Perhaps it’s because it’s “that time of the year” for our household, with a son attaining our local community college, or perhaps my intuition is telling me that many people would appreciate either 1) the information (seen fresh) or 2) a reminder, but during these particularly trying times for many economically, going back to school should be on your radar.

While Nevada’s educational system is nothing to brag about – being 50th in the country is downright shameful from our viewpoint – the fact remains that they do offer Associate programs (and one Bachelors) degrees and certifications. The beauty is many of these courses can be taken directly and completely online.

The benefit to the online course is not only flexibility, but, should money be tight in your family, economical. No gas, no bus tickets, no “extra spending” involved. Just the pursuit of learning.

Which brings me to my purpose for posting today. It’s FAFSA time, and assuming your state has reasonable tuition for its residents, the Pell Grant (in our case) is covering 100% of our son’s pursuit to his (first) Associate’s degree. This means all his credits plus his books (at least here in Nevada) are paid for – and he has the opportunity to advance his learning while not accumulating loans.

If you find yourself and/or family members in a position where pursuing higher education would be most beneficial, be sure to head to FAFSA.ed.gov and get the ball rolling. Cutoff dates for Fall enrollment vary from State to State. Don’t get caught without the potential for assistance with yours or your children’s education.

Hopefully you are running some statistical accounting method on your website and/or blog like Google Analytics. By tracking the information in and out of your site, you will also be made aware of pages that either got lost in the shuffle, were eliminated completely but still referenced elsewhere on your site (that you forgot to remove the link to), or pages seach engines like Google (for reasons unknown) expect to be there, but aren’t.

These are known as your 404 page errors, and letting them pile up can be a time consuming task to set straight and (potentially) hurt your standings.

Mostly they are just a pain in the neck to get search engines like Google to stop seeing. In fact, years ago on a completely different hosting server, I did use the cgi-bin (we don’t now). And, even though the hosting had changed numerous times, those cgi-bin 404 errors kept haunting me. So when I saw a recent incoming newsletter about this problem, I figured it’s a good time to give everyone either a heads up or reminder to track these down and eliminate them.

In fact, Mary Peng of Web Analytics World has recently put out an article on how to make the most of those inevitable 404 errors. She writes:

No matter what type of site you may have, 404 errors may cost you something. It might not be money, but it’s costing you something. Retail sites could be losing money. Other types of sites, however, may be losing something just as valuable… pageviews… return visitors… things like that….

The truth is, your site could potentially do that extra 10-25%, you just don’t benefit from it because your visitors are encountering 404 page not found errors. These visitors can be potential browsers and buyers, but once they hit that 404 page, they’ll leave and bring their money to another site.

Within her article, she also suggests another resource that gives you some great suggestions on how to fix up your 404 errors.

You’ll also discover some very interesting and creative ways you can make those dreaded 404 errors more entertaining. Here are more cool ways web owners have created their 404 pages.

So don’t wait too long. Do stay on top of these “lost pages.” Put them to valuable use and never lose another visitor to your site again.

Comments Welcome! Please Add Yours!

On December 27th, we brought this to your attention and we really do not want you to miss out.

This is not your typical, boring, and (sometimes useless) bunch of marketing tools. From the creators of Getresponse (Implix), this post serves as a reminder that on January 6th, you’ll have the opportunity to get the marketing tools you’re probably paying for already – all bundled into one package – at a heck of a deal.

We added up our savings and to date know we will be reducing our marketing tools service payments by more than 50% a month!

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And, btw, if you’re not using these marketing tools, why not? You know you need them to be successful! You cannot run a business online without the proper tools… period.

This is also a reminder that while you have full use of numerous tools including autoresponders and “go to meeting” interfaces, there is also a great residual income attached to this new program.

Mind you, what you’re getting – for the price – is worth it all by itself.

However, just by telling a few people to sign up right now – prelaunch signup is FREE – you’re also giving yourself (and them) the opportunity to make some money this year.

Hurry and get on the list… Free!

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This morning while participating over at ForumFinder [40,466 Alexa traffic rank], my eye was caught by a particular post at U-G-H [108,508 Alexa].

The post itself, One Step Closer to the Living Room YouTube Goes Widescreen is not only interesting in terms of YouTube, (can you guess what YouTube is up to now? LOL), but in the formatting – the WAY – in which the post is constructed.

And it’s done brilliantly! (more…)