CanIGetADotCom.com Blog

If you’re running a large site that sells a lot of products, you’ve probably had to come up with a plan to deal with pagination: showing products over several pages of otherwise similar content. That was the topic of an interesting discussion in the Google Webmaster Help forums recently, and it also reached the Sphinn home page. Keeping your WordPress installation secure also went hot last week on Sphinn, as did an article about the prevalence of search spam and the battle between search engines and spammers.

This is the latest in a weekly look at the stories that were “hot” on Sphinn in the past week. We’ll post these recaps every Monday. The stories appear in reverse chronological order — i.e., the most recent “hot” stories are at the top.

Hot On Sphinn: August 23 to August 29, 2010

• Time for another look at TrustRank concepts – This one has been on my mind for 6 months, finally got around to finishing it up. Exceptional content? Dunno, but damned important and over-looked. Is it from SEJ? Yea, sorry Michael… Am I also be a cheecky fella today? U bet, sleep deprivation does wonders! hee hee… But heed these words I tell ya!
• Google Helping Slimeballs Profit from Golfer’s Death – Terrible story about people who are taking advantage of an expired domain and Google to profit from the name and death of a young female golfer.
• Google Responds To Pagination SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Questions – A summary of one of the most detailed discussions on the topic of pagination with a Googler and some of the brightest SEO (Search Engine Optimization)s covering the various options.
• Google universal ranking factors: an overview of resources – A great collection of resources and links for all types of Google Universal Search ranking factors, from video to news, from blogsearch to maps. Assembled by Jeroen van Eck from State of Search.
• How we made an extra £14 million a year for a travel company – Sunshine.co.uk are a UK-based travel agency offering cheap holidays. Within six months of working with Conversion Rate Experts, their conversion rate almost doubled. Read how they did it here…
• Official: Yahoo’s Results Now Come From Bing – It’s official! Yahoo is now officially being powered by Bing.
• How To Secure WordPress Against Disasters & Being Hacked – Here @Alysson talks about necessary steps you need to take to protect your  WordPress blog being hacked.  She shares very insightful ‘how tos’ on ways to implement your sites security.
• Enhanced CPC – a Clever New Google Tool, or Just the Lazy Way to Manage Your Bids? – Enhanced CPC – all sounds good, but will this tool really make that much of a difference? What’s the difference between this and Conversion Optimiser, which also promises to boost your ROI with an easy-to-use bidding tool?
• 62 Queries for Writing Ultimate Guides that Build Links, Leads and Legacy – This content series builds high-trust links because of its thoroughness, emphasis on utility and the inclusion of “info-swag” such as free tools, checklists and widgets.
• How User’s Intention Influence Behavior in Search Results with Eye Tracking Study – New Eye Tracking Study Released July 2010: New study tried to determine whether the intention behind queries affects the way people browse the results page, the relationship between gaze patterns and intentionality while performing queries.
• When to Say Goodbye to a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Client – This post discusses at what point an Internet Marketing company should say goodbye to a client.
• The Death of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – Our newest author, Barry Adams, had an interesting first post where he see’s the future of the internet in ‘appification’ and believes that our future, SEO (Search Engine Optimization)s that is, will be changed far and wide from what we know today. Me? Believe it or not I am not much of a gadget geeek, so I have my doubts. An interesting suposition none-the-less. Give it a read!
• 5 Common Problems (and solutions) with Google Base – The writer remembered how many issues he encountered when creating feeds for clients (especially if you are using a CMS (Content Management System) and not a custom xml feed for 50 or so products) and also how many questions posted by other people were left unanswered. He decided to compile a list of the 5 common problems when dealing with Google Base, with solutions. Very handy.
• 9 Ways to Use Twitter Lists – If you automatically follow everyone who follows you, then you may find your home feed a bit overwhelming. In order to keep up with all of the people you want to follow based on their interests and your connection to them. Here are nine great Twitter lists to create and ways to use them.
• Infographic Case Study: How We Got a Link from CNN, Drove Loads of Trafffic w/ Infographics – An in-depth case study on how WordStream leveraged infographics to build links from highly authoritative sites while generating enormous traffic (and even some leads and sales!) via social media.
• The myth of the Tool Bar PageRank – So, over he last few years I have been endlessly peeved when people speak of Toolbar PageRank in the same breath as actual PageRank. You know, ‘PR is useless’ stuff. Thus my quest to sort that once and for all.. read on and pass it forward!
• New Emphasis: Voting Patterns and Unexceptional Content – Please read the latest post on our Sphinn blog about a new emphasis on enforcing existing guidelines, and asking Sphinn users to be more careful about the content that gets submitted, shared, and voted up. I’ll try to keep an eye on comments during the day (Editors will, too) for any questions.
• Google Blog Search; under the hood – A breakdown by David Harry on Google Blog search and how it actually indexes and serves up posts. Some heavy in-depth analyse based on patents submitted, assessment of quality and what it all means to you, the end user.
• Mess With Your Friends Using Facebook Places – Funny stuff from Samir – SNIP – What many people don’t know about Facebook Places is that instead of just letting me check-in to a place, I can also tag my friends. Where we are, shows up on both our Facebook wall and life stream. So, why not spoof my geo-location and start checking in my friends into random dirty places?
• The Psychology of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – In my humble opinion behavioral psychology has always been at the core of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as a discipline -  “The better you are at detaching from your own inner mind and emotional filters, the better your chance of seeing things from and knowing how to reach the mind/emotional buttons of those people.”  I couldn’t say it better. Nice job Alan.
• Canadian SEO (Search Engine Optimization) IYP Rankings Report 2010 – An awesome report worth going thoroughly into. Huge work done as well.
• Pakistan Floodbait: The End of The Info-Graphic – There are so many people jumping on the wagon of Info-graphics as a form of link building, that it almost becomes irrelevant. The cool kids are already moving on, and finding new ways of building links.
• Why ‘Spam’ is Everywhere & Why That Means Nothing! – Aaron’s reply to Rand’s Webspam post: The big issue with search today is not the existence of spam, but how it is dealt with. For a long period of time Google spent much of their resources fighting spam manually. That worked when spammers were sorta poor and one hit wonders fighting on the edge of the web & few people knew how search worked. But as technology advances & “spammers” keep building a bigger stock of capital eventually Google loses the manual game.
• 7 Social Bookmarking Tools You Should Know About – 7 must have social bookmarking tools that are not very well known, for people who spend a lot of time on places like Digg and StumbleUpon.

New to Sphinn? Want to comment and/or vote on one of these stories? Want to submit something for others to read? You can register here or login if you already have an account. Be sure to read the Sphinn Guidelines to help you get started.

Save $300 by registering now for Search Marketing Expo – SMX East, New York City, October 4-6. Time is running out! Rates increase September 11.

SANTA MONICA, CA–(Marketwire – 09/08/10) – Savings.com, the premier destination for online coupons and coupon codes, today announced that it has been named a finalist for the Publisher People’s Choice Award as part of Commission Junction’s CJYou Awards. The awards will be presented on Wednesday, September 22 in Santa Barbara, California at the annual Commission Junction University (CJU).

Commission Junction is the leading global affiliate marketing glossary solutions provider and a division of ValueClick. The CJYou Awards nominate a select group of advertisers, publishers and agencies to recognize industry leaders and innovators.

The Publisher People’s Choice Award is bestowed upon the publisher that the CJU advertising community believes has shown the strongest partnership qualities and delivered the most value to an advertiser’s affiliate program. Savings.com, which has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in sales to advertisers, was recognized as a leader alongside two other companies.

This nomination comes months after Savings.com was awarded the Advertiser’s Choice Award at the LinkShare Golden Links Award Ceremony, which took place on June 22. The award recognizes the company that has shown the strongest growth and results in 2010. Savings.com was acknowledged as the leader in a pool of 15 nominees.

“We have an outstanding team that strives to meet and exceed the expectations of our merchant partners,” said Craig O’Neill, Head of Merchant Support at Savings.com. “Having recently won the LinkShare award, this nomination comes at an opportune moment that further validates our hard work and motivates us to maintain our positive rapport among advertising partners. We look forward to keeping the momentum to deliver real value and excellence with our service.”

Savings.com is one of the fastest growing privately held companies in the US, and has strong relationships with more than 5,000 merchants and more than 20,000 brands. Savings.com aggregates high quality deals from across the Web, allowing shoppers to easily search, find and share the Web’s top deals like Macy’s coupons, Home Depot coupons, Dell coupons and HP coupons. In addition to providing coupons that are guaranteed to work, shoppers across the country turn to Savings.com to find tips from the site’s popular personal finance blog, newly launched Answers tool and a vital community of online coupon experts, the DealPros.

About Savings.com
Savings.com helps consumers save money every day. The premier online savings Web site and community has the best deals for everything shoppers want, making it easier than ever to search, find and share big savings from top brands and stores. The company’s dedicated team of DealPros® scours the Web to find top offers in every category from designer clothes and baby gear to big-screen TVs and gourmet food. The site’s community of members and savers rates each deal to make sure users find the best stuff first, eliminating the need to spend time sifting through expired coupons and coupon codes that don’t work. Savings.com is a safe haven of high-quality, reliable deals. Savings.com’s sister site, Savoo.co.uk, offers top coupons and deals to UK-based shoppers.

Posted 06 September 2010 10:05am
by Owen Hewitson
with 1 comment

As we approach the pre-Christmas rush many advertisers will be looking
to launch affiliate incentives as part of their fourth quarter
marketing campaigns.

But with affiliate marketing glossary continuing to show
strong growth, advertisers can expect increased competition for
exposure on the best affiliates’ sites. So what makes an affiliate incentive successful and what ideas might advertisers want to avoid?

There are three golden rules in designing affiliate incentives:

• Know what you want to achieve.
  Very often this might not be a simple increase in sales. Recruiting more affiliates, reactivating existing ones, or gaining better placement on affiliates’ sites could also be objectives that you choose to design your incentive around.
• Make it as simple as possible.
  Affiliates will be deluged with communication about incentives in the run-up to Christmas. If they have to read more than a few lines to understand what you are offering or what they have to do to be successful, it is likely to be ignored.
• Make your incentive as inclusive as possible.
  The best-designed incentives are those that have the lowest barrier to entry so that as many affiliates as possible feel they can participate.

Which incentives work

Rather than offering cash prizes, one of the most effective ways to incentivise affiliates is to offer them a ‘money-can’t-buy’ reward. Examples might include VIP tickets to sold-out sporting fixtures, gigs, or other events. Gift and experience advertiser Buyagift can claim to represent the gold standard here, offering six of its affiliates the chance to go on adventure weekends to destinations such as Monaco and Las Vegas.

Advertisers looking to recruit new affiliates to their programmes should work with their affiliate network to identify strong affiliates with a proven record in their sector, and approach them with a generous private commission increase for the first month on the programme. Similarly, if you are looking for ways to reactivate your existing affiliate base, start by looking for those that have dropped off over the last year and make contact to negotiate a private, performance-based incentive in return for additional exposure. Make sure you can be flexible with their creative requirements to get the most out of this: consider offering co-branded banners, email creative or landing pages.

Whilst there are drawbacks to using cash as an incentive, you might still consider offering bonuses to affiliates who drive particularly on-target customers. For example, you may value new customers over existing ones or, conversely, loyal and persistent ones.

Consider awarding affiliates bonuses for driving these kinds of customers, perhaps giving a £100 bonus for every tenth new customer, for instance. Often this is more effective than a prize draw or an incentive based on who sells the most as affiliates are clear about what you as an advertiser are looking for: do x and they get y; they are not dependent on how well other affiliates participating in the incentive are doing.

What doesn’t work

The crudest incentives are those that reward only affiliates generating the most sales. The problem here is that the same, top-performing affiliates will always win whilst smaller affiliates will feel shut out. Instead, advertisers should consider ways to re-engage their base. A very simple way do this is to reward on the percentage increase, rather than the number, of sales produced.

Winner-takes-all prize draws are also unattractive to the vast majority of affiliates for similar reasons. Instead of offering one large prize, advertisers should try to keep their incentives as inclusive as possible and offer a number of smaller prizes to attract more participants.

As well as offering trips to Bali, Cannes and Venice, experience retailer Red Letter Days won this year’s A4U Award for Best Advertiser Incentive thanks to the inclusiveness of their offer.

By tiering the volume targets and increasing the prize values as the targets got higher they were able to offer guaranteed prizes to a wider range of affiliates who in return produced collectively a 152% increase in revenue through the affiliate channel year-on-year. The chances of winning ‘low-chance’ or ‘no-chance’ contests are vastly disproportionate to the effort affiliates would need to expend to win them. One affiliate noted wryly, “If I wanted the ‘chance’ of winning something I would play the lottery”.

Being an affiliate is no longer a bedroom art. The industry is now fully mature and many affiliates are themselves sizeable businesses. Cash prizes of £100 no longer motivate them as the money is swallowed up in the company’s coffers, reinvested and, of course, taxed. Other low-value but ubiquitous incentive prizes include Xboxs, LCD TVs and iPods: anyone wanting one of these is likely to have bought one already. However, iPads are new enough to still have currency as an incentive and, like laptops, are productivity tools that affiliates will always find a use for.

Lastly, advertisers should remember to follow through on what they have promised and reward successful affiliates for their efforts. One advertiser running a “free flights” incentive was forced to admit the flight on offer did not involve getting on a plane; rather the prize was a flight of the kind attached to the back of a dart!

In preparing Christmas marketing plans, advertisers should remember that affiliates represent a rich tapestry of innovative opportunities but that competition for their support is fierce. With most affiliates joined to a plethora of programmes a well thought-out incentive will grab their attention and engage them creatively at the most lucrative time of year.

LOS ANGELES–(BUSINESS WIRE)–BRAVADA International Ltd. (www.BravadaWomen.com)
(Pink Sheets:MFLI) announced today that it has began its North
American online affiliate marketing glossary program for its full line of women’s
fitness wear, fashion activewear and in-home fitness and yoga
equipment at BravadaWomen.com. BRAVADA’s affiliate marketing glossary program
has been devised to mimic the essence of a franchise system. Approved
online BRAVADA affiliate partners will be provided with BRAVADA Women’s
Athletica banners and marketing materials to place on their websites
that is linked to BravadaWomen.com. BRAVADA’s affiliate software then
tracks the traffic for each affiliate, records all respective sales
transactions as well as repeat orders and pays each affiliate a share of
the monthly revenue that has been derived by the affiliate.

There is no limit to the number of online affiliates BRAVADA can include
in its program for its women’s
athletic wear. The potential market penetration can be into the
thousands of affiliates with the huge amount of national Television,
weekly magazine and online exposure that BRAVADA is expecting over the
next few months.

BRAVADA affiliate banners include high profile marketing campaigns of
product images with Melanie B as well as additional imagery from
relationships BRAVADA is in the process of concluding. The combination
of national brand exposure and highly recognizable imagery will be a
powerful combination in implementing BRAVADA’s affiliate program across
North America.

For more information regarding BRAVADA’s affiliate program:
Phone:
1-310-498-0040 or Bravada@BravadaLtd.com

About BRAVADA International Ltd

BRAVADA is a publicly traded company specializing in innovative media,
health, fitness and lifestyle products that owns and operates BRAVADA
Women’s Athletica, an exclusively women’s fitness clothes and sexy
women’s gym wear retail store and BRAVADA Productions which develops
exciting brands through the creation of internet and television media
content. BRAVADA is dedicated to providing the highest quality products,
services and media that enriches and provides beneficial betterment for
individuals, both physically and emotionally. Through its dedication to
quality and innovation, BRAVADA delivers its products, services and
media by empowering individuals through positive lifestyles and
experiences.

This news release may contain statements about future expectations,
plans, prospects or performance of BRAVADA International Ltd that
constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor
Provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
These forward-looking statements generally can be identified by phrases
such as BRAVADA or its management “believes,” “intends,” “expects,”
“anticipates,” “foresees,” “forecasts,” “estimates” or other words or
phrases of similar import. Similarly, statements herein that describe
the Company’s business strategy, outlook, objectives, plans, intentions
or goals also are forward-looking statements. All such forward-looking
statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could
cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking
statements. “VATA Brasil” is a Trademark of VATA Brasil Inc. “BRAVADA” a
trademark of BRAVADA International Ltd. SEO
and web optimization
provided by InternetRankingSecrets.com.

If you’re running a large site that sells a lot of products, you’ve probably had to come up with a plan to deal with pagination: showing products over several pages of otherwise similar content. That was the topic of an interesting discussion in the Google Webmaster Help forums recently, and it also reached the Sphinn home page. Keeping your WordPress installation secure also went hot last week on Sphinn, as did an article about the prevalence of search spam and the battle between search engines and spammers.

This is the latest in a weekly look at the stories that were “hot” on Sphinn in the past week. We’ll post these recaps every Monday. The stories appear in reverse chronological order — i.e., the most recent “hot” stories are at the top.

Hot On Sphinn: August 23 to August 29, 2010

• Time for another look at TrustRank concepts – This one has been on my mind for 6 months, finally got around to finishing it up. Exceptional content? Dunno, but damned important and over-looked. Is it from SEJ? Yea, sorry Michael… Am I also be a cheecky fella today? U bet, sleep deprivation does wonders! hee hee… But heed these words I tell ya!
• Google Helping Slimeballs Profit from Golfer’s Death – Terrible story about people who are taking advantage of an expired domain and Google to profit from the name and death of a young female golfer.
• Google Responds To Pagination SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Questions – A summary of one of the most detailed discussions on the topic of pagination with a Googler and some of the brightest SEO (Search Engine Optimization)s covering the various options.
• Google universal ranking factors: an overview of resources – A great collection of resources and links for all types of Google Universal Search ranking factors, from video to news, from blogsearch to maps. Assembled by Jeroen van Eck from State of Search.
• How we made an extra £14 million a year for a travel company – Sunshine.co.uk are a UK-based travel agency offering cheap holidays. Within six months of working with Conversion Rate Experts, their conversion rate almost doubled. Read how they did it here…
• Official: Yahoo’s Results Now Come From Bing – It’s official! Yahoo is now officially being powered by Bing.
• How To Secure WordPress Against Disasters & Being Hacked – Here @Alysson talks about necessary steps you need to take to protect your  WordPress blog being hacked.  She shares very insightful ‘how tos’ on ways to implement your sites security.
• Enhanced CPC – a Clever New Google Tool, or Just the Lazy Way to Manage Your Bids? – Enhanced CPC – all sounds good, but will this tool really make that much of a difference? What’s the difference between this and Conversion Optimiser, which also promises to boost your ROI with an easy-to-use bidding tool?
• 62 Queries for Writing Ultimate Guides that Build Links, Leads and Legacy – This content series builds high-trust links because of its thoroughness, emphasis on utility and the inclusion of “info-swag” such as free tools, checklists and widgets.
• How User’s Intention Influence Behavior in Search Results with Eye Tracking Study – New Eye Tracking Study Released July 2010: New study tried to determine whether the intention behind queries affects the way people browse the results page, the relationship between gaze patterns and intentionality while performing queries.
• When to Say Goodbye to a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Client – This post discusses at what point an Internet Marketing company should say goodbye to a client.
• The Death of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – Our newest author, Barry Adams, had an interesting first post where he see’s the future of the internet in ‘appification’ and believes that our future, SEO (Search Engine Optimization)s that is, will be changed far and wide from what we know today. Me? Believe it or not I am not much of a gadget geeek, so I have my doubts. An interesting suposition none-the-less. Give it a read!
• 5 Common Problems (and solutions) with Google Base – The writer remembered how many issues he encountered when creating feeds for clients (especially if you are using a CMS (Content Management System) and not a custom xml feed for 50 or so products) and also how many questions posted by other people were left unanswered. He decided to compile a list of the 5 common problems when dealing with Google Base, with solutions. Very handy.
• 9 Ways to Use Twitter Lists – If you automatically follow everyone who follows you, then you may find your home feed a bit overwhelming. In order to keep up with all of the people you want to follow based on their interests and your connection to them. Here are nine great Twitter lists to create and ways to use them.
• Infographic Case Study: How We Got a Link from CNN, Drove Loads of Trafffic w/ Infographics – An in-depth case study on how WordStream leveraged infographics to build links from highly authoritative sites while generating enormous traffic (and even some leads and sales!) via social media.
• The myth of the Tool Bar PageRank – So, over he last few years I have been endlessly peeved when people speak of Toolbar PageRank in the same breath as actual PageRank. You know, ‘PR is useless’ stuff. Thus my quest to sort that once and for all.. read on and pass it forward!
• New Emphasis: Voting Patterns and Unexceptional Content – Please read the latest post on our Sphinn blog about a new emphasis on enforcing existing guidelines, and asking Sphinn users to be more careful about the content that gets submitted, shared, and voted up. I’ll try to keep an eye on comments during the day (Editors will, too) for any questions.
• Google Blog Search; under the hood – A breakdown by David Harry on Google Blog search and how it actually indexes and serves up posts. Some heavy in-depth analyse based on patents submitted, assessment of quality and what it all means to you, the end user.
• Mess With Your Friends Using Facebook Places – Funny stuff from Samir – SNIP – What many people don’t know about Facebook Places is that instead of just letting me check-in to a place, I can also tag my friends. Where we are, shows up on both our Facebook wall and life stream. So, why not spoof my geo-location and start checking in my friends into random dirty places?
• The Psychology of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – In my humble opinion behavioral psychology has always been at the core of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as a discipline -  “The better you are at detaching from your own inner mind and emotional filters, the better your chance of seeing things from and knowing how to reach the mind/emotional buttons of those people.”  I couldn’t say it better. Nice job Alan.
• Canadian SEO (Search Engine Optimization) IYP Rankings Report 2010 – An awesome report worth going thoroughly into. Huge work done as well.
• Pakistan Floodbait: The End of The Info-Graphic – There are so many people jumping on the wagon of Info-graphics as a form of link building, that it almost becomes irrelevant. The cool kids are already moving on, and finding new ways of building links.
• Why ‘Spam’ is Everywhere & Why That Means Nothing! – Aaron’s reply to Rand’s Webspam post: The big issue with search today is not the existence of spam, but how it is dealt with. For a long period of time Google spent much of their resources fighting spam manually. That worked when spammers were sorta poor and one hit wonders fighting on the edge of the web & few people knew how search worked. But as technology advances & “spammers” keep building a bigger stock of capital eventually Google loses the manual game.
• 7 Social Bookmarking Tools You Should Know About – 7 must have social bookmarking tools that are not very well known, for people who spend a lot of time on places like Digg and StumbleUpon.

New to Sphinn? Want to comment and/or vote on one of these stories? Want to submit something for others to read? You can register here or login if you already have an account. Be sure to read the Sphinn Guidelines to help you get started.

Save $300 by registering now for Search Marketing Expo – SMX East, New York City, October 4-6. Time is running out! Rates increase September 11.

Newswise — The National Institutes of Health will launch a multi-year study this fall to look at the potential health effects from the oil spill in the Gulf region. The Gulf Worker Study, announced by NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., in June, is in response to the largest oil spill in U.S. history, caused by the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Dr. Collins pledged $10 million in NIH funding for the study’s initial phases.

To help expedite the launch of the study, BP will contribute an additional $10 million to NIH for this and other important health research. The BP funding will come through the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GRI). The GRI is a ten-year, $500 million independent research program established by BP to better understand and mitigate the environmental and potential health effects of the Gulf spill. The NIH will have full autonomy regarding the distribution of the $10 million, with input from external scientific experts in environmental health and who are familiar with the Gulf region.

“It was clear to us that we need to begin immediately studying the health of the workers most directly involved in responding to this crisis,” said Collins. “The donation from BP will help speed our work with CDC, EPA, and other federal agencies, academia, as well as state and local partners to carry out this important study.” Collins asked the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of the NIH, to lead the research project.

The study will focus on workers’ exposure to oil and dispersant products, and potential health consequences such as respiratory, neurobehavioral, carcinogenic, and immunological conditions. The study is also expected to evaluate mental health concerns and other oil spill-related stressors such as job loss, family disruption, and financial uncertainties.

“Clean-up workers are likely to be the most heavily exposed of all population groups in the Gulf Coast region,” said Dale Sandler, Ph.D., chief of the Epidemiology Branch at NIEHS and lead researcher on the study. “We plan to enroll workers with varying levels of exposure. For example, we hope to recruit workers involved in oil burning, skimming and booming, equipment decontamination, wildlife cleanup, and also those with lower exposure such as shoreline clean-up workers. We’ll also recruit some people who completed the worker safety training, but did not have the opportunity to do any clean-up work. They will be our study controls.”

Sandler added, “What we learn from this study may help us prepare for future incidents that put clean-up workers at risk.”

The current focus of NIEHS is to ensure that the Gulf communities most affected by the oil spill have a say in the study’s design and implementation, as well as input into future research directions. The NIEHS is hosting webinars and other community engagement activities to obtain input.

“Community involvement and participation is critical to the success of this study,” said Linda Birnbaum, Ph.D., director of NIEHS and the National Toxicology Program.

NIH and the Department of Health and Human Services have had a continuous presence in the Gulf since the explosion occurred. The NIEHS Worker Education and Training Program (WETP) used its 24 years of experience preparing people for hazardous conditions to contribute to training more than 100,000 workers in the Gulf so they could safely clean up the oil spill. The WETP also distributed thousands of pocket-sized training booklets in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese, so workers have the information they need to protect themselves. The WETP materials are available at http://niehs.nih.gov/wetp/index.cfm?id=2495.

The NIEHS supports research to understand the effects of the environment on human health and is part of NIH. For more information on environmental health topics, visit our Web site at http://www.niehs.nih.gov. Subscribe to one or more of the NIEHS news lists (http://www.niehs.nih.gov/news/releases/newslist/index.cfm) to stay current on NIEHS news, press releases, grant opportunities, training, events, and publications.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) — The Nation’s Medical Research Agency — includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.

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If Horace Greeley were giving career advice today, he would probably say something like, “Go website, young dude, go web.”

In today’s changing high tech job market, young people and college students should be developing their own professional websites and blogs while they are in college and even high school. In addition to theoretical and analytical courses, colleges should teach real world practical skills such as constructing a website. Schools need to teach students that the internet is much more than a social networking tool or a way to research papers and projects.

I teach Journalism at Temple University and Arcadia University. At the beginning of each semester, I’m surprised at the small number of students who have developed their own professional style websites. Everyone is on Facebook or MySpace, but only 10 or so of the approximately 500 students that I’ve taught over the last seven years had their own website, which featured their writing samples, articles, or other work. Most of the college students that I know at my gym don’t have websites. Many schools, including the ones I teach at, offer website design courses, but not everyone takes advantage of them. I now emphasize to all my students that developing their own professional website while in college can be an effective marketing tool and a great way to get internships, part-time jobs, full-time jobs, exposure, and extra cash.

For example, one of my former students, Leah Kauffman, the voice and co-creator of the Obama Girl videos, was a junior at Temple University when she collaborated with others to create BarelyPolitical.com. She has been interviewed in many media outlets, including ABC News, Cosmopolitan, and MSNBC. Kauffman also created her own website, which has her bio, news articles in which she was quoted, and information about her singing career and appearances.

Walter Cherepinsky was a senior at Central High School in Philadelphia when he created WalterFootball.com, which is now recognized as one of the top pro football sites in the country. Now 28 years old, his site garners over 50 million hits a year and he writes columns on fantasy football for USA Today Weekend during the NFL season.

Kauffman and Cherepinsky are examples of high school and college students who were able to launch successful web ventures that furthered their careers.

The most common reasons that my students give for not creating their own websites are that it’s too complicated to set up, that they don’t have the time to work on a website, and that it would be too expensive.

However, as a 49-year-old self-professed technological idiot, I can attest that creating a website isn’t as daunting a task as it seems. After years of procrastinating, I finally pushed myself this summer to create my new website www.professorlarry.com . My site is fairly simple; it doesn’t have too many bells or whistles, but it has my bio, some of my writing samples, links, and a blog. It took me around one week to set up, with the help of GoDaddy.com‘s technical support advice and the ease of using WordPress.

As far as finding to time to work on a website, once you learn how to add content to your site, it isn’t that time consuming to add new blog posts. Regarding costs, it’s possible to create and maintain a website for less than $100 a year, which is the cost of some college textbooks. In the long run, the time and money that you invest will be worth it.

Bloggers and website creators are gaining increased respect and exposure in society and the mass media. Every time Jib Jab comes out with a new video, it gets played on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Ana Marie Cox cultivated a platform and an audience as the blogger “Wonkette” and is now writing regularly for Time Magazine and The Daily Beast. Bill Simmons, who writes “The Sports Guy” column for ESPN.com, started his “Boston’s Sports Guy” website when he was in his late twenties and developed into an internet celebrity.

Unlike Facebook or MySpace, professional websites shouldn’t have pictures of you and your friends chugging beer while standing next to a keg. You can tailor your website to your interests and passions. If you love sports, create a website where you write your thoughts on the topic. If you love music, write music reviews of CDs and live performances. Creating a website can showcase your individual talents and skills.

Agents and book editors check websites and blogs written by young people to try to discover new, unique voices.

In addition, many employers like to Google the names of their potential employees or interns. It would be much better if they discovered your professional website, as opposed to your Facebook or MySpace site, which could contain content that portrays you as being immature.

Another reason to create your own website during college is to earn money. According to collegefinancialaidguide.com:

There are legitimate ways for students to earn money for college online. One way to earn money online is to set up a website about your favorite topic and earn money by placing ads on the site with AdSense. Another way to make money online with your own website is by referring visitors to other online merchants, otherwise known as affiliate marketing glossary.

When creating your own website or blog, it’s usually best to focus on a specific topic that you passionately care about. You can create a static website with your resume, biography, and writing samples, or you can develop an interactive blog or website that you update frequently. To increase traffic to your site, try to trade links with other websites that deal with the same or similar topic. The more traffic and web hits that your site gets, the more ad revenue you’ll make.

Hopefully, schools and individual teachers will require or at least strongly encourage students to create their own professional websites. The digital natives might seem restless about this at first, but they’ll warm up to the idea eventually.