CloudFlare goes to the cloud for security and protection

Give CloudFlare five minutes they?ll supercharge any website. The firm?s software is a cloud-based firewall that also improves load time.It?s a protection and acceleration solution that provides real time analytics. Traffic is routed through their own intelligent global network. Each delivery of a client?s webpage is automatically optimized so visitors never have to wait for slow loading pages.CloudFlare also works to limit bots and crawlers that can waste bandwidth and server resources. Spam and other attacks are significantly reduced and as the number of users increase, so does the system?s speed. Users are immediately notified of visitors who are infected.The system can be used with any website, domain or platform. It quickly installs in five minutes or less and there?s no additional software or hardware is ever needed. Users must add their website to the system, which requires a small change in the domain?s DNS settings, but no other change in the site?s existing code is required. It can be turned off anytime the user desires.The core service is free for those who want an automatic security and performance solution. Statistics are provided about all traffic to the website and it?s updated every 24 hours. The software provides tracking of outbound links and geo-location lookup of any visitor?s IP.The Pro edition is just $20 per month for the first site, $5 for each additional site and $1 for each subdomain. It provides users with all the core services, in addition to more control over their site and advanced security. Virtual real time statistics are provided, along with advanced DNS management and offline browsing. The system is updated every 15 minutes. Traffic can be blocked by country or IP range, and it provides protection from email harvesting and hotlinking. The system analyzes resources and optimization to enable the best possible experience for visitors.CloudFlare was co-founded by CEO Matthew Prince and officially launched on Sept. 27, 2010. The project originally began as a system to track spammers that harvested email addresses and was named Honey Pot. Thousands of websites in over 185 countries participated in testing the software. It performed as intended, and users also experienced a 30 percent increase in the speed at which websites loaded. The free and Pro edition is offered, and CloudFlare is currently at work on an Enterprise option of its software for high-traffic sites that may encounter more threats and require faster loading pages.For more information, visit the website at http://www.cloudflare.com.Update: HostGator has teamed up with CloudFlare to make it even easier for you to use?their?services. So what are you waiting for signup with the?word leading?hosting company to get started with CloudFlare.

10 Little Tricks for Looking Professional on Video

Do you want to create the perfect video for your business? Videos make excellent marketing tools. With videos, you share your experience and expertise with potential customers. Presentation is key when designing your videos. You want to appear professional, speak eloquently and highlight your services in the best light. How can you look more professional on video? Here are some simple tips.1. Variety: Customers do not need to look at you through the entire presentation of the subject. Show off professionally designed Powerpoint presentations, use graphs or bring others into the conversation. If your video is long, change your background graphics.2. Dress professionally: Your video marketing needs to instill confidence within your customers. Poor grooming makes the customers believe that you don't care about your product. If you don't care about your product, why should they? Make sure that your clothing has no holes and no excess wear and tear. Looking great makes you feel good, and feeling good instills confidence.3. Use high quality audio and video: Customers should be able to hear you and see you when you are on camera. If customers can't hear you, they become confused and will not purchase your products. For demonstration and how-to videos, your subject needs to be absolutely clear and in focus so that the customers can follow your instructions. Minimize any background noise.4. Be concise: Avoid rambling off-topic diatribes. Your viewers want to see what you are offering, not hear your opinions about the latest football scores. When you are scripting your video, eliminate anything which can be construed as off-topic or rambling. Your viewers should not be wondering when you will get to the point.5. Scripting: Very few people can sit in front of a camera and produce a great video on the first take. Script every single word that you will say on the video, edit as necessary. Eliminate topics which do not relate to the intention of the video. Each word should forward the story.6. Practice: Practice your script. Most importantly, practice your facial expressions. Practice your body language. Do a few dry runs of your presentation so you can see how well you present yourself. Show a genuine interest in your product. Practice displaying your confidence.7. Mindful speech: Eliminate 'er' and 'uh' and other filler words. This returns to the idea that you need to be concise with your thoughts. There is nothing so distracting as to listen to a presenter who is very obviously camera-shy. Think about each phrase as you are saying it.8. Look at the camera: When someone is looking away or looking down, there is a natural inclination to see what has captured their attention. When you develop a conversational video, pretend that you are speaking directly to your friend or neighbor. Look into their eyes.9. Alter your cadence: Everyone has a rhythm to their speech. When you are saying something that your viewers need to remember, change the cadence of your speech to draw attention to it. Move from a slow rhythmic flow to short bursts. Pause longer between sentences. Speed up or slow down.10. Smile: Your smile places people at ease. When you are smiling, you show that you are relaxed with your presentation. Hide any internal fears that you have by consciously smiling. When in doubt, practice smiling in front of a mirror to determine your best expressions.A video marketing campaign enhances your business. When your presentation is clear and eloquent, you instill confidence within your viewers. When that expertise shines through, you generate more interest in your products and services.A writer and product analyst, James Adams currently works at Cartridge Save, one of the UK's foremost suppliers of printer inks.

Does Your Website DESERVE to Rank #1?

Author Bio: Joel Ohman is a Certified Financial Planner? and serial entrepreneur. Some of his most recent web projects include a website with a bunch of easy to use tools for finding great domain names and a website that makes it easy to compare car insurance online. He is a newcomer to NickThrolson.com and would encourage you to check out the recent post from Nick with a review of Fiverr.The acid test for any website in any market is quite simply if you can objectively take a look at your site as compared to the other top sites in your market and then ask yourself the question: "Is my website honestly the best website out of all of the other websites gunning for the same keyword?" and get a resounding "Yes, my site is the best." If you cannot honestly answer yes then it's time to get back to work and/or go back to the drawing board.

Give the Search Engines What They Want

The biggest mistake that many newbie SEO's make is to try to "game the system" by "outsmarting Google/Bing". Even if we put aside the ridiculous notion that any one person can consistently outsmart a team of highly paid and highly intelligent engineers for any amount of time let's just first realize that if one truly wants to make a substantial amount of money with their website(s) then they will have to do one thing. Work hard.Yup, I said it. W-O-R-K. So if it's going to take a lot of hard work either way then why not put all of that hard work into actually building a great web property? Why try to scam and trick your way into getting your site ranked ahead of other sites that are much higher quality websites than your auto generated splogs will ever be when you can work hard and build a website that people can look at and honestly say SHOULD rank #1 because it is the BEST?Assuming that Google wants to make money by having people continue to use Google instead of BING (and vice versa) then it is in Google's best interest to want to provide the best results possible and the best user experience possible so that people will continue to use their web search rather than jumping ship to BING or another competitor. If this is the case then why not build the absolute best (honestly now - the best) website for a given niche and give users and in turn the search engines exactly what they want? (HINT: If you do this then that means that you will get what YOU want: loads of traffic and in turn hopefully you can convert that into loads of $$$)

Questions to Ask Yourself

It's pretty easy to tell with some sites whether they are a top tier web property and deserve to rank for a competitive keyword phrase. Conversely, it's also very easy to tell when a given site has no business ranking for anything (i.e. MFA "Made For AdSense" websites, auto generated "splogs" spam blogs, etc). However, most sites are not really one of the extremes. Here are some questions to ask yourself about YOUR website as you compare it to some of it's competitors to see how it stacks up:
  • Does my website cover the topic (topic = main keyword phrase that you are trying to rank for) in terms of content as thoroughly or more thoroughly than any other website? - For example, I own a website that has information on anything and everything to do with credit cards. I am constantly adding new high quality information to the website so that the websites will have every possible piece of useful credit card related information on it including credit card reviews, interactive calculators, humorous feature articles, etc. BUT what if I thought that I could just launch up a quick 10 page website and expect to outrank many of the other great websites in the credit card market that have thousands and thousands of high quality pages? Yea, fat chance.
  • Does my website LOOK just as professional, creative, polished, etc as my competitors? - This one is not as important as the meat of the website (the content) but all the same the design of your website speaks volumes.
  • Does my website have all of the functionality as my competitors? - For example, if you want to compete in one of the ultra competitive niches like travel, financial software, etc. and your website can't even come close to a Hotels.com or a Mint.com then you are probably in trouble (which just goes to show that there are solid reasons why each of those sites deserve to have such high rankings in their respective niches).

What do YOU Think?

Do you find yourself tending to think short term and focus on quick results rather than on a long term focus on quality?What are some other ways that one can evaluate their website to determine if it is best in class?

Using Flippa.com To Sell Websites

I use Flippa.com to sell my websites because flippa stands out from the rest. Flippa provides simple navigation ease to find type of site your looking to buy. un-like godaddy auctions & sedo. You cant beat the reasonable $19 listing fee. Flippa is doing it right & will continue to grow. I recommend you buy stite off flippa & or sell an unwanted site test it out & let me know what you think about there market place.Right now I have lots of my sites up for sale. The reason why is they are distracting me from my personal blog & main projects. I really need to focus on these more & less on these side silly sites. So its time to just get rid of them!PS: If You Have a Flippa Account follow me :

XAuth Changing The Way We Share

Meebo announced monday about XAuth will this little nifty tool change the way we share? I think it will vs having bunch of buttons that distract users & make your page look clutered & messy.Over?the past few years I have noticed decrease of sharing when it used to be just share by email or just bookmark this page users would be bookmark & email happy. When it comes down to it I think XAuth has the right mind set & might have some competiotors in the near future watch the video below & tell me what you think?

[polldaddy poll=3085283]

PS: great article for more info about Xauth : http://www.techmeme.com/100418/p22#a100418p22

Getting Started As a Webmaster Lesson2

Once you have your domain name & hosting hopefully with the best hosting out there HostGator you need to get CMS known as ?Content Management System? there are numerous CMS out there you have to find one that fits you I started off with Xoops was pretty cool CMS software but then I finally moved to word press then I was in heaven best CMS by far tons of customizable themes & tons of plug-in. WordPress is very user friendly easy to learn for any beginner webmaster. With WordPress you can make blog into full website not just blog with all these tools at your fingertips can?t go wrong with the ultimate CMS software.Step 1: With Hostgator you can easily install WordPress either manually via ftp or automatically using Fantastico. Once your in cpanel find the Fantastico: link once inside you will see list of CMS software you can install click WordPress on the left hand side then find your domain in the drop down menu then fill in site info & Fantastico will do the rest including database tables ECT at the end you can send your self email showing everything that was done. Step 2: Login with the username and password you provided & look around go to appearance tab find themes you like click add new if you have zip file of theme you really want or you can use the search option to find just the right theme you want.Step 3: Find plug-in that will benefit your website. Once logged into your dashboard go to plug-in add new & find the all-in-one-seo awesome seo plug-in tool I also recommend Google site map plug-in so your site can easily get crawled by Google spiders. Last but not least be sure to check out the popular plug-in lots of developers have put a lot of time & hard work to make WordPress the best.To your success I hope WordPress will benefit you and your website or blog.