How to Find Gay and Lesbian News Online

1. Get your information from the most respected name in gay news, 'The Advocate.' Its Web site (advocate.com) contains lots of information you won't find in the printed magazine.

2. Visit a respected regional source that does a good job with national gay news. The 'Washington Blade' has a Web site (washingtonblade.com) that offers articles from its weekly printed edition.

3. Go for some gay consumer and business news at The Gay Financial Network (gfn.com). The site also carries other news of interest to gays and lesbians and offers up general interest financial services.

4. Get your news directly from the sources that issue it on GayWire.net. This resource provides you with unedited press releases from major and minor groups around the world.

5. Set your America Online news profiles to deliver gay news to you, if you use AOL. Go to keyword 'news profiles' and have it automatically deliver news containing keywords such as 'gay,' 'lesbian' and 'homosexual,' for example.

Google FeedBurner Tutorial

Usage

Initial configuration of FeedBurner is a simple process that can be completed in just a few minutes. Simply enter the address of your existing RSS feed in the FeedBurner interface to begin using the service. FeedBurner reconfigures the RSS feed in a browser friendly fashion -- by contrast, standard RSS feeds are displayed as raw XML files that are nearly unreadable by the average user.

Statistics

FeedBurner has built-in support for Google Analytics, allowing you to view a variety of data concerning how your feed is used, subscriber numbers and click-through rates. Even without Google Analytics enabled, you can see data pertaining to which feed items are read, clicked on and the frequency of enclosure downloads if you publish media like videos, music or podcasts to your feed.

Optimization

FeedBurner offers numerous tools for enhancing your feed to add interactive, multimedia rich elements to your feed items. These tools are called FeedFlares and there is an entire ecosystem of these feed add-ons available to FeedBurner users. With FeedFlares, you can provide simple tools for emailing feed items, sharing them on social networks, direct links to the comment section of your feed item and more. Also FeedFlaresallow you to add external content to your feed from services, such as Flickr, Delicious, Picasa.

Advertising

FeedBurner makes it easy to integrate Google AdSense in your feed, enabling you to earn advertising revenue on users who read your content through an RSS feed reader. The service is intimately connected to Google AdSense, allowing to create new campaigns relating to your RSS feed.

How to Set Subscriptions by Email Enabled by FeedBurner

1. Log into your FeedBurner account at feedburner.com in your Internet browser.

2. Select the feed for which you want to enable subscriptions by email.

3. Select the 'Publicize' tab.

4. Select 'Email Subscriptions.'

5. Select 'Activate.'

How to Make Money Hosting a Website

1. Choose a strong domain name that will help people not only find you, but understand what your website is all about. Whether you are an author writing about your books, or a business woman handing out marketing tips, your domain name should be as catchy and marketable as your website.

2. Buy a hosting package with a Web hosting company that has an affiliate program. Affiliate programs require you to place a simple HTML ad with a specialized link on your website. When interested users click on that link and buy a hosting package, you get a referral bonus from the Web hosting company. Be sure you place your referral ad in a place your visitors can see it, but that does not obstruct or interfere with your content.

3. Sign up with affiliate sponsor programs, such as Google Adsense, AdBrite, Commission Junction and Anastasia's Affiliate Programs. (See links in Resources.) Browse through relevant sponsor ads when setting up your affiliate account so the most relevant advertisements to your website type appear in rotation on your site. The more relevant the ads are to your content, the more likely you will be to draw in clicks and sales.

4. Draw people in to your website. Use social marketing sites like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, and put up free ads on sites like CMF Ads and Entrecard. (See Resources for links.) CMF Ads and Entrecard allow you to upload a small button other users add to their high-traffic websites in exchange for the placement of a button on your page. Regular use helps draw in traffic to your site and expose your ads to more viewers.

5. Update your site regularly with content to keep readers and subscribers from losing interest and moving on. Regular content updates will also draw in new viewers, increasing your earning potential from pay-per-click sponsors.

What Is the Google Business Model?

AdWords and AdSense

Google is where it is today thanks largely to the revenue produced by its AdWords and AdSense programs. When a user performs a search on Google, the results are shown in two columns. The main column contains search results based on algorithms designed to provide the most relevant search results based on the keywords typed into the search box. To the right of this column are a list of paid text advertisements that are limited to four lines of text.

How it Works

When a user clicks on an AdWords text ad, the company or individual who composed the ad is charged a fee every time someone clicks on the ad. This type of advertising is known as pay per click (PPC) advertising. Additionally, Google pays a commission to websites, blogs, and other online destinations to display the Google ads on their sites. This is the AdSense program.

Advantages

The Adwords and Adsense programs work well because the ads are targeted to what the user is looking for.

YouTube and Facebook

Google owns both YouTube and Facebook. Both of these social media sites are free to users. Google has yet to figure out a way to monetise these two sites. As a result, both sites continue to spend more money than they take in through advertising.

Other Google Interests

Google is also investing heavily in the following areas: cloud computing, Internet browsers, Google maps, Google earth, online software applications, Android operating system for mobile devices, mobile phones, and a number of other media-related initiatives.

How to Find Free Wordpress Themes

1. Smashing Magazine offers up a steady stream of stunning, free Wordpress themes. (see Resources below for some links). The site has an RSS feed, so you can keep an eye on the site for new Wordpress themes.

2. Free Wordpress Themes is another site offering free themes. They don't have as many as Smashing Magazine, but they may have just the one for you.

3. The Theme Lab offers free Wordpress themes and reviews them too. This site also offers general information about Wordpress and Wordpress plugins.

4. If one of your hopes for your blog is to make money using Google AdSense ads, wpSkins provides AdSense-ready templates for free.

How to Do Google AdSense to Make Money

1. Go to the Google AdSense website (see Resources) and sign in with your Google account information. If you have not yet created an AdSense account, click the “Sign up” button, then click “Yes, proceed to Google Account sign in.” If you do not have a Google account, click “No, create a new Google Account” and then follow the instructions on the next screen.

2. Go back to the AdSense website. Click “My ads” from the main menu bar and then click “Content Ads”

3. Click the “+New” button to start a new ad. Give the ad a name, choose the size and type that you require and then type in a name for the “Custom Channel” you will use for the ad. This custom channel name is how you identify the ad in the reports tab, so pick a descriptive name like “Home page image skyscraper” or “Blue sidebar ad.”

4. Click “Save and get code,” then copy the code in the “ad code” box.

5. Open the HTML file for the Web page onto which you want to place the ad. Paste the code into the page at the desired location. Save the file. Ads will appear on the page within 24 hours.

6. Repeat this process for all other Web pages on which you want to serve ads. You can use the same ad unit on as many different pages as you like and you can even use the same unit more than once on one page. However, you cannot place more than three ad units on a single page.