CrankyRants.com

By now everyone has seen the work of photographer Adnan Hajj as he captured the tragedies of the ongoing conflict in Beruit. And in the process, the due-diligence of a blogger to help identify the doctored photographs.

Two words… No Freakin Kidding. Look at them! How could they not be doctored? If the final image had been a little more public and printed in a local paper, my three-legged half-blind mutant cat could have picked it out as a fake!

First rule of photoshop, nimrod. When using the stamp tool… Don’t. Repeat. The Pattern! Surprised he didn’t try to insert a nude Jessica Alba on the city street holding a “Death To The Pig Dogs” banner.

There are volumes of information available online about digital marketing and website promotion. Hundreds of posts on hundreds of boards will give advice on which directory to post what request for a link exchange with which site relevant to what content without which no site will succeed.

“What?”

Exactly. Lost in the alpha-net soup of the hows and whatfors of internet marketing is the virtually forgotten realm of traditional marketing for websites. Obviously you don’t want to ignore the digital marketing aspect, because truth be known that is where most of your traffic will come from. But there is a certain satisfaction that goes along with the idea of “Wearing Your Site” to events and public gatherings.

If you travel or attend events that offer up a lot of eyes, five them something to look at by wearing something with your web address on it. I know plenty of people who make their own t-shirts, or use a button maker to create their own wearable artwork. In fact, the button machine comes in handy if you would like to advertise multiple sites. Just print a bunch of buttons and add plenty of web “flare” to your shirt, jacket, or in some cases, your giant over-sized novelty cat-in-the-hat poofy hat.

Here’s the key, though. Don’t go nuts with it. I don’t mind seeing someone’s product or site on their shirt or hat, as long as it’s tasteful. Which I guess the poofy hat is not. But I can’t stand people who wear crap that just screams “I’m desperate. Visit My Pathetic Site”. God knows we’re all desperate to get traffic. But you don’t have to whine about it in t-shirt form. Show a little dignity and tone it down somewhat. The last thing you want to do is drive people away from your site just because you had to be obnoxious and use giant unicorns dancing around your URL in bright neon green. Does not make me want to go. 

You’ll find entry level jobs at CollegeRecruiter.com.

For every drop of rain that falls, a web directory grows. Everyone has one, everyone lists on one. They will soon outnumber Starbucks in the “Most Things in the Universe” category… which is likely it’s own category on some web directory somewhere.

The web directory is a popular site to build because there are lot’s of scripts out there to maintain a web directory, and there are plenty of potential customers in the millions of webmasters who want to drive more traffic to their sites. Perfect match, right?

And there’s the problem. So many link directories, so few good one’s that will actually help your site. There’s little point in listing on a directory that has no traffic and no chance of being properly spidered by a decent search engine. If one doesn’t already exist, someone should create a web directory of web directories so we can keep them all straight.

In the case of CrankyRants.com, I’ve chosen to list with an SEO Friendly web directory that is also highly ranked with the search engines. This solves the problems above. Lot’s of happy text-based directory structure to provide additional content to the spiders. And hopefully plenty of traffic from those simply searching around.

Listing with a directory is of course just the first step in marketing a site. The more listings with quality directories the better, so don’t stop at one. But with hundreds of them out there, definitely stop at around 20. If you can list with the top 20 web directories at first, you should feel confident that your site is on it’s way to stardom, then concentrate your efforts on other methods of promotion. Like link exchanges, tattoos of your logo, and poorly written web addresses painted on the side of your car. Classy!

This one’s been making the rounds in one form or another. Don’t know who this kid is… but he’s got about 5 months before the holidays to get back on the “Nice” list.

Next time you hear your child announce that they’re fingerpainting in the other room… you better get up and check it out quick!

Furst Person provides call center outsourcing services to employers.

Just one day after AOL announced it planned to give away its e-mail and Web services, along with free storage on its servers to lure new users, an additional incentive was added to the tune of one full year of AOL discs, delivered 3 a week through the first year of service.

“I’m sold!”, announced Ted Blaumbach of Detroit Michigan. “That’s like the icing on the cake.”

Prior to AOL’s offer of free storage and discs, many internet users were required to rely on alternate, more dependable storage and disc acquisition methods. “If I had large 20 minute videos of my cats that I wanted to share with my family or boyfriend, I would have to go to like some free file hosting site,” noted Becky McClasternick of San Antonio Texas. “And the only way I could get a steady supply of worthless, unwanted discs was to steal them from the dumpster at work. Now I can get both without getting tetanus!”

The online unit of Time Warner Inc. in September will start offering Internet users who pay nothing up to 5 gigabytes of server space for users to store music, illegal software, photos of their sister, or any of their large, worthless computer files. Starting approximately one week after the launch of the free file hosting service, AOL will launch the “Free AOL Discs for a Year” campaign by dropping over 10 thousand unopened AOL discs from airplanes along the beaches of South Florida and Southern California.

“It is our hope,” said AOL Marketing Executive Clive Berlergson, “That seeing the shimmering ocean-front covered in brightly wrapped AOL discs will remind potential customers that they too can have as many discs cover their home, office, or neighborhood community. By signing up with AOL, you are guaranteeing that you will always have a place to store your oversized, seldom used files. And you will always have an AOL disc within arm’s reach. That is our promise to our customers.”

For everything recruiting, checkout ERE.net.

Media companies Gannett Co., McClatchy Co. and Tribune Co. on Tuesday announced an agreement relating to their stakes in several high-profile websites, none of which belong to me.

Like most small businessmen, I would certainly entertain the prospect of selling a small stake in my vast web empire if the right buyers came along. Clearly the business world has more regard for profitable, high-traffic sites than they do my small, half-finished projects that earn a few dollars a month. Unjust and unfair are two words that come to mind. What has happened to the corporate sense of adventure?

As part of the deal to boost their stake in the sites, McLean and Tribune will each pay roughly $142 million to help expand their ownership in the sites. I can only surmise that the sole reason these firms have so far been unwilling to throw that kind of green at my sites… is that they simply have not truly spent enough time with them. Or any time. Or really even know about them.

Because of this I have drawn the conclusion that more CEO’s need to spend time on any of the various entrepreneur forums that exist to help promote small business. If Gannett’s CEO Craig Dubow would simply sign up for an account, (username DuBowDuBowDoo I’m guessing) and browse around a bit… he might find plenty of upstart companies that could just as easily become successful for a fraction of the millions that they have spent on one or two sites. Plus… you know… he could get some cheap advertising because TheBusinessForum.net I believe uses member-sponsored ads. It’s win-win!

Until then, small-site owners are doomed to live a 142-Million-Dollar-Free life. No one paying for private flights to exotic resort meetings or offering stock trades in an attempt to outbid competitors for the ownership rights to… a celebrity fan forum… or a ringtone download site. The consumers are the real losers in this story. The short-sided, “all eggs in two or three baskets” mentality of the corporate world will prevent honest consumers like you and me from having more than 600 choices in free online flash arcade options. When there could be thousands!

And that is very… very sad.