Improve the Web

Lately, it's been fun finding niche social sites. However, instead of being limited to sites that interest me, you'd rather go check the lists of social sites and pick the ones that fall in your industry.

12 Lists of Social Sites

• Social networking god: 350 categorized social networking sites from Mashable (Oct 2007)
• Digg-style applications: Hundreds of categorized custom Digg style sites, Pligg-based sites, social sites/networks in foreign languages and so on.
• 83 social sites: various social sites, cagetorized by the topic. Judging by the size of the list, I'd figure it covers most common topics and the sites have some traffic.

I've had several great ideas on how to build a site or what content to create for months now, but the lack of time doesn't allow me to do much.

As time passes by, I notice people doing what I thought would be a good idea or already developed sites, right what I was thinking about. This was and is not only amuzing, but also interesting.

For example, I've noticed this phenomenon a while ago and surely enough, Aaron Wall finally writes about sharing your ideas now (with more examples of this lazy bloggers plague).

I've been tagged by Elizabeth to write about what I am doing, when not doing SEO.

Run

When I have a full time job, I run in the morning (2-6am). It turned out I can't make myself run, if I don't have a financial guarantee to afford food and equipment in the long run (literally, too), btw.

In winter, it is mostly fast, short runs, while in summer I tend to run for hours.

Cook

As Elizabeth, I also cook, but nothing fancy. It doesn't mean it isn't delicious though.

When going online, few people give much thought to all the aspects of running an online business. But in order to be among the 5% of the businesses that still run after their first year, you need to keep a few things in mind.

Know your target market

In order to create something that people would love to buy and use, you need to know your target market. To do this, you can:

While it is common, nowadays, to whine how Google shouldn't tell people how to make money with their websites (like selling links), this time Microsoft has done the same.

Lately, it's been noticed that Live.com spams the referrer logs of the websites, claiming that it is only about quality check.

Back in the days, Web 2.0 was defined as a new medium that allows people to share things. Blogs and social sites were Web 2.0 and forums and personal sites were 1.0.

State of the Web and the forums

In a Cre8asite Forums thread, a question is raised about the state of the Web and where forums find themselves in it.

And while this is a very good question, it got me thinking. What makes a forum and what makes a social site?

In business, you may often want to offer a "competitive" price in order to win a client. But what happens when you do get him?

Do you work as hard as you'd be working for a better pay?
Do you enjoy working as cheap labour?

In essence, I'd think that you should charge yourself fairly, because:

1. you'll actually be doing what you can, not what you have to just to match the price
2. you'll enjoy the work (it should be #1, but its second to what the customer gets)

When optimizing your website, it is generally expected that your pages need to have certain keyword density to be ranked with the search engines. While it is a good idea to have at least one keyword on the page, you also need to remember that real people will be reading your pages, so you need to also write your text for the people.

As an expert, especially, if you do consulting, you, probably, spend a great deal time of using your knowledge for your clients and educating them around the industry. But how well do you apply your knowledge to your own work and business?

For example, for any client, you'd probably advise:

• knowing the industry (you do that already, hopefully)
• building something of value and providing value on every step of the journey

In social marketing, having a powerful account to submit from helps to get the story to the front page, or to get noticed, at least. In fact, some link baiters build strong accounts specifically to get successful promotions for their clients.

Lately, as my Stumble Upon account grows, I begin to sense responsibility for stuff I thumbs up and review, because it is seen by the people from the Web industry.