California’s American Chronicle online magazine recently ran a very informative article outlining an often-overlooked way to drive traffic to your website: Writing articles for other sites, and linking the content back to your own. It’s a win-win strategy for both parties — you get traffic, and the other website gets fresh and unique content. Indeed, this is a a growing trend in an online landscape where original content is becoming an increasingly valuable commodity.

” … [A]rticle writing is one of those powerful ways to drive targeted traffic to your website,” writes B. Hopkins in an article for the paper dated September 27, 2008.

One way of getting traffic to your website is to write articles for other people’s websites. Not for blogs or websites where there are already a number of other writers, but a website where you are the only other person to supply content. This technique may not be as difficult as you might think because most website owners are struggling to keep their site fresh and if you provide the solution to their problem of having fresh quality content, many website owners will jump at the offer. This strategy sets you apart because you can now get links back to your website without competing with other web site owners. You also stand out more in the eyes of the visitors to the website you are writing for so when they come to your website, they are more interested in what you have to offer. This strategy does require original articles that are written by you and are of good quality because it will be a tough sell to get someone else to put your crappy spam on their website.

,,, You can also use your articles as part of an auto-responder series to continue to drive traffic back to your website. If you write a series of articles on the same topic or in the same niche, you can put one article per message in the auto-responder series. Your message would include a compelling call to action after the article to send the reader back to your website. This method works very well to build trust with your readers, who will then be more willing to buy from you because they now feel like they can relate to you.

Read “The Overlooked Ways Of How Article Writing Can Drive More Traffic To Your Website” here.

We’re happy to introduce the Aplus.Net Forum, a new blogging, networking and online chat and communication service created exclusively for the Aplus.Net community.

The new website, located at http://forum.aplus.net, is the perfect spot to trade tips, advice, and insight about everything from building a small business to mastering e-commerce. It’s also the new official location for customers to receive information directly from Aplus.Net, should there be anything important to announce.

If you have a question about web design, content management systems, sales markets or service providers, or even something off-topic, this is the place to get together with other members of the Aplus.Net community to talk about the best solutions. It’s a great way to network on all topics regarding running and maintaining a successful online business in today’s volatile marketplace.

Check it out today! Click here to go to the Aplus.Net Forum.

One of the web hosting industry’s premium directories just got a facelift. Click here to see MyHostNews.com’s new look.

MyHostNews is a great resource for online businesses. It offers a variety of articles aimed at giving consumers every advantage when choosing a web host, going beyond superficial aspects like price to some of the more in-depth matters such as eCommerce and reliability. If you haven’t checked it out, we recommend heading over there and taking a look.

You’ll always find Aplus.Net’s latest news at MyHostNews, too.

Lately, we’ve been discussing the world of domain names and domain name registration a lot here at the Aplus.Net Blog — how to successfully buy and sell domains, how to structure them, even how you can make money from the domain names you own but aren’t using.

And all of this discussion has revolved around the most fundamental domain naming strategy: attaching an effective name to an available suffix — also known as the TLD, or “top level domain,” the .net in aplus.net, for example, or the .com in amazon.com. In recent years, we’ve seen the TLD market grow by leaps and bounds. Where you could once only buy basic TLDs like .com, .net, and .org, there are now dozens to choose from, ranging from the affordable and accessible like .info to the expensive and highly specialized, like, say, .museum.

But, according to a recent article by TechNewsWorld.com’s Renay San Miguel, all this will soon change, in a revolutionary way. In an article entitled “ICANN Approves Dot-KitchenSink Internet Address Policy“,  Mr. San Miguel tells us that ICANN has recently approved a new policy that allows organizations to name their domain name anything they want. Their TLD doesn’t have to be a preset suffix, it can be their company brand, like .coke or .nike.

From the article:

The Internet is about to get a lot crazier. Anyone who’s willing to fork over a fairly grand sum, possibly in the $100,00 ball park, will be able to buy the rights to a branded domain. That means no one who’s anyone will be a lowly dot-com anymore — and the practice of snatching up domain names with the hope of selling them for big bucks later will be a lot less lucrative.

The universe of Internet domains will soon experience a Big Bang, thanks to Thursday’s vote by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers Latest News about Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approving a new system for handing out Web addresses.

Corporations and other public and private entities will no longer be limited to Web extensions like .com, .net or .org; for a fee that will likely start at US$100,000, a company can register a more personalized top-level domain (TLD) with its own brand name extension, such as .coke, .apple or .prada. Cities will be able to apply for .newyork, .berlin or .moscow.

ICANN also voted for the first time to allow non-Roman characters in Web addresses, which means that Chinese companies can register suffixes in Mandarin script, Russian companies in Cyrillic, and so on.

Beginning in spring 2009, the Internet address possibilities will truly be .endless.

Although this opens up a whole new world of legal headaches (with cybersquatting about to get a lot more lucrative), the possibilities it allows are nothing short of world-changing as far as online business is concerned. Some say it will make the value of existing domain names plummet; others say it will add value to the old .com standards. Obviously, ICANN wouldn’t have approved the process if they weren’t confident that it would have a positive effect. But given the dramatic nature of this change, it’s hard to say for sure just what the ultimate impact will be.

Either way, the plan (which is still not 100 percent carved in stone) would go into effect in the second quarter of 2009, according to the current proposal. (Read the official ICANN news release on this topic here.)

What do you think? Is it a good idea to make the domain name system this changeable? Will this new policy endanger an important fundamental of the World Wide Web, if suddenly any brand name can become a TLD? Or is the logical next step in a marketplace where TLDs already number in the dozens (or hundreds, if you count country code TLDs)?

Despite weathering some well-known difficulties in recent years, the Los Angeles Times has still managed to maintain its status as one of the nation’s leading newspapers, and in particular, a reliable source of info for the business community. And no small part of that reputation comes from an author who’s been penning the newspaper’s small business advice section since the early ’90s, Karen E. Klein.

An accomplished online entrepreneur in her own right, Ms. Klein’s question-and-answer column at the L.A. Times has accumulated an incredible amount of small business management info over the years, covering everything from marketing to balancing the books.

One of Ms. Klein’s recent articles touched on a subject that we’ve been spending a lot of time discussing here at the Aplus.Net Blog — and that we’ll soon be spending a lot more time talking about: What’s in a domain name?

Picking the right domain name

Dear Karen: My preferred domain name is taken. How do I create another one?

Answer: Identify the keywords your target customers will search and use those words in your domain name, putting your most important keyword first. “Keep it short. Use no more than three or four short words – 55 characters, max – in your domain name,” said Caroline Melberg, founder of Small Business Mavericks.

Consider using hyphens between the words, which makes your domain easier to read. “If your main keyword choices are taken, consider making one a plural or singular version,” Melberg said. “Or try adding numbers to find a clever, catchy domain name.” You could also add supporting words, such as “online” or “pro,” to your keywords.

“Imagine you are giving your website address over the phone to someone who does not have a pen and paper handy, or over the radio where people are listening in their cars. If your domain makes sense to your prospects, they are much more likely to remember it and type it in once they get to their computer,” Melberg said.

Read the original article here. Klein also writes for The Chicago Tribune, Newsweek, and BusinessWeek. Check out her L.A. Times column here.