Using WEB 2.0 To Drive Internet Traffic – Three Top Tips
June 23, 2010 by Felicity Baker
Filed under Internet Business
Along with WEB 2.0 came a whole range of new jargon and slang to describe the building blocks and concepts that it introduced. Like all new ideas, it can seem a little confusing for the newcomer, and might even deter some from participating in it altogether.
I have picked three of the three concepts that WEB 2.0 uses and will describe them here in the hope of demystifying them for those looking to either enjoy WEB 2.0, or more likely benefit from the advantages that this huge new “virtual market” brings.
1 – Tagging and Tags. Tags are like the keywords of a particular message, video, article or application. They are a “short cut” to understanding what it is about. As an example, if you produce a video about rock climbing you might choose “rock climbing”, “mountaineering” and “ascent” as three of your tags. This gives both the end user, and the engines on the web that categorize your video an idea of how and where to file it, and allow people to find it when searching under appropriate keywords.
2 – Project collaboration. You can think of many of the items posted on WEB 2.0 sites like Facebook and Youtube as “projects”. There is an original post, and over time others add to the discussion around it. Possibly responding with articles, videos or other media of their own, making the original post a “hub” for a whole topic where everyone can have a say and participate.
3 – Syndication. If your message is good, clear and unique, then others may want to spread your word for you. Simple content platforms such as WordPress offer one button press syndication.
A great benefit for both the original author, who sees his message spread to a wider audience. And the syndicator themselves who benefits “by proxy” by having this much sought after information on their site or domain.
The new features and accessibility offered by WEB 2.0 has massively increased the number of people actively participating on the internet. Finding hotspots where these discussions are taking place between massive numbers of people is now relatively easy.
The trick from this point is to leverage your own skills to get your contribution seen and heard. Positioning yourself as someone with a product or idea that people should spend their time and possibly money on.
With the huge expansion of WEB 2.0 social sites, comes easy and quick ways of gaining web traffic to your own web pages.
Warcraft Cataclysm and Patch 4.0. The Gold Sinks.
April 2, 2010 by Paul Rone-Clarke
Filed under Computers
Long term players may well have become aware of changes in the way Warcraft’s economy is working over the past fifteen months or so. The progression of wealth alongside character progression and profession is now completely out of balance.
The reason as I see it is the economic weight of so many level 80 characters paying the way for their ‘toons.
I doubt if I’m the only one to have reached a server full of level 80′s (I multibox, So 5 at a time in about 6 week’s real world playing time with multiple refer-a-friend bonuses). But I know I’m not alone. Several guild buddies have four or more level 80′s, achieved the more usual way “one at a time”.
But I still start new toons, and this follows a pattern.
Well, I do this from time to time. Just to see what a new combination works like. Then, once I have got to level 30 or 40 I might look at the professions. Generally, like most people with a stable of level 80 characters -I just buy the materials to level my profession up to say 225. Spending whatever is required to buy the ingredients and reagents on the way.
However, at some point down the line I get bored of the characters.
More often than not, I don’t. I might even delete them. So I never buy the mid range crafting materials for them. But the problem remains for Blizzard. Whenever I start a new alt, I can (and will) just buy my profession skills. Why not?
I know I’m adding to the imbalance problem. Crafting is a gold sink. Until you get a crafting profession to 450, you are pretty much pouring gold down the drain. Sure the odd item sells, but most are destined to be vendored for a fraction of the production cost – or just thrown away. Apparently it costs over 5000g on most servers just for enchanters to level their rod. Just the rod! Never mind the 450 enchants they have to perform as well.
Expect patch 4.0 and Cataclysm to bring in some big changes. Most of this is informed speculation at the moment buy I predict;
A huge overhaul to crafting. Low level crafted items will be tweaked, or new ones added to make them appealing to use. The better ones will cost a little more to make, but will be decent enough to be vendored, and will offer more than one skill point to the maker.
New huge gold sinks will be added. The biggest gold sinks ever. It is rumoured that there will be a skill needed to fly across the ashen wastes of Azeroth, and that might set you back between 5000g and 10000g. New speed perks for flight will also cost a fortune. More than your epic cost in the first place.
The new profession of Archaeology will provide ingredients that can be used to improve existing crafted items – but they will need to be used at the point of crafting, and may not be added later like an enchant. Expect different versions of many crafted items depending on what extra archaeological item was added at the point of manufacture.
Vendored items introduced for levels 81 to 85 will be expensive. Very expensive. As will repairs, and flights into the high level areas.
The game will be altered in such a way as to make each characters “right of passage” from 81-85 unique. We multi boxers may well come across obstacles which mean we are forced to split our parties up for the duration of levelling.
Cataclysm is perhaps the last chance for Blizzard to fix the economy. Sure it works now, and many don’t see the real world warning signs of hyper inflation and manufacturing redundancy being relevant in a game. But they are. These two economic problems are rife in Warcraft, and they will eventually grind the economy to a halt. The laws of supply and demand need a helping hand in WoW. This is Blizzards last chance.
Thankfully it seems they understand this, and are looking to fix the economy. If it fails – and it might. Be prepared for the end of the economy altogether by the time we hit patch 5.0.
To read more about the upcoming changes in the Warcraft economy, then For the goldblog, click here For the best Warcraft gold guide avaialable then try The Warcraft Advanced Gold Guide
Warcraft Gold Generator, The 5 Steps to Success
January 31, 2010 by Paul Rone-Clarke
Filed under Software
These five tips will help you become a serious Warcraft gold generator. These first tips work at any level, and are therefore ideal for low level characters.
1- Enjoy the game by playing and levelling. Power leveling gives you a host of real benefits.
Firstly it gives you access to areas with higher level loot. Secondly you will pick up travel and flight points (vital to making really serious gold later in the game). Thirdly, if you combine power leveling with questing, you will benefit from good quest rewards in terms of both the gold and decent weapons and armour.
2- Ask a guild friend, or pay a stranger, to get a low level alt to Dalaran by portal. Dalaran has vendors that sell high level consumables. These consumables can then be posted back to a character at your factions major cities and put on the auction house there. Bullets, arrows food and drink all fetch a lot more at auction than from the vendor. Don\’t flood the market. This is a real WotLK gold farming method.
3- Use your secondary crafting skills such as disenchanting, milling, transmutation or prospecting. It may be that the items you have in your inventory are worth more in an altered state. Crafting doesn\’t offer a lot of perks to the serious gold maker, so make sure you use this one.
4- Auctioneer and other addons allow you to scan the auction house for bargain, Looking for items that are well below the average asking price. For this tip to work you need to have built up a decent number of full scans of the AH. I think probably 10 scans is enough as long as they are spread over a decent amount of time
5- Many people don\’t put a buyout on their auctions. These auctions will of course have to run for the full time. Check the auctions with less than 30 minutes to run. You will often find no-one at all has bid. The player that put them on perhaps thought he would spark a bidding war (it rarely – if ever happens. No buy-out is a real no-no both for buyer and seller) Take advantage of their mistake and buy these items up for minimum bid of 1 copper more.
Some of you will be shocked \”minimum bid?\”
Why offer more? What for? If the current bid is 50 gold 49 copper – why bid more than 50 gold 50 copper? What\’s the rest of your bid for? It\’s just gold out of your pocket for no reason. The vendor will either be happy with the results, or learn quickly. Don\’t let them learn at your expense.
I hope these tips help, and you are soon on your way to being a World of Warcraft Gold Generator.
Free downloadable and professionally produced Warcraft PDF\’s. Visit The Warcraft Goldblog. For direct access to the guides simply go to.The Warcraft Advanced Gold Guide
