100k Job Trading From Home

There are all kinds of blogs like personal blogs, topical blogs, culture blogs, political blogs, science blogs, educational blogs, news blogs and much more. One of the things these blogs have in common is that they are generally good sources of information. Not only are they good sources of information but are good sources of up-to-date information at that.

People looking for an alternative source of information will find that blogs can sometimes offer a more in depth view or a refreshing take on current events. One of the major benefits of information from blogs, specially from personal, cultural and political bogs, is that it gives readers insight on the locals’ viewpoint. For example, although news sites can offer accurate information and report facts and statistics about important events such as the 9/11 attack or the latest Tsunami tragedy that hit Asia, personal blogs of people who were actually there or knew someone involved in the tragedies offer a deeper and more compelling insight on the events. Reading political blogs would also give you a chance to know what ordinary citizens of a country really think.

The downside with information from blogs is accuracy. Since most blogs are subjective, information garnered from the blogs can be lopsided and even exaggerated. Most blogs do write about facts but give commentaries as well. When reading opinions and commentaries be discriminating and do not believe everything written without thinking or checking out the facts by reading other blogs and sources.

One problem with extracting useful information from blogs is knowing where to start. With more than 10 million blogs online it is impossible to search for specific information without the help of a good blog search engine. A good blog search engine, however, will weed out most of the noise and point you to the blogs that contain the information you need.

To help you search for information found in blogs, here’s a short list of the best blog searching tools on the net right now.

•    Google blog search – google blog search is the fastest blog search engine at the moment and returns incredibly relevant search results.
•    Technorati.com – Technorati.com is the most established blog search engine. It gives back the most number of results and has the most features among blog engines. However, it can be slow and returns quite a number of irrelevant links.
•    Yahoo! Blog Search – Yahoo’s blog search is a new feature added to its news search. The search result page is divided into two columns with the left column containing news results and the right column containing blog results. Yahoo! blog search is best for people who need current information but are not very particular that it be from blogs.
•    Feedster is one of the oldest blog engines. One of its useful features is that it caches blog pages. Feedster would be useful for people looking for blog posts that have been deleted or edited.
•    BlogPulse is a search engine most useful due to its extra tools that allow users to do things other blog engines don’t like create graphs and plot log buzz for search terms. It also has a Conversation Tracker that’s gathers related blog posts converts them to threaded conversations. This cool feature allows readers to follow topics they are interested in more easily.
•    And to apply for a Blog Review and possibly win an award, go to Bloggy Award!

I’m directing this article to those who are just starting their eBay Selling Venture.  Whether you’re selling books, DVDs, CDs, collectibles or clothing, all things (with the exception of eBooks and services) need to be mailed.   And it’s the postage, handling fees and mailing that seems to cause a great deal of angst among new sellers.

You’ve heard the advice – don’t overcharge for shipping.  That is very good advice, indeed, as nothing turns off potential buyers like sellers who gouge you on the shipping costs.  It’s also a practice that can rack up bad feedback.

However, I’m going to play Devil’s Advocate here and suggest that you don’t go overboard and give so much of a break on shipping that you’re chipping away at your profits.  It’s good to remember the “hidden costs” of shipping:  bubble wrap to secure your breakables, tape, shipping envelopes, boxes, etc.  Then there’s the gas you put in your car to take all those trips to the post office.

You might think I’m being cheap, but, if you added up all your eBay expenses for the year (as some did for their recent taxes) you might be shocked to see how all the packing materials and gas for your car added up and took a little chunk out of your eBay profits.  And, believe me, they do add up.

Some people are even more surprised to find they underestimated the weight of their packages, causing their profits to shrink even further.

How can you be fair to both you and your buyers?

1.  Buy a scale.  It may sound simple, but purchasing a scale can save you a bundle in shipping.  If you’re just eyeballing the weight of the package, you can often times guess too low, and be in for quite a shock when you go to the post office and see the package is going to cost twice what you thought to ship.

2.  Know the dimensions of your packaging before listing the item.  Some packages cost more to ship because of their dimensions.  Knowing the weight alone isn’t enough.

3.  Offer the buyer a variety of shipping methods.  Some prefer speedy delivery with Express mailing, while some prefer to save money with parcel post even though the wait is longer. It’s always a good idea when using parcel post or other slower ground shipping to alert the buyer by email that it can take anywhere from 8 to 10 days.

4.  Save yourself money whenever possible by using boxes that have been used.  Most stores are more than happy to let you rummage through their old boxes and take some home with you.  But, do remember to choose boxes that are presentable, secure and strong enough for your items.  And, if you have breakables, don’t skimp on the bubble wrap.

5.  Give yourself a small handling fee that will cover your expenses.  Some sellers add on an additional $1 or $2 to the shipping fees for their handling fees (depending on the cost of the item and how much packaging you have to use).  I really advocate doing this because your expenses will add up if you do a lot of selling on eBay.  Be sure to be upfront with your buyers that you have a small handling fee so they can’t complain about it later.

Being fair to both yourself and your buyer will keep you both happy, and keep more of your profit in your pocket.

Reasons for Replicating Data

According to a study done by Krishna Bharat and Andrei Brodner there are several reasons why data are replicated or why mirror sites are created – Load Balancing, High Availability, Multi-lingual replication, Franchises or Local versions, Database Sharing, Virtual Hosting, and Maintaining Pseudo Identities.

In load balancing, replication of data is done to decrease the servers’ loads. Instead of just having one server to handle all the traffic from web surfers interested in the data or content, the site is mirrored or the data replicated so that the traffic is split between two or more servers.

Virtual hosting also sometimes result in mirroring. This happens to services with different websites and host names but use the same IP address and server. What happens is the path to one site is the valid one while the path to the other site simply gives an identical webpage as a result.

Google’s Webmaster Guideline about Duplicate Content

Search engines are blatantly against replicated data so much so that Google even has a warning against them in their Webmaster Guidelines. Google’s Webmaster Guidelines were a list of Do’s and Don’ts that ought to be followed by websites to help the search engine in finding, indexing, and ranking websites. Following the Do’s will of course increase the chance that Google will list a specific website and ran it favorably as well. However, doing any of the Don’ts will of course detract from a website’s rank.

Valid Mirrored Sites

However, for valid mirror sites like those mentioned above (multi-lingual, franchise, etc.) there should be no worry since search engines have provisions for such things and take into account the motive behind them. You can help your mirror site by making sure that you follow all the other guidelines to get noticed and ranked by Google. Following the guidelines will surely help not only your ranking with Google but with other search engines as well.