Niche mini sites are one of the best methods to make money online the web. I have said this before, find a product you like, blue bird feeders, and start building the site. I found that blog comments are one of the top ways to building links for niche minisites. Your blog comment name should have the words “blue bird feeders” which will have a hyper link embedded. This is called a anchor text. The keyword anchor text is a valuable search engine optimizing tool when used correctly. Not only does it benefit the search engines it also helps web visitors understand what the web page link is about. Try to post comments on a variety of blogs. If you find blogs related to your minisite you will create traffic as well as backlinks. These backlinks will move you up in search engine rank placement (SERP). Try to build a rapoite with your favorite blog owners and this may lead to a feature. Make Money Online and keep link building, goodluck.

Someone asked me if forums signatures were good for link building and gaining SERP. The answer is yes. Forum links are great at building links and creating traffic. Forums get indexed pretty quickly by Google’s web crawlers (spiders). To get the most out of your forum links follow these tips. Anchor text is very important when it comes to search engine optimization. Use a keyword anchor text in your signature. If your website is about “bird feeders” then your forum signature should have the words “bird feeder” with a hyper link embedded. The main mistake webmaster make is using words like “click here”, “here”, “go here”, etc. Your keyword anchor text should always be an accurate description of web page it’s linked to. The keyword anchor text is a valuable search engine optimizing tool when used correctly. Not only does it benefit the search engines it also helps web visitors understand what the web page link is about. Try to post comments in a variety of forums and not just one. It is better to have 10 links from 100 forums than to have 1000 links from 1 forum. I see this mistake quite often. A person stays in one forum and will have 10,000 posts and then make a statement like “I have 10,000 posts and have not moved up in search engine rank…what to do? The obvious answer to the question is to quit posting in that forum and find another 100. Google will only give weight to about 20 forum signature links. My advice is post until you reach 100 comments then move to another forum. Here is the guideline, find ten forums and start posting 10 links in each one for 10 days which equals 100 links per day and 1,000 links in ten days with about 200 quality backlinks. Now here is the easy part. Find 10 more forums and repeat. In 4 months you will have over 10,000 key word anchor text links in over 100 sites. If you follow the suggestions on forum posting you will catapult yourself in the rankings of Google and Yahoo.

The economy is falling into a deeper recession. The older generation in my area has started growing all their food as they did in their childhood. Most Americans are paying down debt and started saving again. Saving for the future is a good thing. The best way to supplement your income is with a website. Websites have very little overhead and the profits can be immense. Pick a topic you love and start building content. As the content grows so will the traffic. A great hosting company to get started with is bluehost. Blue host with Google adsense can increase your income to thousands each month. Don’t wait sign up today.

Yahoo investor urges board compromise with Icahn
By Anupreeta Das

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Dissident Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) investor Eric Jackson urged fellow shareholders on Monday to vote for a board comprising five existing directors and four nominees from billionaire investor Carl Icahn’s slate.

Jackson, who leads a group of 146 investors holding 3.2 million Yahoo shares, said that, while he supported Icahn fully, he recognized that major shareholders may not. So he proposed a “third option” to create a new board that is more responsive to shareholders’ concerns.

Icahn, who owns more than 4 percent of Yahoo, launched a proxy battle in May to replace the Web pioneer’s board in the wake of Microsoft Corp’s (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) failed effort to acquire the company.

“Neither side running for election can guarantee that Microsoft will ever come back to the table with an offer for Yahoo,” Jackson said in a statement first published on TheStreet.com. “We must accept that reality and select a board to do the best job in the current situation (even as distasteful as the situation is).

“I want Icahn to win outright, but I am putting forward this “Third Option” because I fear several large shareholders will worry about the operational abilities of Icahn and his team.”

Jackson said his move was aimed at major Yahoo shareholders, including Capital Research, Legg Mason and Vanguard, as well as proxy advisory firms such as RiskMetrics and Glass Lewis. (Click on tinyurl.com/5qz5cz for more details.)

Last Thursday oil prices increased $5.50 per barrel in one day. Last Friday marked the biggest single-day surge in oil price history, rocketing $11 more to $138 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In just two days, oil costs increased 13 percent.

Average Americans are literally driving to the poor house on financial fumes. With gas at more than $4 per gallon, roughly two cars in every household, and the average annual gas usage at 700 gallons, you do the math. Americans are being forced to use their hard-earned money that once put food in their stomachs to now put petroleum into their tanks, but to drive the exact same distances they drove a decade ago for four-to-five times the price.

As oil and gas prices skyrocket, Congress continues to play the blame game. In April 2006, with the Democrats poised to take over Congress with Nancy Pelosi at the helm, she released a statement saying, “With skyrocketing gas prices, it is clear that the American people can no longer afford the Republican Rubber Stamp Congress.” She followed that with the commitment, “Democrats have a common sense plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices by cracking down on price gouging.” So has the Democrat’s commonsense plan worked? Average gas prices were about $2.50 a gallon at the time. Now they’re $4 a gallon and rising. Some crack-down plan.

Meanwhile, in the Senate, they are going to discuss this week a cap-and-trade system, something that Obama and MCain both support. The main problem is official estimates say that it will increase gas by another $1.50 a gallon. Or as Newt Gringrich said in an interview recently with Glenn Beck, “It should be called ‘Raise prices and destroy jobs’ because that’s what it will do. It’s going to raise the price of gasoline; it’s going to raise the price of diesel fuel for truckers. It’s going to raise the price of aviation fuel for an already ailing airline industry. It’s going to raise the price of heating oil. It’s going to raise the price of natural gas, and it’s going to raise the price of coal.”

From the steady decline in the value of our dollar, to trade deficits and oil dependency, our sovereignty is being sold out from underneath us. Might I remind the federal government what one of their original and primary charges is: to protect the American public from the tyranny of foreign powers – which is exactly what is happening through others’ financial rule over us. It is sucking the life out of our economy. And Congress is virtually standing by and watching it happen.

Look at the energy chaos that our government has allowed. While we remain at the mercy of oil companies, cartels and OPEC, our government has tied the hands of states and citizens to tap even temporary energy relief from our own land. Here are a few key vistas on the oil and energy landscape at the moment:

Though we have more oil in the shale of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming than combined in the Middle East (800 billion barrels), liberals and environmentalists have made it illegal to touch it.
It’s illegal to drill in northern Alaska (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge), or off the coasts of Florida or California.
Oil fields in Colorado are being shut down.
We won’t develop shale oil fields in the Western states
It’s illegal to explore in the Atlantic.
It’s illegal to explore in the Pacific
It’s illegal to explore in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico
We’re not receiving any more leases to drill in the Gulf of Mexico, while China, Venezuela and Cuba are.
We haven’t built an oil refinery in 25 years and reduced in half those we have
There’s enough natural gas beneath America (406 trillion cube feet) to heat every home in America for the next 150 years, but we can’t tap it all.
We have the largest supply of coal in the world, but it’s Germany who is planning to build 27 coal-fired electrical plants by 2020.
American airlines are in danger of going out of business.
American truckers are being stranded on the sides of the road.
American commuters are going bankrupt trying to travel back and forth to work, and are being forced to work locally for lower wages.
If there isn’t a conspiracy going on here, someone needs to make a movie about one!

Bill Clinton once said, “We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse emissions because we’ve got to save the planet for our grandchildren.” That is the type of mentality that got us in this trouble. I’m all for doing our best to preserve our planet, but not at the price of losing our nation in the process. Bill’s words just might come true, but not as he or Al Gore might expect. We might save the planet for our grandchildren, and lose America at the same time, unless we turn around this energy crisis now.

Instead of whining and blaming, Congress needs to take some practical steps now to stop the insanity at the pumps, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, open up some temporary energy production avenues for economic relief (like shale development) and focus more of their taxpayer work time into establishing further alternative ways of producing energy for everything (from coal, electrical, natural gas, hydrogen, solar, nuclear, wind, etc.) Being the wealthiest nation on Earth, there is simply no reason or justification for us to be dependent on fuels that we can’t produce in our country.

If you’re sick and tired of giving away $2 of every gallon of gas to foreign dictators, making other oil-producing countries, cartels and tycoons rich beyond their imagination, and watching the federal government flail for energy solutions and bow to international powers –all of whom are sucking the very life out of the American people, economy and threatening national security – I implore you to sign and pass along the petition, “Drill here, drill now, pay less” at Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions website. We’re hoping to send millions of signatures to Congress demanding an immediate emergency session and resolution to our economic and national security crisis revolving around soaring oil and gas prices.

Our message: It’s time to drill here and drill now! The petition is simple. It states: “We therefore the undersigned citizens of the United States petition the U.S. Congress to act immediately to lower gas prices by authorizing exploration of proven energy reserves and reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries.”

Speaking of unstable countries, did I mention that the Iraq oil minister just reported that oil production is at pre-war levels (2.5 million barrels a day), yielding earnings for Iraq of $28.5 billion in just the first five months of this year? What that means is, we’ll likely soon be dependent and in debt to yet another Middle Eastern oil-producing country that we’ve helped stabilize and become wealthy while ours is going straight down the tubes.

Congratulations Congress – you’re completely failing us.

What is the best way to obtain a backlink? I find it easy to obtain backlinks with forums and commenting in blogs. Quick an easy but are they quality backlinks?

The economy is in ruins and unemployment, gas and food prices are skyrocketing. Now is the time to start a website and begin making money online.

Jobless rates jumps to 5.5 percent — biggest rise since `86

By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON - The nation’s unemployment rate jumped to 5.5 percent in May — the biggest monthly rise since 1986 — as nervous employers cut 49,000 jobs.

The latest snapshot of business conditions showed a deeply troubled economy, with dwindling job opportunities in a time of continuing hardship in the housing, credit and financial sectors.

“It was ugly,” said Richard Yamarone, economist at Argus Research.

With employers worried about a sharp slowdown and their own prospects, they clamped down on hiring in May, said Friday’s report from the Labor Department. The unemployment rate soared from 5 percent in April to 5.5 percent in May. That was the biggest one-month jump in the rate since February 1986. The increase left the jobless rate at its highest since October 2004.

On Wall Street, stocks slid. The Dow Jones industrials tumbled more than 200 points in morning trading.

The big jump in the unemployment rate surprised economists who were forecasting a tick-up to 5.1 percent. Payroll losses, however, weren’t as deep as the 60,000 that analysts were bracing for. Still, job losses in both March and April turned out to be larger than the government previously reported. Employers now have cut payrolls for five straight months.

The White House expressed disappointment, too.

“Certainly this isn’t a report that we wanted to see today,” White House deputy press secretary Scott Stanzel said. He acknowledged that the increase was higher than experts expected. “It is a number that is too high in our view but it is lower than the average of the last three decades.”

The 5.5 percent rate is relatively moderate judged by historical standards. Yet, there was no question that employers last month sharply cut jobs in manufacturing, construction, retailing and professional and businesses services. Those losses swamped gains elsewhere, including in the education and health fields, government and leisure and hospitality.

The government said the number of unemployed people grew by 861,000 in May — rising to 8.5 million. The over-the-month jump in unemployment reflected more workers losing their jobs as well as an increase in those coming into the job market — especially younger people — to look for work, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said.

A year ago, the number of unemployed stood at 6.9 million and the jobless rate was 4.5 percent.

A trio of crises — housing, credit and financial — have rocked the economy. That’s caused economic growth to slow to a crawl as businesses and consumers have tightened their belts. Spiraling energy costs are another negative force.

The country’s economic problems are a top concern for voters — and thus for President Bush, lawmakers on Capitol Hill and those vying to win the White House this fall.

And, there’s been a lot of talk about whether the economy is on the brink of, or fallen into, its first recession since 2001. That determination, made by a panel of academics, is usually made well after the fact.

“For the average American there is not debate that the eocnomy is in a recession,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com. “That’s because their net worth is lower, their purchasing power is lower and it is tough to find a job. If you lose a job, it is tough to get back in,” he said.

So far this year, the government said, job losses have totaled 324,000.

Workers with jobs, however, saw modest gains.

Average hourly earnings for jobholders rose to $17.94 in May, up 0.3 percent from the previous month. Economists were forecasting a 0.2 percent gain. Over the last 12 months, wages have grown by 3.5 percent..

With food and energy prices marching upward, paychecks aren’t stretching as far. Although tax rebates helped to energize shoppers and give major retailers better sales in May, analysts still believe that anxious consumers will be keeping a close watch on their purchases and their budgets in the months ahead. A weakening job market could make people feel less inclined to spend.

Worried about inflation, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has signaled that the central bank’s rate-cutting campaign, which commenced last September to help bolster the economy, is probably over for now.

Fed officials and the Bush administration are hoping that the Fed’s powerful doses of rate reductions and the government’s $168 billion stimulus package, including tax rebates for people and tax breaks for businesses, will pull the economy out of its deep funk in the second half of this year.

Even if that happens, the unemployment rate is expected to climb to 6 percent or higher early next year. Employers won’t want to ramp up hiring until they feel more sure that an economic recovery has strong legs.

The Billionaire Universities
by Andrew Farrell
For every one opening at Harvard’s undergraduate college, there were 14 hopeful high school applicants. Despite the daunting odds, there’s good reason to try to win one of those coveted acceptance letters.
Harvard is consistently ranked as one of the top schools in the country. Its $35 billion endowment makes it the best-funded college in the United States.
Oh, and there’s this: Harvard students are more likely to become billionaires than graduates of any other college.
Of the 469 Americans on Forbes’ most recent list of the world’s billionaires, 50 received at least one degree from Harvard. The school has produced 20 more current American billionaires than No. 2 on our list, Stanford University.
Harvard’s billionaire alumni are an accomplished group. They include Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and media tycoon Sumner Redstone.
Stanford University trails Harvard, but still boasts 30 billionaire alumni. These include Nike co-founder Philip Knight and discount brokerage mogul Charles Schwab.
Fittingly, the California university, which has produced so many ultra-wealthy businesspeople, was founded by one. The grieving railroad tycoon Leland Stanford decided to found a university after his only son died of typhoid fever. With considerable land and money donations from the Californian, the school opened its doors in 1891.
Following Stanford is the University of Pennsylvania, with 27 graduates. Notable members of the group include real estate king Donald Trump and SAC Capital founder Steven Cohen.
Rounding out the top five are Yale, with 19 billionaire graduates, and Columbia University, with 15. The top school from the Midwest is the University of Chicago, ranked seventh, with 10 grads. No. 1 from the south is Duke, with eight.
A dubious distinction goes to New York University. The school has five dropouts who have gone on to become billionaires, including Carl Icahn. After receiving a degree in philosophy from Princeton, Icahn enrolled in NYU’s medical school. Bored by all the memorization required, he jumped ship to be a stockbroker.
It proved a profitable career change. The Queens, N.Y., native is now the 46th wealthiest person in the world with a fortune of $14 billion. He could rack up another $300 million in profits if he can push Yahoo! to reconsider a sale to Microsoft.
A small group of schools account for a disproportionate amount of billionaire education. Just 20 universities and colleges account for 52% of the billionaire graduates while 182 schools count for the remainder.
What makes certain schools billionaire factories? For one thing, they offer excellent educations. But they also offer networking, which in many cases amounts to a ticket to the old-boys network, still very much in existence these days.
Some programs, like business schools, are more likely to produce super-high earners. Of Penn’s 27 billionaire graduates, 20 attended its prestigious Wharton business school.
Strong research programs in developing areas of tech are important too. Sergey Brin and Larry Page met at Stanford’s storied computer science program. The Google co-founders are now worth nearly $19 billion each.
Selectivity also helps. The best schools are overwhelmed by applicants each fall. Acceptance rates for nearly all of the top billionaire-producing schools are below 30%.
The low acceptance rates ensure that incoming classes are exceptionally smart. They’re full of people whose resumes already point to great successes ahead.
Future billionaire Patrick McGovern caught MIT’s attention as a teenager after building a computer that was unbeatable at tic-tac-toe, a remarkable feat in the 1950s. After attending MIT on a scholarship, McGovern began publishing magazines covering the growing computing world. Today, his tech media empire now puts his net worth at $4.7 billion.

Here are the five main strategies that helped the Obama Campaign overtake the front runner Clinton and these strategies should be applied for you to have a successful internet business and make money online.

1) The Obama Campaign planned for the long haul and not just a win on Super Tuesday.

When you build and design your website plan to make money long term and not a “get rich quick” overnight scheme. Have top content and remember you are targeting people and not just machines for your articles. It’s okay to have an adword campaign to create traffic but you also need to start a long term link building strategy that as your site matures, will rank high in searches for your keywords and keyword phrases.

2) Obama’s campaign mastered some of the most arcane rules in politics, and then used them to foil a front-runner who seemed to have every advantage — money, fame and a husband who had essentially run the Democratic Party for eight years as president. “Without a doubt, their understanding of the nominating process was one of the keys to their success,” said Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist not aligned with either candidate.

Understand how the arcane rules of the internet search engines work and learn how to use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to have a natural high ranking site in search results. The higher your site is listed in search results, the greater the volume of traffic you will receive. The first part of SEO is page optimization. Basic steps included in on site optimization are:

1) Find best targeted keywords relevant to your business.
2) Make title and meta tags relevant to your web page theme.
3) Content optimization and internal linking.
4) Use of h1,…,h6 tags for heading.
5) Create a site map.
6) Use title and alt attributes that include targeted keywords.
7) Make robots.txt file.

Once onsite optimization is completed, offsite optimization is started. The number one factor for gaining higher search engine rank is building back links. Here are some basic steps for offsite optimization:

1) Directory submission
2) Article submission
3) Link exchange
4) Free Classifieds
5) Social bookmarking
6) Blogging
7) Forum posting
Press release
9) Video Submission

For an online internet business, content is the most important factor in the make money online field. Having informative and interesting content in the website will entice frequent visits by more visitors. This also helps you to get quality back links easily, as quality back links are most important factor in search engine optimization. Once your site gets higher ranking, it will start getting more targeted visitors and your ROI will increase gradually.

3) “They understood the nuances of it and approached it at a strategic level that the Clinton campaign did not.”
Learn the nuances of the business side of the “make money online internet business”. Determine the correct balance of contextual advertisements and affiliate sales to enhance you visitors and enhance their experience and maximize your profits. Remember people visit your side for two reasons and two reasons only; seeking information and/or wanting to purchase a product.

4) The system is designed to benefit candidates who do well among loyal Democratic constituencies, and none is more loyal than black voters.

The key to an internet business or any type of business is to find customers that are loyal. You need to be customer service oriented. You can send follow up emails thanking them for visiting, ask customers about items they want or information they are looking for. Do everything in your power to bring satisfaction to your web visitors.

5) The Obama campaign was very good at targeting districts in areas where they could do well.

Know the area or niches of the internet you can perform well in and develop a strategy to target that market and make money online. Study the competition ranked in the top 5 and find out what products and content they offer and you will then offer a better variety of higher quality. What are their SEO weaknesses? Are their keywords not focused? How many backlinks do they have? Start a backlinking campaign for the long term to over take the number one ranking and maintain it.

If you follow the five main strategies the Obama campaign used, your website will be a wealth producer that will make money online forever.

Obama campaign used party rules to foil Clinton

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Unlike Hillary Rodham Clinton, rival Barack Obama planned for the long haul. Clinton hinged her whole campaign on an early knockout blow on Super Tuesday, while Obama’s staff researched congressional districts in states with primaries that were months away. What they found were opportunities to win delegates, even in states they would eventually lose.
Obama’s campaign mastered some of the most arcane rules in politics, and then used them to foil a front-runner who seemed to have every advantage — money, fame and a husband who had essentially run the Democratic Party for eight years as president.
“Without a doubt, their understanding of the nominating process was one of the keys to their success,” said Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist not aligned with either candidate. “They understood the nuances of it and approached it at a strategic level that the Clinton campaign did not.”
Careful planning is one reason why Obama is emerging as the nominee as the Democratic Party prepares for its final three primaries, Puerto Rico on Sunday and Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday. Attributing his success only to soaring speeches and prodigious fundraising ignores a critical part of contest.
Obama used the Democrats’ system of awarding delegates to limit his losses in states won by Clinton while maximizing gains in states he carried. Clinton, meanwhile, conserved her resources by essentially conceding states that favored Obama, including many states that held caucuses instead of primaries.
In a stark example, Obama’s victory in Kansas wiped out the gains made by Clinton for winning New Jersey, even though New Jersey had three times as many delegates at stake. Obama did it by winning big in Kansas while keeping the vote relatively close in New Jersey.
The research effort was headed by Jeffrey Berman, Obama’s press-shy national director of delegate operations. Berman, who also tracked delegates in former Rep. Dick Gephardt’s presidential bids, spent the better part of 2007 analyzing delegate opportunities for Obama.
Obama won a majority of the 23 Super Tuesday contests on Feb. 5 and then spent the following two weeks racking up 11 straight victories, building an insurmountable lead among delegates won in primaries and caucuses.
What made it especially hard for Clinton to catch up was that Obama understood and took advantage of a nominating system that emerged from the 1970s and ’80s, when the party struggled to find a balance between party insiders and its rank-and-file voters.
Until the 1970s, the nominating process was controlled by party leaders, with ordinary citizens having little say. There were primaries and caucuses, but the delegates were often chosen behind closed doors, sometimes a full year before the national convention. That culminated in a 1968 national convention that didn’t reflect the diversity of the party — racially or ideologically.
The fiasco of the 1968 convention in Chicago, where police battled anti-war protesters in the streets, led to calls for a more inclusive process.
One big change was awarding delegates proportionally, meaning you can finish second or third in a primary and still win delegates to the party’s national convention. As long candidates get at least 15 percent of the vote, they are eligible for delegates.
The system enables strong second-place candidates to stay competitive and extend the race — as long as they don’t run out of campaign money.
“For people who want a campaign to end quickly, proportional allocation is a bad system,” Devine said. “For people who want a system that is fair and reflective of the voters, it’s a much better system.”
Another big change was the introduction of superdelegates, the party and elected officials who automatically attend the convention and can vote for whomever they choose regardless of what happens in the primaries and caucuses.
Much has been made of the superdelegates this year because neither Obama nor Clinton can reach the number of delegates needed to secure the nomination without their support.
A more subtle change was the distribution of delegates within each state. As part of the proportional system, Democrats award delegates based on statewide vote totals as well as results in individual congressional districts. The delegates, however, are not distributed evenly within a state, like they are in the Republican system.
Under Democratic rules, congressional districts with a history of strong support for Democratic candidates are rewarded with more delegates than districts that are more Republican. Some districts packed with Democratic voters can have as many as eight or nine delegates up for grabs, while more Republican districts in the same state have three or four.
The system is designed to benefit candidates who do well among loyal Democratic constituencies, and none is more loyal than black voters. Obama, who would be the first black candidate nominated by a major political party, has been winning 80 percent to 90 percent of the black vote in most primaries, according to exit polls.
“Black districts always have a large number of delegates because they are the highest performers for the Democratic Party,” said Elaine Kamarck, a Harvard University professor who is writing a book about the Democratic nominating process.
“Once you had a black candidate you knew that he would be winning large numbers of delegates because of this phenomenon,” said Kamarck, who is also a superdelegate supporting Clinton.
In states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, Clinton won the statewide vote but Obama won enough delegates to limit her gains. In states Obama carried, like Georgia and Virginia, he maximized the number of delegates he won.
“The Obama campaign was very good at targeting districts in areas where they could do well,” said former DNC Chairman Don Fowler, a Clinton superdelegate from South Carolina. “They were very conscious and aware of these nuances.”
But, Fowler noted, the best strategy in the world would have been useless without the right candidate.
“If that same strategy and that same effort had been used with a different candidate, a less charismatic candidate, a less attractive candidate, it wouldn’t have worked,” Fowler said. “The reason they look so good is because Obama was so good.”