What's your title?

The title on your business cards may say a lot of what kind of person you are, how big your company is and also in some cases what you actually do for a living . Most people owning a small company or working for themselves print business cards with Cheif Executive Officer (CEO) as their title because they think it sounds cool and may impress the people they give their business cards to. If you're company is a big one with a famous name like Coca-Cola, Verisign or Name Intelligence then it works, people will get impressed by the CEO title on your business cards, but what if your company is a smaller company or if you're self-employed?

If you're self-employed or working for your own small company with just a few employees, then any other creative title may be more impressive then CEO because the user may actually think you're a piece in a much bigger puzzle . I for example got Business Development Director on my business cards because that's more correct if you look at the kind of work I do here at Xavier Media. I develop the company and it's services . I also got that title because the CEO of Xavier Media gave me that job

So instead of choosing CEO or Managing Director, go for a title that describe the work you do. That's much cooler and may be even more impressive then just something that everyone got printed on the business cards.

/Andreas

Create your own directory with Linkmachine

If you would like to start your own directory like XavierMedia.ws then you should have a look at Linkmachine. Linkmachine is actually a reciprocal link exchange management software that makes it easy to find and contact quality link partners, generate custom link pages that match your site, and keep track of reciprocal links. But it works perfect is you want to create your own directory too.

LinkMachine is a PHP application that runs on your web server, so it can automatically update your link pages the moment a change is made - no need to upload files each time a new link is added. Linkmachine will also check for reciprocal and broken links automatically so you don't have to worry at all about that. If a link is missing or broken Linkmachine send the owner an email. If the link is still broken or missing after a few days a reminder is sent out and after a few days the link is deactivated. All link pages are automatically updated!



Linkmachine is really easy to use and no programming or HTML knowledge is needed to have the software up and running on your site. If you want to can easily create your own template so the directory looks exactly like the rest of your site (like we've done at XavierMedia.ws), or you can use a ready-made template.

The key to success for a website or online business is good search engine ranking. All of the major search engines use link popularity to determine how well a site will rank - so
the more high quality, relevant links that lead to your site, the higher it will rank. LinkMachine makes it easy to get the links you need.

Get Linkmachine you too!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone! We at Xavier Media hope to see you all soon again after the holidays and we're planning some new cool services for you all during 2008 so keep visiting our sites.

You have still time to join our contest in our blog where you can win free advertising credits from EntreCards. Check out the Xavier Media Blog for more information on that.

You also got a few days to get your own domain names at discounted prices from eXavier.com. So if you got the time and want to save a few bucks, check it out.

/Andreas

With or without www?

With or without www is simply one of the biggest questions you need to ask yourself when starting a new site, but unfortunately most people simply forget to decide.

First of all we need to talk about why it's important to decide on with or without. One of the reasons is the search engines. Links to sampleaddress.com and www.sampleaddress.com are counted as links to two different sites by search engines which will impact negatively on your SERP. Instead of finding 20 links to www.sampleaddress.com search engiens may find 10 links to www.sampleaddress.com and 10 links to sampleaddress.com.

One other reason is branding. How would you like your visitors to remember your site? At XavierMedia.com we're using www, but at our new site adv.erti.se we're not (you can still type www.adv.erti.se and it will work).

If you're using www you should remember that sometimes visitors type a few w too much or too little. So if you're using you should make sure that w.sampleaddress.com, ww.sampleaddress.com and wwww.sampleaddress.com will work too as a service to your visitors.

If you have a really popular site you may even consider to register wwwsampleaddress.com just to be on the safe side (www.sampleaddress.com without the dot).

Are you using www for your sites?

/Andreas

.RS to lauch in January

The Serbian top level domain (TLD) will launch on the 10 of January 2008. The cool thing with this domain is that it's so easy to create domain hacks.

[b]What actually is a domain hack?[/b]
It's a domain name where both the domain and the top level domain spell out a word together. Some examples are
* del.icio.us - delicious
* mon.itor.us - monitor us
* adv.erti.se - advertise
* bjornb.org - Björn Borg
* cr.yp.to - crypto
* blo.gs - blogs
More examples can be found here.

What's so cool with .RS?
A lot of words are ending with the letters RS like advertisers, adventurers, webmasters, domainers, bloggers (the list can be as long as you like ).
A list of 4000 words ending with RS can be found here.

To find out more about the .RS TLD, please have a look at nic.rs.

LearningPHP.com

Finally we've done something good with our domain name LearningPHP.com. For a long time this domain has been parked with just a basic article about PHP on the main page, but know we've integrated that domain name into the rest of our forum at XavierForum.com.

Because of the integration with our forum, not only Xavier Media staff can post articles, but anyone with PHP knowledge can! The visitors can also post questions and comments to the articles.

Check out the new and improved LearningPHP.com.

/Andreas

Subscribe to our feeds

We've just updated the feeds page at feeds.xaviermedia.com. You have a couple of new feeds to choose from like the World Trade Forum feed and the Ad Bazar feed.

You also find the Xavier Media blog feed hosted by FeedBurner at our updated feed page.

If you like the contest we're currently running at the Xavier Media blog then you should subscribe to the above feed so you don't miss the next time we have that contest

/Andreas

Why blog?

Why should you blog? If you got something you're selling or something you want to promote (like affiliate programs) then you should definitely blog about it. I for example are blogging about domain names, hosting and other webmaster related stuff at the Xavier Media blog where I'm publishing most of my posts is packed with ads for my companies products. By blogging you also show your new and existing customers that you know at least something about your area of expertise (you're blogging so you must know at least something about what you're writing ).

Posting quality articles in your blog is also a fantastic SEO technique since the search engines will find your blog posts. When I'm posting something new in one of my blogs I usually get an email from Google Alerts that Google has crawled my new post in less then 15 minutes from the time of posting. That's really impressive and also something really good for your company (the more quality pages the search engines got about you and your company, the bigger chance new customers will end up on your site ).

So how do I start blogging? Well, it's easy. There are several free services out there on the Internet like Blogger and Wordpress, but I prefer to use my own domain name for my blogs instead of subdomains to domain names owned by someone else. That's because then I can move my blog anywhere I like and I can also do whatever I like with the blog. It's also better to use your own domain name when you're building your own brand or trademark and it looks much more professional.

When you register a domain name for as little as $1.99 at eXavier.com your also get a free blog ("QuickBlog").

/Andreas

Why blog?

Why should you blog? If you got something you're selling or something you want to promote (like affiliate programs) then you should definitely blog about it. I for example are blogging about domain names, hosting and other webmaster related stuff at the Xavier Media blog where I'm publishing most of my posts is packed with ads for my companies products. By blogging you also show your new and existing customers that you know at least something about your area of expertise (you're blogging so you must know at least something about what you're writing ).

Posting quality articles in your blog is also a fantastic SEO technique since the search engines will find your blog posts. When I'm posting something new in one of my blogs I usually get an email from Google Alerts that Google has crawled my new post in less then 15 minutes from the time of posting. That's really impressive and also something really good for your company (the more quality pages the search engines got about you and your company, the bigger chance new customers will end up on your site ).

So how do I start blogging? Well, it's easy. There are several free services out there on the Internet like Blogger and Wordpress, but I prefer to use my own domain name for my blogs instead of subdomains to domain names owned by someone else. That's because then I can move my blog anywhere I like and I can also do whatever I like with the blog. It's also better to use your own domain name when you're building your own brand or trademark and it looks much more professional.

When you register a domain name for as little as $1.99 at eXavier.com your also get a free blog ("QuickBlog").

/Andreas

Wikis, wikis and even more wikis

Oh, my God. There are wikis everywhere on the Internet today and they seems to get even more by the minute (or sometimes even by the second ). You got Million Dollar Wiki, Million Euro Wiki, Five Dollar Wiki, One Buck Wiki, Quarter Wiki and of course the original wiki and mother of all: WikiPedia.org.

The trend of new wikis all the time is reminding me of the trend with Million Dollar Homepage. Do you remember that site? I'm not surprised if you have forgotten about it because most people have. Million Dollar Homepage was a page where you could buy pixles (small pictures of 10 x 10 pixles) linked to any site you wanted. When all the pixles had been sold the owner would have earned a million dollar (less a few percent in payment processing fees).

When the Million Dollar Homepage got attention in the news all around the world the Internet got all filled with all types of pixels selling web sites where you could buy pixels of all kind at all kinds of prices. It didn't take long before all the pixels selling sites started dying and soon everyone had forgotten about them :(

I think we will see the same trend soon with all the Wikis because I saw that one of the bigger wikis is up for sale at SitePoint. I think that indicates that the owner wants to cash in on his work before everyone forgets about his site. What do you think?

Also why would you spend money on buying just one page in a wiki when you can get your own domain name (that you also control) + a blog with hundreds, maybe even thousands of pages, for as little as $1.99 at eXavier.com?

/Andreas

Domain name sales - .biz, .tv and .mobi

Don't forget about the really cool domain name sales we got over at eXavier.com.

AMAZING .COM SALE
Check out our hot prices on .COM domains and other domain names -- from only $6.95* per year at eXavier.com.

$6.99 .BIZ New Domain Sale
Get business rolling…with your very own .BIZ domain name. Only $6.99 per year at eXavier.com until December 31st.

.INFO domains - Your own informational domain
There's no better way to get your information on the 'Net than with your own .INFO domain. This domain name is currently on sale at eXavier.com for fantastic $1.99/year!

.MOBI SALE!
Give your customers on-the-go access with a .MOBI. There are four times as many mobile phones as there are PCs, and 1.8 billion people already have access to the mobile Web. Make no mistake, "mobile" is the wave of the future… and .MOBI domains are playing a key role in that wave. The world's first Internet domain specific to mobile devices, .MOBI names have already been registered across 104 countries in just the first few months of availability. Register your .MOBI for only $7.99!

.TV SALE
Looking to channel your audience to your video and multimedia site? Then a .TV domain is something for you. At eXavier.com you can get yours for only $29.99.

Domains By Proxy
Did you know that when you register a domain, your name, address, email address and phone number are immediately made available to anyone who wants to see them? That's right. Your personal information is exposed 24 hours a day, everyday, to anyone, anywhere. Protect yourself from spam, fraud, stalkers and worse by keeping your name, address, email and phone number private with Domains by Proxy. Now only $1.95 per domain name!

Don't forget that you can save like never before with our lowest price ever on domain names -- only $1.99 with each and every non-domain purchase.

Visit eXavier.com to register your domain names today.

All offers expire at December 31st 2007 unless otherwise stated.

"The .se drop"

On the 25th of March 2006 I published a list of popular top level domain names (TLD) and the number of pages hosted on each TLD. When Xavier Media some time later started counting the number of pages on a regular basis for Xavier Media Whois Database (can be found at whois.xaviermedia.com) we noticed a slow drop in rank for the Swedish top level domain (.se).

On the 25th of March 2006 the .se TLD was found on the 14th place on the list, but on the toplist from today (11th of December 2007) the .se TLD is only on 21st place! Is the .se domain loosing ground to other top level domains? I would say yes. The .com TLD is really popular in many countries and also in Sweden. The .nu domain is not as popular as it used to be (years ago), but it's still being used for web sites (nu is the Swedish word for now).



It's going to be interesting to see if this development continues....

/Andreas

Here's todays TOP 40:

Number of pages hosted on TLD domains 2007/12/11:
1. .com - 17 800 000 000 pages
2. .org - 2 190 000 000 pages
3. .jp - 2 120 000 000 pages
4. .net - 1 610 000 000 pages
5. .de - 1 410 000 000 pages
6. .cn - 934 000 000 pages
7. .ru - 886 000 000 pages
8. .uk - 840 000 000 pages
9. .edu - 601 000 000 pages
10. .it - 395 000 000 pages
11. .nl - 361 000 000 pages
12. .pl - 294 000 000 pages
13. .fr - 280 000 000 pages
14. .tw - 276 000 000 pages
15. .gov - 261 000 000 pages
16. .us - 246 000 000 pages
17. .ca - 240 000 000 pages
18. .au - 232 000 000 pages
19. .info - 163 000 000 pages
20. .ch - 160 000 000 pages
21. .se - 152 000 000 pages
22. .dk - 130 000 000 pages
23. .br - 130 000 000 pages
24. .at - 121 000 000 pages
25. .es - 116 000 000 pages
26. .be - 112 000 000 pages
27. .no - 109 000 000 pages
28. .hk - 86 800 000 pages
29. .fi - 79 200 000 pages
30. .hu - 73 600 000 pages
31. .cc - 64 700 000 pages
32. .nz - 55 200 000 pages
33. .biz - 51 500 000 pages
34. .ar - 47 900 000 pages
35. .tv - 47 600 000 pages
36. .eu - 44 700 000 pages
37. .il - 44 200 000 pages
38. .za - 35 500 000 pages
39. .gr - 34 300 000 pages
40. .th - 30 700 000 pages

46. .nu - 22 800 000 pages

Source: Xavier Media

Will a .us domain get poor ranking in search engines?

I saw a post about that some time ago in a webmaster forum. Since I myself own a couple of .us domains and I also got a lot of other country code domain names I started doing some research on this subject.

Field study 1: I started my research by visiting one of the biggest .us sites, del.icio.us, and selected the first two keywords I could find on their site: social bookmarking. I then pointed by browser to Google and entered "social bookmarking" (without the "") in the search field. As number two in the search result I found del.icio.us, so I guess that's acceptable.

Field study 2: I visited another big .us web site, mon.itor.us, and did the same thing as with del.icio.us but using the keywords "free websites performance". The results where almost as good as in the case of del.icio.us because I found mon.itor.us as number three in the search results. I did another search, but this time for just "websites performance" and mon.itor.us was found as number four in the results.

These two field studies show us that it's possible to build a successful and high ranking website using a .us domain name . It shouldn't be any different if you use a .uk, .se, .dk, .eu or whatever top level domain for your site.

If you got more examples of successful and high ranking .us websites, please feel free to let me know

/Andreas

Great hosting deals at eXavier.com

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* 5 GB Space
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Get any of our hosting packages and get a domain name for only $1.99!!

Old forums deleted

We just did a database clean-up and deleted all forums with no posts for over 90 days over at Xavier Forum Hosting.

At Xavier Forum Hosting you can get your own discussion forum for free. If you also would like to make some money on free forum hosting you can check out our partner page where you can earn some extra money :D

/Andreas

November & December 2007 - Entrecards.com

I have just found an amazing way to promote your blog and to find new cool blogs to read. It's called EntreCard and it's a web 2.0 business card in cyberspace :)

In our blog at blog.xaviermedia.com you'll find two videos explaining how it all works. One of the many good things with this service is that you don't have to pay anything: It's free!

To join Entrecards you too, simply visit our blog at blog.xaviermedia.com and click on the Entrecard logo :D Yes, it's that easy!

Another cool thing with Entrecards is that you can setup advertising campaigns to promote your own blog in blogs similar to yours :D All you have to pay for the ads are a few credits you've earned while reading interesting blogs.

/Andreas

A new domain: adv.erti.se

Xavier Media just purchased a new and cool domain name: adv.erti.se (well, actually we registered erti.se and created a sub domain called adv).

Anyway, we need some ideas for what this name could be used for, so please post here if you got any ideas.

/Andreas