Traffic exchanges are basically membership sites where members are taken to each other’s web pages.

The basic membership of most traffic exchanges is free – but you have to commit to viewing a certain number of sites each day in order for your site to be presented to other members.

This is done by logging in and clicking a command to browse sites (or view sites).  The traffic exchange then presents you with sites from a rotator which you have to view.

There are a number of ways that the exchanges incentivise you to really view the sites that are presented to you.  Sometimes it’s as simple as staying on the page for a pre-determined period of time – 20 seconds for example.

Some sites ask you to rate the site you’re visiting and provide some feedback to the author.  Others ask you a question, the answer to which you will only know if you’ve read the page.

Whatever incentives they use, you are required to visit a certain number of sites each day in order for your site to be entered into the rotator and presented to other members.

If you don’t want to spend time each day viewing sites (and it can become pretty time consuming if you have a number of sites in the system), you can pay a monthly fee, which will ensure your site is presented to others.

There are people who absolutely swear by traffic exchanges, but my experience has not been very satisfactory. I think there are a couple of reasons for this:

1.  Even though there are incentives for people to really read your site, most people find ways to meet the requirements in the shortest time possible.  This is particularly the case where the requirement is to spend a certain amount of time on the page. People can do this while watching TV, just clicking on after 20 seconds or so.

2.  The traffic that I’ve got in the past is not targeted, even though you can specify what industry or niche you want your site to be displayed in. It’s possible that the problem is not un-targetted visitors, but the fact that they’re not paying attention because they’re focused on meeting their obligations as quickly as possible!

In any event, while my stats did show a high number of hits coming from the traffic exchanges, the value of that traffic was very low.

It may also, of course, depend on the industry you’re in.  I was promoting business opportunities and that may not have been a good fit with traffic exchanges.

So for those reasons I don’t currently use traffic exchanges.

None-the-less, they are there and they’re popular with lots of people, so it may be worth trying them to see whether they work for you.

Here are a couple of traffic exchanges I’ve used:

Link Referral (This one asks you to rate each site you visit and provide feedback)

Traffic Swarm (This one is highly rated by a lot of people.  It asks you to view a page for 20 seconds)

Traffic Exchanges also usually have affiliate programs – both of the ones I’ve listed above do (although those links above are not affiliate links!).  These programs can be quite lucrative because there’s a large market of people out there looking for ways to get traffic to their sites!

If you think this information may be helpful to others please ‘Share This’ through the link below, and leave us a comment with your experience of traffic exchanges.

You may have heard the term ‘Bum Marketing’ – it was a term coined by one of the first people I followed when I got into Internet Marketing:  Travis Sago.

Social Network Marketing is just another name for Bum Marketing – why?

Because they’re both about marketing your website through establishing an online footprint and attracting visitors without spending any money.

Both of the last two topics I covered – Forum Marketing and Article Marketing – fall under the definition of Social Network (Bum) Marketing, because they’re both ways of establishing and growing your online footprint.

Here’s another way:

Create as much web real estate of your own as you can and link it back to your main site.

What do I mean by ‘web real estate’?

Your own pages on the different ‘Web 2.0’ sites. Sites like Squidoo, Hub Pages, Pownce, Tumblr, Digg, Facebook, Mixx, Mashable, LinkedIn, Plaxo and more.

There are literally hundreds of these social sites where you can set up your own account, have your own page, put up your own information and write or post your own articles.

Each one encourages you to set up your own profile, offers you the opportunity to link to your site or your blog and encourages you to get involved in the community.

The more of these that you can set up the bigger your online footprint becomes.

But here’s the thing:  back in the article on Forum Marketing I talked about the need to establish your credibility and authority – to become trusted within the community – and exactly the same principle applies to every web real estate property you put up.

I cannot over-stress the importance of making sure that you provide value to the community you’re part of.

Here are some examples of things I do:

On LinkedIn I answer questions in the Q & A section on a regular basis.  I also make sure that I make introductions and generally network with others.

On Squidoo I have some lenses that contain valuable guides and tips or pointers on how to do things.  And, although I don’t do it as often as I should, I keep those lenses updated.

On Digg I make sure to visit every day and Digg up a few articles (as long as I like them!).

On Del.icio.us I set my bookmark RSS feed as ‘Public Domain’ and make sure that I organize and bundle my tags so that others can easily find their way around.

You get the picture..!  This is not set and forget.  It’s a commitment to establishing yourself within the online community, in much the same way as you would if you moved to a new real-world community.

You’re probably thinking now that this sounds like a lot of work.  It is!

It takes time and effort to create your footprint and build up the momentum.  But once you do so, the momentum is powerful and will bring you a lot of targeted visitors.

And there are ways you can reduce the amount of time and effort you need to put in.  Effective use of my blog’s RSS feed is one method I use to disseminate my content as widely as I can, without having to re-write and re-post everything multiple times.

Another way is to get yourself organised.  Set up a weekly schedule that has you working on 3 – 5 of your social sites each day, writing new ‘cornerstone’ content two or 3 times a week and so on.  Make a schedule and stick to it.

By ‘cornerstone’ content I mean meaningful articles giving good solid content that you can post on your blog or post to article directories.  In addition, you can make short blog posts which serve as more of a ‘heads up’ to your readers – and you can do these every day or as often as you have something to bring to their attention.

The first step in Social Network Marketing, then, is to establish your accounts at as many Web 2.0 sites as you can (or want to!).  Set up your profile in full and make sure you link back to your blog or your main site – which ever you’re trying to drive traffic to.

Think of the Web 2.0 sites as a funnel, attracting traffic and directing it to your blog.  And, again:  be sure to add value to all of the sites you join!  If you don’t, your efforts will be entirely wasted.

If you think this information may be valuable to others please ‘Share This’ through the link below and leave us a comment with your thoughts (or questions) on Social Network Marketing.

Article Marketing has been around for years and seems to go through cycles of popularity - apparently it’s in a popular part of its cycle at the moment!

None-the-less, the fact that it’s been around for years does testify as to its effectiveness as a method of driving traffic to your site.

Here are what some others are saying:

How to Succeed at Article Marketing

I have noticed several posts around the “make money online” and internet marketing blogosphere discussing the benefits of using article marketing to increase traffic and links to your site. I covered this a bit about a year ago in an …

5 Easy Steps For Effective Article Writing That Anyone Can Do

Benefits of Article Writing: Article writing benefits both the writer as well as publisher. Following are some essential benefits of article writing: 1. Link Building: Article writing is one beneficial way to attain inbound links for …

Article Marketing - How to Come Up With Topic Ideas

These topics led me in all kinds of different directions as I did research into in-store marketing, point-of-purchase marketing, out of home advertising, the benefits of software as a service (SAAS), wait warping, planning digital …

One of the suggestions that comes up quite regularly in advice on article marketing is about keywords and keywords density. My own view is that you need to write for people. So while you definitely need to identify keywords in order to give a good focus to your article don’t fixate on things like keyword density.

Write for people. If they like it they’ll link to it or book mark it and click through to your site.

If you think this information may be useful to others please ‘Share This’ through the link below and leave us a comment with your thoughts on Article Marketing.

There are a few ways in which Article Marketing and Forum Marketing are similar:

• Their purpose is two fold:  1) to grow your credibility and trustworthiness with your readers and 2) to get visitors and links to your site.
• You’re not able to directly promote your site within the body of the article (or forum posts)
• You can (and should) place a link to your site in the article resource box – similar to the signature file in forum marketing.
• Any form of spamming is out, out, out!

Remember that when I started this series on promoting your site for free I said that off-site SEO carries more weight than on-site SEO in the process of getting your site noticed by the search engines.  I also said that off-site SEO was largely about getting inbound links to your site.

Article Marketing is a great way to get links to your site because, if your article is good, it will get picked up by ezines and webmasters who are constantly looking for good content.  When this happens your article will be published far and wide – and since your resource box will contain a link back to your site you’ll be getting lots of high quality inbound links.

But, just to set your expectations – that probably won’t happen with your first article!

Like anything that’s worth doing, it takes time and effort.  But there is one tool that I’ll cover later which makes the task of disseminating your article efficiently a gazillion times easier.

OK – so where do you start with Article Marketing..?

Here are some basics:

• The subject of your article should be closely relevant to the site (or page) that’s going to be linked to in your resource box at the end.
• You cannot link to an affiliate site – it has to be to a site owned by you.
• You cannot openly promote a product or service in your article
• Your article needs to be informative and well written.

On a logistical level your article should:

• Be submitted either in an email or in an attached text file (Notepad or WordPad) – i.e. without formatting
• Be between 600 and 1500 words long
• Be formatted to 60 characters wide (but check the requirements of the directory you’re submitting to)
• Include a 4 – 5 sentence summary
• Contain a 2 – 3 sentence resource box (author’s bio plus link to your site)
• Be free of spelling and grammar errors

What to Write About?

For the first-time article marketer, finding something to write about can be daunting.  But, at the end of the day, the only way to get started is to get started – so jump in!

Here are some simple steps:

• Pick a subject that’s closely relevant to the site you’re promoting
• Choose an article type – here are some common types:
  • A review article, which compares 3 or 4 different models of the same product or service, coming down to a ranking
  • A testimonial article, which is usually a case of reporting on your own personal experience of using the product or service
  • A ‘how to’ article, giving simple, clear steps for how to solve a problem or do something
  • A ‘this is what happened to me’ article, giving others the benefit of your experience in a specific field
• With both review articles and testimonial articles you’ll need to be careful to avoid any direct promotion of the products you’re reviewing or testifying on.
• Once you’ve got the subject of your article and you’ve decided what type it’s going to be, map it out – just the section headings – to make sure you don’t miss anything when you’re doing the full script.
• Once you’ve got your article mapped out, start writing.

When you start writing don’t try to get it perfect first time.  However much trouble you take on the first draft, I can guarantee that you’ll be doing lots more editing before you’re ready to unleash it on your unsuspecting readers.

So just write.  You can go back and tidy it up later. (In fact you’ll have to!).

My approach:

The approach I use is to write the article initially using Word (or any word processing package).  This is because I can use the spelling and grammar checkers to get all that basic stuff right.

This includes the main article, the 4 –5 sentence summary and the 2 – 3 sentence resource box text.

I then copy everything into Notepad to get rid of all the formatting that Word puts in.  I also set the width of my Notepad window to 60 characters.  You can do this by simply typing 1234567890, then copying it and pasting it 5 more times across the top of the page.  Then grab the right margin of your Notepad window and drag it to the point where your 60 characters exactly fit.

I then put hard carriage returns at (or before) the 60 character point on each line, making sure to delete any extra spaces, so that no line of the article is more than 60 characters wide.  Many will be less, because if the 60 character point falls in the middle of a word you’ll have to put the hard carriage return right before its first letter.

Finally, when that’s all ready, you’ll have an article that’s formatted correctly for most of the article directories.  However, do take care to check out the formatting guidelines of the directory you’re submitting to, because they do vary – and some even allow you to use HTML.

The Objective of Article Marketing

To recap, then, the objective of article marketing is to create credibility and authority for you and generate lots of visitors and incoming links to your site.

To do this, the article needs to establish you as an authority on your subject.  You need to provide good, useful information in your article and it needs to be well written, because that will entice readers to click the link in your resource box.

The headline is particularly important.  Without a good headline people won’t even read your article, so it must be a headline that entices people to click on it.

The actual content of your article will be a lot easier to come up with than you may think.  Firstly, as I’ve said earlier, it needs to be directly relevant to the site or page you’re linking to through your resource box.

I personally prefer to write ‘How To’ articles.  This is because a) it’s easier to create a title that will attract visitors and b) I don’t have to worry about crossing the line by being too promotional of the product or service I’m writing about.

So if you’re creating a ‘how to’ article, simply take something from the page or site you’re promoting and describe how to do a related task, or solve a problem.  Use simple language, short sentences and bulleted or numbered lists.

Don’t flood the market with articles.  You’re far better off going the quality route, rather than the quantity route.  Aim for 1 or 2 a week – no more.  But make them good!

Remember also, that this is not an instant fix.  You won’t get a ton of traffic to your site as a result of your first article.  Possibly not even from your first 10 articles.  But you do need to be publishing articles regularly.  Over time, as your article ‘footprint’ grows you will start to see traffic to your site building up.

It’s all part of creating a presence online.  Like a departing train, it takes a while to build up the momentum but, once you have the momentum, it’s powerful.

Automated Article submission

I mentioned earlier a tool that will help you disseminate your articles much more efficiently.  It’s a membership site that costs $37 a month and it distributes your articles on your behalf to literally hundreds of ezines, directories and webmasters.

This means that you only need to write and submit your article once - the service takes care of the rest.

You can set up various parameters in your account (such as your resource box, for example) which then enables you to concentrate on writing articles without worrying about the logistics each time.  All the issues around formatting for the different directories and ezines they submit to are taken care of by the service.

They also have a very good tool that enables you to produce different versions of your article very quickly, which greatly reduces the chance of any directories or ezines getting duplicate copies.

They also have a wealth of resources and tips for article publishers and, in my view, the service is well worth the fee.

It’s a service that absolutely slashes the time required to produce and distribute articles widely.

I’ve used them for a few months now with great results.  Check out the details here

Leave us a comment with your thoughts on article marketing and, if you think this information may be useful to others please ‘Share This’ through the link below.

Now I want to start looking at some ways to get people to see your high quality content - without spending any money.

And the first area I want to look at is Forum Marketing.

Forum marketing is about becoming an active member of a forum in your niche (or a closely related niche) and establishing yourself as an authority.

Remember – the objective is to point people to your site so that they see your content and link to it.

Remember, also, that off-site SEO is an ongoing project – something that you never stop working at.

OK – so the first step is to identify forums that focus on your niche.

Check them out to find the ones that are well managed and sufficiently active.  This would require you to follow them for a while to gauge the levels of activity and the general tones of each of the forums.

When you find one that’s active and professionally run, and if the subjects that are discussed are related to your product or service, then join it.

The subjects that are covered are important, because you want to be able to participate in them and add valuable insights and contributions.  That’s a key part of becoming recognised as an authority.

So make sure that you join a forum where you’re going to be able to participate meaningfully in the discussions

Once you’ve joined a forum be sure to set up your profile as fully as you can.  You want people to see that you’re a serious, professional long-term player.  Your profile is one way of doing this.  And, most importantly, add a link to your site (with a brief statement about your business or service) to your Forum Signature.

Why is this important?  Because it’s the only way in a forum that you can publicise your site.

None of the professionally run forums will allow you to directly promote your product or service in forum posts.  That’s considered Spam and will be very quickly stamped out.

Your post will be deleted and you may receive a warning from the moderators in some forums.  You’ll also probably receive some sarcastic comments from other forum members – not the best way to start out on your objective of becoming an authority!

Once you’ve got your profile all set up, then you’re ready to start participating in the community.  Make sure you get a feel for the forum before jumping in with both feet – just as you would in a real life forum or discussion group.

And, most importantly, remember that your goal is to establish authority for yourself.  To become recognised as a trustworthy expert in your field.

Most forums will have a sticky with the Forum Rules set out.  Be sure to read them and abide by them.  And when responding to discussions, or initiating discussion threads, be sure to always write professionally and politely.

And be as helpful as you can.  ‘Give and ye shall receive’ is a very good motto to follow for the way you participate in the forums.

Gradually you will begin to become known in the forum and then people will start checking out your profile and clicking on the link in your signature to see what your site is all about.

That’s when your high quality content will blow them away and they’ll start linking to you!

As with anything, forum marketing takes time, effort and consistency.  I have a rule of thumb (which I don’t always follow, I have to admit!) of responding to 2 posts each day.  Some days there may be nothing I can respond to, while on other days I can respond to 2 or 3 threads.

However it works out, you need to be participating consistently, thoughtfully and helpfully to become recognised as an expert in your field.

And, as you do this, so people will start clicking your link, visiting your site and (hopefully!) linking to your content.

OK – forum marketing is one way of getting people to your site so that they link to your content.  Next time we’ll look at Social Marketing.

If you think this information may be helpful to others please ‘Share This’ through the link below.  And leave us a comment with your thoughts!

But, as I mentioned towards the end of that post, off-site SEO ultimately carries more weight with the search engines than on-site SEO does.

So, today I’ll take a look at a few things you can do to improve your off-site SEO.

What is off-site SEO?

Off-site SEO is basically what the Internet at large thinks of your site.  Is it an Authority site..?  Does it have good information..?  Is it updated regularly..? Do people like it and find it useful..?

Remember that the objective of the search engines is to provide the most relevant results possible to searchers.  This is what drives them.  Their customers are searchers, not webmasters and, as much as we may not like that fact, that is what we have to understand and work with.

So off-site SEO is largely about the number of incoming links you have to your site.

But beware:  there are links and there are links!  The search engines long ago learned to identify and give less (or no) weight to reciprocal links, links from link farms and links secured simply for the purpose of having links.

You have to have high quality, incoming links to figure well with the search engines.  That means links from sites in the same or a related niche and links that have relevant anchor text.

This takes work.  Ongoing work.  With on-site SEO you can get everything set up right and then let it run.  You may need to make some tweaks or adjustments occasionally, but once it’s done, it’s basically done.

Off site SEO, however, is a never-ending project.

So how do you go about getting good quality, incoming links to your site?

In the first place, by producing good content.  This is the basis of everything and, without it, you won’t get quality links.

Content that’s original, helpful, funny or controversial.  Basically, content that people like so much that they link to it and become repeat visitors.

Here’s where two things become important:

1. Selecting a topic for your site that you enjoy writing about, and can write about.
2. The ability to write well.

Despite the arrival of audio and video, which are both powerful media for webmasters to use, you still need to have good copywriting skills to get people to take the final step:  to click your link or opt in to your autoresponder list.

If you can’t write well, or don’t like writing, you’ll need to consider whether to hire a Ghost Writer or a Copy Writer.  However you do it, you’ll need to have well written content on your site.

The next step is to find a way of putting good quality content onto your site on a regular basis, and you have 2 very useful tools for this:

1. A blog
2. An RSS feed

All things being equal, blogs tend to be more attractive to search engines than static sites are, because they’re updated more frequently.

So if you’re running a blog, be sure to add to it regularly!  But, just as important, be sure to add good quality content.

And if you’re not running a blog start one.  Or a wiki or a membership site – something that gets updated frequently!

A blog can be a part of your site (as mine is) or your site itself can be a blog.

Make sure that you update it regularly.  There are those who will tell you to update your blog everyday but, in my view, this is dependent on the type of blog you’re running.

A news or news-related blog probably needs to be updated each day.  Or even more frequently if you’re following a breaking story.

But an ‘authority’ blog doesn’t need to be – at least not in my view.  With an authority blog I prefer quality to quantity.  Two really good articles a week do more for my blog than 5 that don’t offer value.

If you don’t have a blog and don’t want to start one, using an RSS feed is another way of getting fresh content onto your site regularly.  There are a couple of important things here:

1. The search engines will know it’s an RSS feed
2. Because of that, you will need to select a feed that is totally relevant to the topic of your site and provides valuable content.  Content that people will come back to your site to read time and time again.

OK – so the basis of getting high quality incoming links to your site is good content. Without that, however many people you point towards your site, they won’t link to it.

In the next article I’ll look at some ways that you can point people to your high quality content, so that they find it and do link to it.  A linking strategy, in other words.   So stay tuned!

If you think this information may be useful to others please ‘Share This’ through the link below, and leave us a comment with your thoughts.

So be sure to subscribe to either my RSS feed or email updates (both are free) so that you can get the full series.

OK – let’s get on with it…

There are two areas you need to focus on to effectively promote your site for free: things you can do on your site, and things you can do off your site – throughout the rest of the web.

Things to do on your site:

The first step is to get your site optimised as far as possible for the search engines. Getting your site optimised for the search engines also breaks down into 2 areas – on site optimisation and off-site optimisation.

Off site Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is basically about building lots of high quality incoming links to your site and, since we’re looking at on-site tactics here, I’ll come back to that next time.

On site SEO is about making it easy for the search engines to find your site, to find out what it’s about and to find their way around your site.

Here are some things you can do to make their job easier:

1. Install a sitemap in the root directory of your site.

If you’re not familiar with them, you can create a site map here. It’s very straightforward – just follow the instructions they give you and then upload the sitemap to your root directory.

2. Make sure that your robots.txt file allows the search engine spiders to crawl your site.

By default the spiders will crawl if there’s no robots.txt file – so if you don’t see a robots.txt file on your site you’re OK. If you do see one, open it up and make sure there’s nothing there that says *DisAllow.

If there is, change it to *Allow or just delete the entire phrase which ends in *DisAllow. The default action the spiders will take is to crawl your site, unless they are ‘DisAllowed’.

3. Use the Google Webmaster tools to register your site, identify and fix any problems and make sure the Google bots are crawling it.

If you have a Google account you can use their webmasters tools free of charge. If you don’t have a Google account you can get one for free and I highly recommend it. They have lots of excellent tools for webmasters.

If you already have a Gmail account then you’re all set – all you need to do is go into your account settings and add Google Webmaster Tools.

The webmaster tools will enable you to register your sites. After confirming that they’re yours, you’ll have access to tools and analytics that will alert you to any problems on your site, and make it more accessible to the Google bot.

4. Make sure that your META data is fully completed on each page of your site.

Make sure that it’s unique to each page as well – especially titles, descriptions and keywords.

If you’re not sure what META data is or how to set it up, click here. Fill in the fields on that page and then click the link at the bottom to generate the code.

A new window will open with the META data. Just copy and paste this into the source view of your web page, at the top, between the <head> and </head> tags.

Again - just follow the instructions. They’re very straightforward.

5. Make sure you use your main keywords thoughtfully in your <h1> and <h2> tags as well as throughout your content.

But, very important, don’t stuff keywords!

Remember that people, not search engines, buy from you. So make sure that each page in your site is written for people – not search engines! Over repetition of keywords will just turn people off and they’ll click away.

Remember that since your META data is unique to each page your keywords should be as well. On each page you should have <h1> and <h2> tags. Make sure that the keywords for each page appear in these tags and throughout your text.

But, again, write for people not the search engines! It’s far more important for people to read and like your content than the search engines, and here’s why:

Ultimately off-site SEO has more impact on your search engine rankings than on-site SEO. And off-site SEO is primarily about high quality incoming links.

One way to achieve high quality incoming links is through people liking your page and linking to it. But to do that they first have to like it – which means that you need to write for them. Not the search engines!

Here are some more posts from around the web on simple things you can do to make the search engines’ job easier:

6 Simple Search Engine Optimization Strategies Guaranteed To … - Reviewing your site from time to time, implementing the necessary changes, and keeping abreast of the newest trends in Search Engine Optimization will definitely ensure your site achieves a top ranking for your chosen keywords and key …

Guide To Do-It-Yourself Search Engine Optimization - Search engine optimization is implemented to make your website or blog site accessible to all search engines such as Google, AltaVista, Yahoo!, and MSN among others. These search engines store your website information in their vast …

Website Optimisation Techniques - As well as link building and on-page optimisation, there are some other very important SEO factors which can help your website index and rank in search engine listings. The following techniques are grouped into the category named …

OK, next time we’ll take a look at off-page SEO – so stay tuned!

If you think this information may be useful to others please ‘Share This’ through the link below. And if you can add anything to these guidelines please leave us a comment!

I think it totally depends on the product or service you’re selling.

In some sectors or industries you can’t avoid it, but in other sectors you’ll devalue your offer.

I’ve taken up many free offers or free trials in the past but, because they’re free, they usually don’t give me much value and my enthusiasm wanes pretty quickly.  Then, once the free trial period is up, I cancel.

Or, to be more accurate, what usually happens is that after a couple of months I suddenly realise that I’m being charged for a service I’ve used about half a dozen times and then I cancel..!

In my experience the problem with free trials is that they usually don’t offer me anything outstanding - hence my interest waning quickly.

If a free trial offered me something that I just couldn’t live without then I’d gladly pay once the free trial was over.

However, I’ve yet to come across a free trial that does that!

On the other hand services for which I pay a fee, from the outset, I evaluate much more carefully.  I’ll pay a lot of attention to them and get as much benefit as I can.

The result of that is that I definitely benefit more and, in some cases, the service benefits more because of my input, commitment and, in some cases, my promotion of it as an affiliate.

One interesting business sector to watch is the social networking sites sector.  Offering free membership is pretty much mandatory for a social network site.

But that’s a tough market - new social sites are popping up every day and, to me, they need to find a way of generating real ongoing revenue if they’re to survive and prosper over the long term.

They’re going to have to find a way of breaking free of Free.

Leave us a comment with your thoughts and, if you think this may be useful to others, ‘Share This’ through the link below.

‘What’s so great about that?’, you may ask. The incredible range of answers that were submitted.

I always thought of Web 2.0 as ‘user generated content’ but there were 26 answers to the question and probably less than half actually agreed with me.

Many described Web 2.0 in purely technical terms (AJAX, XML and other technologies) and many said that Web 2.0 was what the web was originally designed to be anyway. Others said that there was no such thing as Web 2.0 - it was all just a natural progression of technology which gave a steadily growing range of functionality to people.

As such, it’s impossible to define Web 2.0 because there’s no cut off point from Web 1.0.

So I took a look around the web and found a few articles describing Web 2.0. Many of them talk about the lack of revenues that Web 2.0 sites have generated and compare the current state of Web 2.0 with the state of Web 1.0 in the late 90’s - and we all remember what happened in 2000/2001..!

Here are links and summaries to 3 articles that look at different perspectives of Web 2.0:

Web 2.0 myths debunked

Many organisations are leaping onto the New Media / Web 2.0 bandwagon, but not always for the right reason. If it is just to make you or your organisation look ‘cool’, time will reveal whether your actions will reap any meaningful …

“Mesh Collaboration” Seeks to Demystify Business Innovation in Web …

Strategy book by Capgemini’s Andy Mulholland and Cisco’s Nick Earle advises business leaders on how to harness collaborative ‘mesh’ in a Web 2.0 world.

Web 2.0: Think it through

A COUPLE of stories in the Financial Times are getting some attention because they’re calling into question the sustainability of the Web 2.0 boom amid a tough economy and a lack of revenue. The first article — Web 2.0 fails to produce …

What’s scary is that people are already talking about Web 3.0. If we can’t get agreement on what Web 2.0 is how can we be talking about Web 3.0..!?

Leave us a comment with your thoughts on Web 2.0 (and Web 3.0 if you like!) and, if you think this info may be helpful to others, please ‘Share This’ through the link below.

Web 3.0 Is Your Future Online

It is coming to the Web there is no question, so can we polish our crystal balls and predict what the new 3.0 will be like? Certainly it means a big change to the internet and the way we will be interacting with it. If [...]

Is Internet Blog Radio The Next Super Marketing Wave Of The Future?

About 70 years ago, commercial radio arrived on the world landscape. In the United States, the early version of radio was quite different than it was today. Instead of paying for radio programs through commercials, people paid for a …

Coming Fast: True Multi-Platform Media Marketing

Now marketers are asking for much more marketing-solution-driven offerings. This is requiring a shift in emphasis, from the media type to the total solution. Weakness in Analog Media Relative to Digital Siblings. The Internet has been …

The interesting thing is that it took a long time to find anything worthwhile on this subject - seems there aren’t too many people writing about it!

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