawn Allin

I regret to inform the community that Dr. Shawn Allin was found unconscious in his office this morning and was taken to Spring Hill Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

All of us who loved Shawn - his parents, family members, colleagues and students - mourn the loss of this superb teacher who was truly a man for others.

Our community will gather for a memorial service at 5:00 p.m. today in St. Joseph Chapel, followed by a gathering in the Cloister at approximately 5:30 p.m. for those who wish to share support.

Greg Lucey, SJ
President
Spring Hill College

Dr. Allin was the first friend I made at Spring Hill College.  I was a somewhat older incoming freshman; at 21, I was still too young to be considered an 'adult' student, and far too old to really fit in with the other freshmen.

My very first class was General Chemistry, with Dr. Shawn Allin.  He was new to Spring Hill then, as was I, and the two of us hit it off immediately.  On the very first day, he sent me home with two of his books: a pop science by John Gribbin and a collection of SciAm articles by Stephen Jay Gould.  I stayed up half the night reading both of them, and returned them first thing the next morning.  I still remember the smile he gave me then: "Eric," he started, in his distinct Canadian accent, "I anticipate this will be the start of a great friendship."

More than any other teacher at Spring Hill, Shawn gave me guidance.  He introduced me to a favorite hobby of his: paleontology; and I subsequently spent a summer in the Dakota badlands digging up trike bones in the gumbo buttes.  When I started straying from science (physics and math was my thing back then) and turning toward philosophy, he was there for me.  He helped me adjust to the idea of keeping true to what I felt drawn toward, and argued philosophy of science with me a number of times.

Shawn went through a lot.  His divorce shocked me; Lynn was a common sight on campus, as she was getting an undergraduate degree.  That she left him immediately after graduating...  .:sigh:.  One cannot help but to wonder if she stayed with him near the end just to get the free tuition.  And finding out that he was leaving Spring Hill at the same time as I... ...

There is a part of me that wishes to say that I hope his death was the path he chose, rather than the path that some random occurence took him in.  I know this sounds strange, but the part of me that wishes to share that thought is somehow more significant than all the other parts of me put together.

Dr Allin was a great teacher.  Shawn was a great friend.  Maybe it was not premeditated.  Maybe it was.  I cannot say for sure.  But if it was...  I think there is some part of me that somewhat understands why he chose as he did.

I will miss you, Shawn.  Thank you for all you ever did for me.

Note: A follow-up to this was posted in March 2021.