Golden Street Gallery

Archive for May, 2009

In some ways travel writing online is similar to that in the print world. Readers still want the facts about a location, maybe an interesting perspective, and some useful advice. However, this doesn’t mean you can just write the same article for both a magazine and a website. There are some important differences.

The first has to do with how the readers find your article or page. They see it in the table of contents of a magazine, but online, people find articles using search engines. A man types in “hiking in yellowstone,” for example. Perhaps your web page is about exactly that. But if it’s titled “My Weekend Wilderness Walk,” he’ll probably never find what you wrote. You have to optimize your writing for the keywords that people are using when they search online – a whole topic in itself.

This is true whether you’re building a page, or writing an article for free distribution. But for the latter there are still other necessities. People not only have to find what you’ve written, but they also have to take the next step: visit your website. Otherwise you get little value from distributing your articles.

Whether submitting your article to an online directory, then, or to another website, you need to include a working link to your own site. You also need to give the reader a reason to click it. The link will normally be in the “author’s resource box” at the end of the article, sometimes titled, “About the Author.” This is where you get to “advertise.”

A good article is not enough. You have to sell the reader on visiting your site, because even the best travel writing may not do this for you. How do you do this then? In the resource box.

If you have a free ebook, you might say: “Click here for the free ebook, ’10 Tips For Traveling To Spain.’” You have to at least make the web site sound interesting, perhaps with a tease like, “Discover the insider secrets of getting cheap plane tickets at…” Of course good writing alone may build your reputation, but for maximum value you need to get that click through to the site.

Advantages Of Online Travel Writing

The examples above are not about selling your articles, because that isn’t the way to make travel writing pay on the internet – a big difference from the print world. You may be able to sell your articles to some sites, but the pay is generally poor. This is why writing online is normally all about promoting your website and/or products.

How do you make money then? Here is a typical scenario: I write an article on traveling to Mexico, and submit it to fifteen article directories, where it’s taken and used on other websites as well. Eventually it’s in forty places online. In the resource box at the end of the article, readers are promised something valuable or interesting if they click that link and visit my website. On the site they can buy my ebook, click on the ads which I get paid for, or visit the companies who pay me a commission when I send a buyer to them. Here are four advantages of putting your travel writing online:

1. No need to sell your writing. You never have to find a magazine or newspaper to buy your articles, and no editor can reject your writing. Build a website and sell your own ebooks, or sell ad space, or link to affiliate products, and you can start making money in a few weeks.

2. Small investment. There is no need to even spend money sending out your manuscripts. You can start making money with your travel writing this week by creating a free blog where you post tips and promote affiliate products – no investment required. Starting a website is inexpensive as well.

3. Online articles are short. Internet attention spans aren’t very long, and directories want shorter articles for fast loading of pages. Your articles will usually be between 400 and 1000 words for these reasons. At that length, you can probably write a few good ones tonight.

4. You get to work from anywhere in the world. I’ve written articles while in a hotel room in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado and in an internet cafe in Ecuador. You can even put new pages on your website from any computer connected to the internet, wherever you are.

One benefit which is common to travel writing online or off, is the tax deductions you get. Your vacations can become deductible expenses (talk to your accountant). In fact, if you start a free blog with the aim of making money, you’re in business.

Don’t have enough readers for your free blog website?

Do you want to create your own blog the fast and easy way?

If you answered yes to any of these questions then free blogging sites are for you. Firstly, you might be wondering what blog is all about. A blog or a web blog is like an online log where you can use to build traffic for your website. It can contain any topics you want and it can even contain your diary.

So just how do you start blogging for free?

Creating your own blogging website is very simple. You can visit websites that offer free blogs which has step by step process on creating your blogging website. It will usually just take a few minutes of your time to create a blogging websites in sites that offer free blogging web pages.

However, before starting to go to websites that offer free blogs, you should first determine several factors for your blogging web page.

Firstly, you have to think of a name for your blog. To do this, you must first determine what kind of topic you will dedicate your blogging webpage to. Ask yourself what you want to discuss, what are your interests or hobbies or if you have a website that is dedicated to a particular topic, you can discuss that to. It can be anything, it can be dogs, cars, casinos, food, travel, and you can even create a blog about yourself.

After knowing what name your blogging site should have, the next step would be what to put in it. Basing from your title, you will have an idea on what to put on your blog. You can put in any comments you want with different topics regarding your title and headline. You can even post in surveys as your topic; this is very useful if you sell a particular product where you can get consumers opinion on how to sell your product more effectively.

Another way to generate interest in your blog and attract a lot of readers is to make your blog a bit controversial. People like controversies and making your blog one, can create a lot of curious people to read your blog. You should post comments that can be controversial and this can result in many people wanting to post in their comments too.

Now that you have finished creating your blog, with title or headline, a comment, how should you attract people into reading your blogs? One of the best ways is to write an article about a particular topic in your blog and post them into article submission websites. This can generate a lot of targeted traffic and in no time at all.

To make this work, you should write the article with your blog site URL included at the ending of the article or in the footnote. With a good article and a little bit of luck, your blog will be discovered by people and chances are, your blog will create a lot of traffic by word of mouth.

Free blogging websites are one of the most useful tools to generate targeted traffic to your website. It can even generate a lot of loyal readers or fans of your work to post in comments and suggestions regularly to your blogging website and will often recommend it to other people. The best thing about this is that it’s easy, convenient, fun, and as the name suggests, it’s all for free.

John Platania

PRO INFO SPORTS takes all factors into consideration when handicapping sports investment opportunities for our Sports Handicapping Services, including the weather. We also strongly recommend clients give the “elements” a final check for any late-breaking developments prior to wagering, by reviewing our Weather Reports.

Atmospheric conditions can have a big impact on sporting events. In perceived football “mismatches”, poor weather tends to lessen the advantage powerful teams have over weaker opponents. The underdogs’ chances of keeping the games close or even pulling off the outright upsets are enhanced, especially by turnovers which occur with more frequency in bad-weather games. Just the threat of poor conditions can act as a great equalizer. Teams become more offensively conservative in order to avoid costly fumbles and interceptions. Either way, inclement weather in football usually portends defensive battles and low scores.

Sub-freezing temperatures generally restrain deep passing attacks, giving an advantage to football teams with superior running games or solid short-passing schemes. For baseball considerations, warm air is less dense, or thinner, than cold air. A would-be 400 ft shot at 75 degrees would carry 408 ft at 95 degrees.

Along with temperature, humidity has to be considered when factoring meteorological elements. An NFL team like the Miami Dolphins is conditioned to a hot and humid environment which is most extreme in the first month of the season. Take them out of their natural climate and their performance suffers, as shown by a large disparity in their September home record vs. December road games. Overall, teams from the South have the advantage when hosting a opponent not used to hot, humid conditions, while cold-weather squads from the North gain the edge when hosting warm-weather teams in chilly December weather.

Humidity can also affect a baseball game. According to Professor Robert Adair, the dean of baseball physicists, a baseball in a humid environment is actually heavier and less elastic than a dry ball, and, therefore, cannot be hit as far.

Wind is perhaps the most overlooked weather factor in sports handicapping. The importance of football special teams are amplified in bad weather, especially in windy conditions, as teams with superior kicking games have a distinct edge over an inferior kicking team. Meanwhile, teams that rely on passing games can be greatly affected by blustery conditions, especially if the winds are blowing across the field. In a game where there are strong winds blowing parallel to the direction of the field, one team will always have the wind at their backs, allowing them to pass the ball more easily; however, if the wind is blowing strongly across the field, this can hamper both teams’ passing attack for the entire game.

In regards to baseball, air moving along in the same direction the ball is flying pushes back less on the ball, allowing it to travel farther. In fact, the wind is very often the single most important thing to consider about the weather when betting baseball totals. A 400 ft shot in calm conditions would turn into a 445 ft blast with a 15 mph wind directed out to center field.

Yet another factor that has to be weighed when handicapping sports is altitude. At stadiums and arenas one mile or more above sea level, the air is considerably thinner than those below 1000 feet in elevation. With the oxygen level greatly reduced at higher elevations, the heart and breathing rates increase to compensate. This is experienced as shortness of breath and early fatigue. It takes about 10 days for the body to completely acclimate to altitude, so low-altitude teams making road trips to the Rocky Mountains simply don’t have enough time to fully adjust. They often struggle, especially late in a hard-fought contest.

As in poor-weather games, special teams play can become a more decisive factor in high-altitude football contests as well. Punts and placekicks travel longer distances due to decreased air resistance. The team with the more accurate and consistent kicking game will fare considerably better as they will be more likely to convert their increased kicking range into good field position and points.

Air under low pressure is less dense, or thinner, than air under high pressure. This is the main reason long balls carry farther in Denver – the atmospheric pressure at that altitude (5,300 ft) is always about 15% less than sea level pressures. A hit that would have flown 400 ft at sea level would carry to 430 ft in the thin air of Coors Stadium. This permanent effect of Denver’s high altitude is duly noted by the oddsmakers, however, resulting in totals typically in the 12-14 range, reducing the opportunity to simply bet OVERS and win most of the time. The day-to-day pressure changes of the atmosphere, however, are not considered by the oddsmakers, but these daily pressure differences at stadiums caused by the meanderings of the high and low pressures depicted on weather charts are very small. On a low pressure day the pressure is only one or two per cent lower than on a normal day, so a 400 ft shot would only carry a whopping 402 ft! Obviously this effect is too small to worry about in baseball, especially since there are other atmospheric factors that actually make a big difference.

PRO INFO SPORTS considers all of the NCAA Football and NCAA Basketball games played in the Rocky Mountains region “altitude games”, from El Paso, Texas (4,000 ft) to Laramie, Wyoming (7,100 ft). In the NFL and MLB, only Denver qualifies, while the NBA has 2 high-altitude sites in Denver and Salt Lake City (4,330 ft).

Ultimately, a decided competitive advantage can be gained by a team in its element playing an opponent out of its element, whether it is temperature, humidity, precipitation, wind, or altitude.

These weather principles are, of course, generalities and all factors must be considered when analyzing sports investment opportunities, but the monitoring and scrutinizing of these conditions and circumstances are examples of how PRO INFO SPORTS gains a significant sports handicapping advantage and uses the information to help determine the strength of certain selections according to our Money Management strategy.