This is just a quick correction from a post I made the other day.  I made a post “What’s Google up to Now?” on December 28th.  It was 3:43 in the morning when I posted it.  I was suffering from a lack of sleep mixed in with just not thinking before I posted.  Google has nothing to with the quick links around the Google search bar seen in the below image.

I installed an SEO for Firefox extension months ago.  I never thought it worked, but I had it on the other day (Accidently, since I never knew how to work it in the first place.) while I was searching on Google.  I automaticly thought that Google supplied the quick links.  I was also thinking why would Google link out to other sites like Overture.  But I let common sense go down the drain and made that post.  Someone left a comment correcting me.  I started to check out what he said and he is totally right.  It’s the SEO for Firefox extension that gives you these sweet quick links for SEO purposes.  You can find the extension here.  Sorry, for the mistake.  Carry on with life as you were.

Do you ever know something for a long time, but then one day you really get the revelation of how great the little bit of knowledge is?  This happens to me a lot.  There are things that I’ve known about for years, but then I see how I can apply this knowledge to my life and it’s like I rediscovered this great idea.  Do you know what I’m saying?

The other week when I built my pro audio directory, I started seeing all these free PHPLD templates that were sponsored by some well known directories.  I first saw this same concept years ago on a web template site, but it just hit me how beneficial it would be for me to do this.  This particular web template site was giving away free templates, but the kicker was you had to keep their link on the bottom of the template.  If you are talented in design you could always create free templates and do the same, leave your link on the bottom of the template.  Having that link on the free templates can help build your PR and not to mention help get you ranked in the serps if you are using the correct keywords in your anchor text.

This same concept can work with articles.  If you are good at writting articles, you can give them away for free (or charge a small fee for them), but then again leave the links in the article.  This would be very successful especially if you didn’t have any duplicates.  It would be hard work, but it’s an idea.

Really, this concept can be used with just about anything.  You can have your link under a real nice web tool that you developed and give it away for free.  Even outside of giving things away for free that has your link on it.  How about just being nice and linking out to someone out of the kindness of your heart?  Some people will link back to you because of it or repay you in some sort of way in the future.

I just noticed this today.

I don’t know how long Google has had these quick links available under the search bar. But I think the coolest one is the view bids tool. You can check to see what people are paying for their keywords. This can be very helpful if you are trying to make money with Adsense. It can give you a better idea what to blog more about.  I know there was a way to view bids before, but it wasn’t this accessible.  Good move Google!

I guess there is a little game of tag going around with a small group of bloggers. Chris, at Nailsblog.com tagged me. Basicly, how this game of tag works is if you get tagged, you have to write a post about 5 things that people may not know about you. Then you have to tag 5 other people with blogs.

Here are 5 things that you may not know about me.

1. I used to be into martial arts. The style that I was in was a mix of Kempo and Jujitsu. I was very close to earning my black belt, but then I moved away to a different city and have never got into martial arts since.

2. I used to work on a huge pig farm in southern Illinois. I actually liked that job.
3. I love to play Scrabble with my wife even though she beats me nearly every time. I just keeping coming back for more.
4. Give me a microphone in front of a ton of kids and become a nut.

5. I can make siren noises like the guy on Police Academy.

6. (I’m not suppose to give you 6, but I’ll give you 6 just for fun.) I can back a bus up into a very tight spot, but don’t ever ask me to pull forward in a plain parking spot in GEO Metro. I learned how to back up buses to tiny shoots in my pig farming days. We had buses with no seats. This is how we transported the pigs from place to place on the farm.

I’m tagging God’s Real, YFS1, Jimmylee, Merchant Account Services, and well, I can’t think of a a fifth person. Everyone I wanted to be number 5 have already been tagged. If you want me to tag you, be the first person to comment to this post and I’ll tag you.

Okay, Pilkster commented first.  Tag…  You’re it.

Here’s a tip for newbies who are starting an ecommerce site, go dynamic. There are basicly two kinds of sites static and dynamic. Static sites are sites that are based on HTML. Ediiting a static site usually takes more time. Dynamic sites are coded with a programming languages like PHP, ASP, Cold Fusion etc. Dynamic sites can be editted very easily. Take Webpuffs for example, it is PHP driven. If I want to edit the top portion of my website, also known as the header, all I have to do is edit the header.php file. This makes changes to the header on every page not just my home page. If I want to edit the navigation on the right, all I have to do is edit the sidebar.php file. And again, this change is seen on all the pages where my navigation is shown. If I wanted to edit my header on an HTML driven site, I would have to go to each individual page to make the change. It can be a pain if you have a lot of pages to edit.

Going dynamic is something I failed to do when I first started out. My site that makes the most money is a straight html site. I started it in 2004 when I had very little knowledge of even HTML. I wish I would have created a dynamic site with PHP. In the last year and a half, I’ve finally developed enough understanding of PHP be to create a basic PHP driven site from scratch. It seems like nearly every year the prices to our products change so I have to go to each individual page and change the prices. If I add new products to the site, I have first of all create the new page, and then add a link to the page in the navigation on every single page. It can be quite time consuming. My advice to you newbies is go dynamic even if it takes you longer to get going.  In the long run, it will save you time.  Besides, there is so much open source stuff out there like Zen Cart and osCommerce to make life even easier for you.

Merry Christmas to you all. Here’s those pics from my outreaches I was talking about maybe I will get a chance to put more up later.  I got to get a DVD-ROM here at home.