While we see the headlines about thousands of new internet sites being launched each and every day of the year, it seems that more and more would be online entrepreneurs are calling it a day. The news that some are struggling will not surprise those who follow the industry but why are people calling it a day? What is the problem?

The problem with many new entrants to the online world is the fact that they see the headlines, they see the multi-millionaires driving about in their new Ferrari’s and they want it – tomorrow!

There is no other business environment which can match the internet for building up your hopes only to scupper them and leave you feeling helpless – but is it really that bad. The sad fact is that many people who join the online revolution come to the party with some great ideas, fresh thoughts and a will to win. However, too many get disappointed and leave the scene before they have given their site and business a chance to breath. It does not happen over night for 99.999999% of people, so give it time and give your new business time to breath. Make sure you don’t give you site and your early start business away for buttons!

More and more people are set to feel real pain and guilt in the future with more and more savvy online business people picking up good sites, good domains and great business ideas for “buttons”. A little bit more “link juice”, a revamp of the site design and the business you sold for a few dollars may well be the success story of tomorrow. Don’t regret it, don’t give it away and don’t lose the faith!

The chance to make a living online is there for all of us, we all just need to take a little more time and work, work, work…..the chance is yours, don’t miss it!

When I wrote my review of advertising on AboutUs.org I got asked by the staff for suggestions on how to improve AboutUs.org (I think they ask anyone that writes about them ) so here are a few suggestions:

1. Give the people that buy your editorial services like I did statistics for the number of visitors to their page. At the moment you don’t know how many saw your page at AboutUs.org. For example they say when you sign up that they get 5,000,000 readers each month, but that’s not interesting information to me. I’m more interested in how many saw my page when it was featured and how many will see the page in the upcoming year? Something similar to Google Analytics would be good and it would almost make their services worth the $197 they charge.
2. Paying members should get access to a special members page with articles and a few tools like for example SEO tools to build and improve your site. This wont cost too much to develop and together with point 1 this would make it worth the $197 for their services.
3. They should develop a special badge (or widget if you like to call it that) for domain owners to add on their own pages to drive traffic to their own AboutUs.org page. I’ve for example used the standard AboutUs logo in this article and linked it to aboutus.org/xaviermedia.com. The badge should be updated with something special from your own page, for example get your RSS feed and show the latest head line like you can do with Feedburner. This will both benefint AboutUs since their site will get more readers and the people linking to them will get more visitors to their AboutUs page writing comments. The badge could also ask/request the visitors to add their comments on the site their visiting.
4. Since I’ve already mentioned RSS feeds I think I should continue on that track. Why not get the latest feed headlines like DomainTools.com does it:
   
5. Develop a plugin for your web browser so you can look up domain names by just clicking a button in your browsers tool bar:
   
   When the user is at a site he should just click the button in the browser toolbar to be taken to the AboutUs page for that domain name.

I hope the AboutUs staff like these five suggestions

Is this a good or bad omen? I guess it’s kind of bad to have 6666 Entrecard credits in your account….

I don’t know if you have heard about AboutUs.org before but it’s a wiki similar to Wikipedia.org, but it’s only for web sites. You can look up any domain name you like in AboutUs.org by typing aboutus.org/sampleaddress.com in your web browser.

There are three ways to get your domain name listed in AboutUs.org:

1. Wait until the AboutUs.org bot has spidered your site
2. Write your own page
3. Pay AboutUs.org $197 to do the page for you

To find out if it’s a good deal to pay for a page at AboutUs.org I pulled out my credit card and paid. To be honest I didn’t only pay just to be able to do this review, I really really wanted a better AboutUs.org page too . A good Aboutus.org page must be as good as a good MillionDollarWiki.com page or maybe even better

At their site they offer you the following for a flat fee of $197:

• Position yourself in front of more than 5,000,000 unique readers each month.
• Increase your results in the search engines.
• Point more traffic to your website.
• Create an amazing article that will tell the world about your business.
• Build strong relationships with the community.
• Develop ongoing dialog about you and your business.
• Generate another way for clients to find you.

I’m happy with the coach I got to help me build the page, but what I don’t like is that most of the stuff at my AboutUs.org page is copied directly from my site. Hey it’s a page about my site so it actually doesn’t matter…. Or?

The traffic they mention is not something I’ve noticed at all , but I guess it will take until the next pagerank update by Google to see some results on the search engine ranking. I think they should offer some kind of statistics for the people that upgrade their page because otherwise it’s going to be really hard to figure out if it was a good investment or not. Especially since it’s your wiki page that’s featured on their front page, not your actual homepage.

So, was it worth $197?

My opinion is that it’s not worth the money, but on the other hand people spend $100 for a page at MillionDollarWiki and then you don’t get any help building the page at all. At Aboutus.org I got a coach helping me at least.

If you can build your page yourself (i.e. you know the syntax) and have the time to do it then do that instead of paying $197. If you don’t know how to do your own page and really really really really want a better AboutUs.org page, then buy this service.

If you’re interested in having a look at my AboutUs.org page you’ll find it at aboutus.org/xaviermedia.com.

While they may be breathing a sigh of relief at Yahoo! after seemingly escaping the clutches of Microsoft, this may still be the end of the road for the Yahoo! business with more vultures circling after they made the mistake of suggesting that they are ripe for takeover at the right price. Even though they could not agree a price with Microsoft, to many people they have sold themselves down the river….

Over the last decade life has been tough for Microsoft’s MSN searching engine and Yahoo! have not faired much better, but together it could have been such a different story. The innovation of the two boards and the massive firepower of Microsoft could have made a real difference but what does the future hold for both companies?

Yahoo!

The vultures are most definitely circling the company and it would come as no surprise to see a deal agreed with either a Venture Capital company or another of the major online conglomerates over the next few weeks. This episode has not been the best in the history of Yahoo! and they are now in a weaker position than they have ever been before.

Microsoft

Microsoft’s MSN offshoot seems to be lacking somewhat in size to attack the mighty Google and while the Yahoo! deal is a set back they have shown that they are looking ahead and making plans. Do not write off MSN as they will be back, most likely with a larger or similar sized partner in tow. This is just the start of a new life for MSN.

All in all this latest blow, after years of rumours and counter rumours about a possible merger, will further enhance the power of Google and give them a little more breathing space before they see any real contenders come forward to steal their crown. Thankfully for webmasters around the world, Google are of a size that they would never be able to make any sizeable acquisitions in the search engine world so any more growth will be purely organic.

Watch this space, there is more change to come in the not too distant future…….the landscape is changing…..