Ok so this is a few days old but I didn’t get around to posting it until now. Plus it’s Memorial Day so I didn’t want to do a too in-depth post. Anyway, if you haven’t heard, Feedburner was just recently purchased by Google for $100 Million. I view this as a very solid move on Google’s part because Feedburner is at the top of the Web 2.0 world right now. Other related services such as Technorati, BumpZee, etc are all things that a blog owner should not be without. Along with Google Analytics and Feedburner traffic stats you can easily keep track of pretty much anything on your blog.

Chat rooms have always been popular. They aren’t nearly as popular as they were in the mid to late 90’s, but even so chat rooms are always a crowd pleaser. I recently added chat to some of my websites and I have to say that I definitely think chat rooms are a good thing to add. There are a few pros and cons, however, that you should be aware of before adding a chat room.

First and foremost, chat rooms do not result in added content to your site. Unlike forums or blogs, chat conversations are not generally accessible by gusts and visitors after the window is closed. In fact, chats are almost always only visible from the time a visitor enters the chat room. It’s not a very good way to build content, but, people love chatting and by adding a chat room you can give your users yet another way to network and become a community.

Following along with yesterday’s blog, today I’ll talk about things that you SHOULD do on a day to day basis in order to stay focused.

1. Set Goals: Whether you run a blog, a forum, a news site, a service, or really any type of online business, you are in it to make money. How much you make and how soon you make it are up to you. How motivated are you? Are you a goal setter? When you work for yourself it’s easy to have a main goal in mind, but often times it’s easier to reach that goal if you break it down. If you have a blog then decided in advance how often you will update it. If you have forums, set a goal of how many posts you will make per day, and how active you will be. Participating in your own websites is often times the key to growth. If the admin leaves then the rest will follow. Set strict goals and be very adamant about reaching them.

If you are like me, you aren’t necessarily always using your time in the best way you could. Running an internet business can easily turn into running an internet business while watching movie clips, listening to new music, chatting, etc. The internet truly has become something that has been able to capture the interest of almost anybody who knows how to use a computer. We are constantly bombarded with possible distractions while we “work”, and soon working can turn into “pretending to work”.

A while back when I was considering selling off a majority of my online ventures I decided to have a heart to heart talk with myself. It was time to decide what my job title actually was going to be and how many hours a day I was going to work. If you approach your online business casually, you will have a hobby. If you approach it as a career, you’ll have a paycheck. Here are some things that you may need to consider while you work at your computer.

Dell has been struggling lately. Sales are down and competition is up. Dell is not about to fail though. They have some tricks up their sleeves yet. You don’t get to be the #1 supplier of home pc’s and office pc’s alike by being stupid. While Dell is going through some bumps in the road, it seems as if they may have just come to a wide open straightaway. The answer for the computer manufacturing giant may very well lie in the hands of the big boys over at Wal-Mart.

According to Forbes, Dell will begin selling desktop pc’s through over 3,000 Wal-Mart stores starting on June 10th. That’s right. Buying a Dell computer just became extremely easy. If you haven’t been the observant type you probably didn’t realize that Dell is not currently available in retail stores. It’s always been Sony, Gateway, Toshiba, HP, but not Dell. Dell is the one that you get free magazines and catalogs from every few months. The deals are great and so are the computers. That’s how Dell became #1, by cutting out the middlemen.

In the domain name world there are a lot of investors and speculators. I was recently approached by somebody looking to invest a good deal of cash into purchasing several of my domain names. I could have walked away with high four figures but there was one thing that made me say no. This person was a middle man. He was looking to flip the domains in a year or so for a good profit, a profit that I also would not mind waiting for.

It’s all in how you play your game. If you are in it for the short game then a profit of a few thousand dollars might be what you are after. If you are patient and can hold out for the long run then chances are you will reap the rewards of your waiting. Why sell to an investor when you know good and well that he or she will be waiting a few years, or even less in many cases to find an end user to sell it to?

A week or so ago I talked about a possible Microsoft purchase of Yahoo. Microsoft just recently acquired AQuantive Inc for $6 billion. While the $6B purchase was Microsoft’s biggest purchase to date, investors and market analyzers alike are calling for the record to be short lived. Microsoft was rumored to be considering a $50 billioon dollar purchase of Yahoo earlier this month. Now with the AQuantive Inc deal in place many people are predicting a Yahoo deal to be next in line.

I’ve posted this on some of my forums before, but, I thought I’d post it here as well. It seems like everybody is looking for ways to make a million dollars. It’s a nice round number and after all, who couldn’t use a spare million? I was brainstorming a while back and realistically a million dollars is not that difficult to earn (in concept). Most people look for ways to earn it all at once instead of looking for ways to earn it piece by piece over time. It’s all about getting yourself motivated enough to get the ball rolling. Many people never get to this point, but, you don’t have to become a statistic. You can take control of your future by selling niche items on eBay.

According to Alexa Digg traffic is not headed in the right direction. They are down 20% in the past 3 months. This isn’t surprising considering a lot of people are all “dugg” up when it comes to Digg. Ever since the content fights with members vs. admins a few months back it seems that everything has started to slide downwards. Not to mention Digg’s new layout is (how do you say) lacking in many ways. It was fine before so why did they change it? Who knows. One thing is for sure. I’ve heard from several Digg users who have quit Digg altogether now. The site is just starting to lose it’s luster. The big thing on the web right now is user submitted videos, not news. That’s why we see sites like YouTube continuing to grow daily. YouTube traffic is up 24% in the past 3 months according to Alexa.

I’m a big fan of ValueClick and have been using them for years on several of my websites. It’s shocking of course to hear the news today that they are being investigated by the FTC for violating the “Can Spam Act” with several of their campaigns. I don’t personally remember getting many emails from them that I would consider spam but then again I’m a subscriber so it doesn’t count as spam in the first place.

Basically, ValueClick is going to have a rough road ahead if the allegations ring true. Spamming is not something to be taken lightly and it’s certainly not anything I want to get involved with. Black hat is never smart but spamming is one of the most obvious “Black hat” methods that companies can use to get extra traffic. After all, the traffic is free, at least until you get caught. Then suddenly all the years of benefiting from spamming are not worth it when compared to the fines and other legal actions that can be taken against you. It will be interesting to see how this all turns out.