If there were any piece of advice I would offer to anyone starting a new venture in life, it would be this: court failure.

Failure is a dirty word in our culture. It has a potent negative connotation that sends chills up many a spine, mostly the spines of people who don’t do much.

That’s not a criticism but an observation. You cannot succeed without failures and you can’t succeed without doing a lot of work. So if you’re doing a lot of work, you’re failing more than infrequently.

Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.
-Mark Twain

How to Court Failure

Every day that you get up and work toward a goal in a new arena, you are courting failure. You’re inviting problems for which you don’t yet have solutions, attempting tasks for which you don’t yet have skills, and often planning a future that you don’t yet know how you’ll pay for. You’ll make mistakes in most every category.

I started a new business this year. I literally can’t count all the failures I’ve experienced in less than six months. But I’m still having fun so I hardly notice them.

That’s not entirely true. Sometimes they hurt and made me kick myself. But I am comforted by the thought that when this happens, it’s because I’m courting failure, a necessary action on the route to … to where exactly?

Another Dirty Word

I know you may be irritated with me for goin’ all Zen on ya, but it is a fact that we spend so much time trying to categorize the actions of our lives into successes and failures that we miss a lot of life as it passes by every day.

Success is not the opposite of failure; it’s merely the other end of the see-saw. When we persist in labeling success as failure’s opposite, our focus becomes skewed and we live with an anxiety that saps the creative energy required to move forward.

We don’t often stop to question where our definitions of success and failure come from. I’m not talking about the etymological origins but the sociological origins. Who imposes these ideas of success and failure upon us? No one, really. We willingly put them on like a hand-me-down coat and wear them like the king’s robes.

Living by Choice

While sitting on my front steps after a run this morning, I caught myself ruminating somewhat anxiously about the future of my business. As I looked up at the early-morning spring sun glowing through verdant, newly-leafed trees, I suddenly decided, “I am going to live this day.”

I wanted to simply experience the day in whatever form it arrived, watch how it interleaved itself with my life and my plans (or interrupted them), and just live. I wanted to acknowledge the uncertainty of tomorrow and the day after, knowing that it would be a sin to allow that uncertainty to mar today.

I was partly … “successful.” On and off through the day, I prodded myself to come back to this thought, to this living in the day. Sometimes it worked and sometimes the rush of traffic beside me or the question of a stranger pulled me back into the swirl of ruminating about the future. But in those moments, I was successfully courting failure as well.

The degree with which we can live without anxiety about what a particular moment or event in life means is the measure of how much we actually live. One way to reduce the anxiety about whether or not we’re successful is to be conscious of courting failure. When we truly see the value in failure, both success and failure assume equal weight, neither to be fully trusted nor feared nor expected to fill our every day. Neither is an end in itself.

Tomorrow, when you get up, try for just one day to court failure.

Lisa’s Comments: I absolutely love this article because it not only applies to our websites, but our day to day lives.  Your perspective and attitude make all the difference.

If you interview every successful Internet marketer, I bet they will have stories of failure.  I have plenty.  Without them, I wouldn’t be where I am today.  It’s not how many times you fail, but what you do with the lessons that blossom from those failures.

Brian V. Hunt spent more than a decade as a senior writer at Microsoft. He’s an SEO copywriter, performs search engine optimization, is a senior copywriter, and writes sell sheets for clients at B2B corporations and commercial web sites. Get more tips from him on writing for the web and SEO at http://brianvhunt.com.

Everyone’s buzzing over the article about YouTube stars making six figures per year that Yahoo Finance posted last week.

This has sparked questions about my income earned from my YouTube channel that now has over 22,000 subscribers.

I hate to disappoint you guys, but my YouTube Partner earnings aren’t NEAR six figures.  Some months I don’t even break $100.

As I reported in some of my YouTube videos, I earn way more from the contextual AdSense ads on my sites than I do with the partner program.

This may come as a shock since I have over 22,000 subscribers, but here’s the deal…

I hardly display the ads on my videos anymore.  So that’s a big part of the reason my YouTube partner earnings are low.  I don’t like how intrusive they are and many of them are unrelated to what my videos are about.

To me, it’s not worth flashing annoying, unrelated ads across my face just to make a few extra bucks per month.  So if I do display the ads, I opt to only show the banner alongside the video.

Also, every niche is different.  My niche has a lot of banner blindness, but I know of a few people in the hair and beauty niche who are doing very well with the partner program.

This doesn’t surprise me because the ads in this niche are often very relevant and enticing.  However,  the ads aren’t performing as well in my niche.

“Lisa, Help Me Make Partner, PLEEEEASE!”

It’s amazing how many people beg me (literally) to help them become a YouTube Partner. I’ve even been offered money to help people get approved.  Some are so anxious to get in because they assume it’s their instant ticket to hundreds or even thousands of dollars per month.

For some channels, it may be.  But getting accepted as a YouTube partner is not a guaranteed gold mine.  Just like the regular AdSense program, how much you make depends on number of clicks, ad relevance and traffic.

I think the YouTube Partner Program is a great opportunity for popular channels, but I also believe it generates a lot of hype and unrealistic earnings expectations.

You will never know how much you are going to make until you get accepted and start displaying the ads.  Also understand every niche performs differently, so you can’t base your potential earnings off someone else’s.

If you do become a YouTube Partner, great!  But don’t lose sleep if you can’t.  Some people do very well with it, but it’s not an instant income generator like many people believe.

In my personal experience, AdSense text ads on my websites perform much better than banner ads on YouTube.  Of course, everyone’s experience will be different.  This is just my story.

Is your first reaction, “Of course not!”?  Well, even if you think you’re sure about this, I recommend you read on …

Webmasters use images all the time to create logos, help illustrate the point of a subject, break up text on a page or just to make a website more visually appealing.

But is use of these images legal? Maybe, maybe not.

What???

Here’s the deal: If you use images obtained from the internet to create your logo or for use on your website, you could be guilty of copyright infringement and not even realize it.

Copyright infringement is illegal and can get you in a huge tub of hot water. While you might be “free” to use these images, there are still rules to be followed to ensure you don’t infringe on copyrights.

There’s a common misconception that if an image is out on the web it’s “up for grabs.” Even if you purchase a “stock” image, it’s crucial that you adhere to an end-user license agreement.

Internet Images

I love how Google has its “Images” menu item. Whenever I want to see a picture of just about anything, I use Google Images to find what I’m looking for.

But while this may seem obvious to some, believe it or not too many webmasters will grab these images for their own use and republish them without permission. This is copyright infringement whether intentional or not.

If there’s an image you want to republish, you MUST get express permission from the copyright owner before you can legally use it.

What Are Copyright Free Images?

The term “copyright free images” is overused and leads people into believing they can take these images and then call them their own. The only way you can stake claim to an image is if you create it yourself and it is truly an original.

If you Google “copyright free images” 930 million results are found. The truth is the only images that can really be deemed copyright free are those that are in the public domain because public domain works have no copyright.

And even though you are free to use an image from the public domain, it will always remain in the public domain, copyright cannot be restored, and it will never actually be yours.

How About Royalty Free Images?

First of all, understand that royalty-free does not mean copyright-free. If you use a royalty-free image, the creator of that image remains the copyright holder. And royalty-free doesn’t necessarily mean free of charge.

Creators of images will often allow others to use their works for various purposes. For example, I used to publish a travel magazine and would sometimes publish pictures taken by professional photographers.

I would be charged a royalty fee based on my planned use of the photo. If I wanted to use the photo again in a different issue of the magazine, I’d have to pay the photographer another, separate royalty fee.

So what does “royalty-free” mean? It means you are free to use an image as many times you want without having to pay a separate fee for each use. Usually you will pay a one-time flat fee and can use the image as many times as you wish, as long as you adhere to the license agreement attached to it.

The terms of service and license agreement will spell out exactly how you are permitted to use an image. In shutterstock.com’s license agreement you can use their images on websites up to 800×600 pixels without copyright notice or credit, but if you want to use an image on t-shirts for resale, you are required to have an “enhanced” license and must include a copyright notice and credit the creator.

In other words, they are giving you permission as long as you abide by their rules.

What About Free Graphics?

There are tons of free graphics available in software and on the web. A good example is Microsoft’s free clip art. Anyone can use these images for whatever they want, right?

WRONG.  While Microsoft isn’t charging you a fee, there are still terms of use with very specific restrictions on the use of these images.

Pretty much every free graphics resource will have some restriction on the use of their images. Some will require credit to the creator or inclusion of a copyright notice. Some even have watermarks embedded already so the copyright will always be included. Some will say you can use images for this but not that.

These Images Are Not Unique

Copyright-free, royalty-free and free graphics can be used by anyone. Even if you’ve paid for the use of an image, that doesn’t take it “off the shelf” – tomorrow someone else can purchase it for their own use as well.

So if want an image for something like a logo and you want your logo to be one-of-a-kind, it’s a bad idea to use anything other than an original creation. This is especially true if you intend to trademark your logo!

The only way to have truly unique and original images is to create them yourself or hire someone else to create them for you. But if you hire someone else, realize that artist will retain copyright of the creation unless you have a copyright assignment agreement.

What Can Happen if You Violate Copyrights

Copyright infringement is serious. If you’re caught, at the very least you will be forced to remove the infringing images from publication.

If legal action is taken, you can be subject to a civil lawsuit in the copyright owner’s jurisdiction and actual and statutory damages that could be financially devastating.

And with certain deliberate violations, you could be subject to criminal penalties carrying massive fines and long prison terms.

The Bottom Line

Plain and simple, don’t take any chances. Don’t use images you have no rights to without express permission, and read end-user license agreements carefully so you understand permissible use.

I was inspired to write this post because I just finished browsing some YouTube videos.  Many of the channels use autoplay (the video starts automatically.)

I always advise people to be careful with autoplay on YouTube and with music on their sites because both can be annoying.

Not everyone’s watching from the comfort of home.

Right or wrong, many people surf the Internet at work, and having autoplay on your site is a great way to lose a visitor.

When I had a 9 to 5, there were many times I would go to a site (shame on me, I know) and the music would start automatically.  I’d have to quickly close the browser or lunge for my speaker controls to turn the volume down.

(C’mon, you know this has happened to you at least once! )

When using autoplay, it’s important to consider that many people are not watching your videos or viewing your site in private.

If you have a YouTube channel, I would highly recommend turning off Autoplay. (It’s located under “Videos and Playlists” in your channel options.)

Trust me, I did an unofficial Twitter survey and the results were overwhelmingly in favor of NO AUTOPLAY. In fact, everyone that responded said they hated it.

Musical Etiquette

I was on a blog once and the author kept referring me to other sites, and the sites opened in the same window.  So every time I went back to his site, the music started again.  Ugh!

I thought I was going to slit my wrist!   I had to hunt for the volume controls because they inconveniently placed it at the bottom of the page.

I’ve never understood that logic. Forcing people to listen to your tunes is not going to make them enjoy your music or site more.  If anything, it may aggravate them and cause them to leave.  Just because you are grooving to your tunes, don’t assume everyone else will.

In most cases, you should give people a choice between whether to listen to music or not.  However, if you must use autoplay, only load the song on the first page view, and make it easy to turn the audio off.  Don’t hide the volume controls!

Music can be a great addition to a website, I just think it should be used sparingly and appropriately.

What do you think of sites that play music and/or have autoplay media?

Your avatar.

It’s the little square that appears next to your tweets, FaceBook posts, etc.  It’s your identification for social media online.

Someone recently asked me why I never change mine.

I simply replied…

It’s part of my brand.

For the most part, I use the same icon for 2 Create a Website everywhere.  (There are a few exceptions.)

It’s recognizable and my followers have become familiar with it.  I also prefer to use a photo because I believe it is more personal.  But I certainly understand why you may choose a logo instead (brand awareness).

Changing Faces

I follow people on Twitter who change their avatars multiple times per month, and there have been many times I didn’t realize who they were until many tweets later.

This happened with someone I follow very closely.  I unintentionally bypassed their tweets because I didn’t recognize the avatar.

I know what you’re thinking…  Content sells, not avatars.  So why does it matter what picture is displayed?

Here’s the deal.  Most people follow hundreds (or even thousands) of people these days, and can’t effectively read every update.  But many have their favorites.

No matter how many people they follow, they will always take time to read the updates from their favorite people.  So as they are scanning, they tend to zero in on these people, and a recognizable avatar assists with that process.

Of course, content is the most important thing, but don’t underestimate the importance of that little square.

A familiar picture helps people quickly recognize you as they scan through the numerous updates of people they subscribe to/follow.  You don’t want to get skipped by your loyal followers because you change your picture every other day.

If you’re using social media for personal reasons, then these rules don’t necessarily apply.  In fact, switching up your photo is often a means of self expression.  But for business, I think it’s important to consider familiarity, brand awareness and consistency.

I’m not saying never switch your avatar.  A change in scenery is nice every now and then — especially if you’re just changing to another photo where people can still recognize you.

However, random avatar changes (from cars to dogs to sunglasses, etc.) every week might be a bit much.  Just remember the role that small icon plays when it comes to recognition and branding.

What do you think?  Do you change your avatars often?  Why or why not?  Let’s talk!

As you may know, your search engine rankings, largely depend on relevant, quality backlinks (related sites that link to you.)

However, when it comes to less competitive keywords (which make up the majority of my search engine traffic for all my sites), your content and other on-page criteria may have more influence in certain cases.

So it’s still important to make sure your pages are as optimized as possible, and this includes ensuring that your source code displays your main content as close to the top of the page as possible.

The problem is, most CSS templates (static websites and blogs) are not coded this way by default.  Check the source code of your site (right click and View Source on your page.)  If you have a left nav, I bet that content comes up before the main content.

Just to experiment, I changed Flat Stomach Exercises (my Site Build It! site) last August.  Now the content displays right after my header in my code.

Shortly after this change, my search engine traffic grew dramatically and I haven’t updated the content in over a year.  I also haven’t actively promoted this site in several years.

Coincidence?  Could be.  I’ll never know for sure.

It would be very irresponsible for me to assume this change was the sole reason.  Please read that last sentence again because the last thing I want to do is mislead you.

Nevertheless, why wouldn’t you want your content to appear as close to the top of the page if you understand how search engine bots read web pages. (They view the source code from top to bottom.)  To me, it just make sense to make this change.

This is especially true for those of you with long, busy navigations with a lot of links, ads, etc.

And even if it only moves your pages up a few spots in the rankings, multiply that impact by hundreds or even thousands of different keyword phrases your site gets found for every month. Think about it.

This tip is probably not going to impact your rank for most competitive keywords, but could have the greatest impact on long-tail (less competitive) keywords. I don’t know about you, but long-tail keywords make up the majority of my search engine traffic.

Watch the video below and tell me what you t

Can’t see the video?  Click to watch.

Good News for Thesis and Site Build It! Owners

If you own Thesis (blog) or SBI! (static website), both of their default templates code the content before the left navigation by default. There may be more themes/products out there that do this, but these are the ones I own so I can only speak on them.

The reason I had to change my SBI! site is because I use a template that I created from scratch.  So if you use the basic float: left attribute for your left nav (CSS sites), more than likely this is true for your site too.

Earlier this year, I asked you about your top referral traffic categories (search engines, direct/bookmark traffic, referring sites, etc.)

So I thought it would be cool to see what specific sites send you the most traffic.

My top 5 traffic sources in the past month were…

1) 2CreateAWebSite.com

2) YouTube.com (From my two channels combined)

3) WebsiteBabble.com (My forum)

4)  Twitter

5)  Google

Just a few notes…

1) A lot of people assume I get more traffic to my blog, but my static website outperforms this blog by far when it comes to traffic and earnings.

2) Even though Google is ranked 5th for traffic referrals for this blog, it’s ranked 1st for my static website.

3) Regarding Twitter traffic, I do not have my blog address in my Twitter profile.  (I use a Twitter landing page because it’s more personal.)  So my Twitter referrals for this blog are coming from announcing my blog posts through Twitterfeed and RT’s (retweets) from my generous followers.

I used the Google Analyticator plugin to retrieve my “top 5 referrer” data.  I love it because it shows a quick overview of your traffic (top referrers, searches, etc.) right on your WP dashboard.  It’s nice because I don’t have to login to Google Analytics just to get a quick overview.

What were your top referring sites in the past month?

For months, I’ve been toying with the idea of letting people rent a sub forum to promote/announce their sites/services on WebsiteBabble.com.

Now that the forum has been upgraded to the new platform (vBulletin 4.0), I am almost ready to move to the next step.

But first, I need some feedback from you.

Who Can Rent a Forum?

In the beginning, I will only open this up to people who have sites related to web design, development, programming and other technical web services.

So if you have a logo design company, you could rent a forum to showcase your latest work, offer deals and generate new business from other Website Babble members.

WebsiteBabble.com receives about 75,000 page views per month and has an average Alexa Rank of about 14,000.  The forum also uses the vbSEO plugin, so every post is promptly added to the XML sitemap and submitted regularly.

Many newbies come to my forum and need help with design, development and other programming services.  So this is a great promo opportunity for people who offer such help/services but don’t have enough traffic/exposure.

Benefits of Sponsorship

- You will have your own sub forum to promote your site (latest blog posts, products, services, etc).

- Ad revenue opportunities within your forum (AdSense, banners, etc.)

- Owning a sponsor forum means more dofollow backlinks to your site from another relevant, trafficked site (major SEO benefit)

- Website Babble will also promote and list the WB Sponsor forums in other locations on the forum

The WB Sponsor will be billed monthly (subscription service through PayPal) and can cancel at any time.  I haven’t decided on a price yet, but I do have some numbers in my head.

I was hoping to get some feedback here before I announce the official/final cost.

Sooooo, what do you think?   I welcome feedback from everyone, but I’m especially interested in hearing from those who would qualify.  So based on what I’ve revealed thus far…

- If you are interested, what is the most you’d pay (per month)?
- What other benefits would entice you?
- Any other questions or comments?

A product like this could be a big win/win for myself and the sponsors involved so I’d love to get as much feedback as possible before I launch.

I probably won’t allow sites/programs related to “making money online” (unless they are purely tutorial related).  There are so many scammy/sketchy sites out there and I don’t want to appear as if WB is endorsing such sites.

Your thoughts pleeeeeeeease?    I may provide a free trial to people (with relevant sites) who offer great suggestions and feedback.

I received a comment from a reader who seemed disappointed that my blog comments are nofollow.

For those who don’t know, nofollow means that my site’s PageRank is not transferred to your site when you leave a comment along with a link to your site.

In other words, the link from my site to yours, has no influence on your backlinks and PageRank in the eyes of Google.

To make a link nofollow you simply add rel=”nofollow” inside the href HTML code of your hyperlinks like this…

<a href=”http://www.anysite.com” rel=”nofollow”>Name of Site</a>

I’ve never even considered making my comments dofollow (the opposite of nofollow).  In fact, WordPress 1.5 and higher automatically assigns the nofollow attribute to all comments, and most bloggers never bother to change this.

The major benefit of having a dofollow blog is you may get more comments.  Many bloggers seek out these blogs, and there are numerous directories that list dofollow sites.

The downside to using dofollow, however, is that you could be inundated with spam.  This also means you are flowing PageRank to potentially spammy/inappropriate sites, and this could hurt the reputation of your site in Google’s eyes.

So to preserve and protect my reputation and PageRank with Google, I use nofollow for my comments and sponsor ads.

The Obsession Continues

My personal opinion is that the dofollow/nofollow issue is blown out of proportion.

Of course, a few dofollow links from some very relevant sites can positively impact your backlinks and PageRank, but is it worth spending hours per day looking for these sites when you could be using that time to focus more on building quality content?

At the end of the day, if your site is useful, fresh, unique and you are promoting it effectively, you will naturally earn plenty of voluntary dofollow links from other site owners who value your content.

There’s nothing wrong with keeping track of your PageRank and backlinks, but when it becomes obsessive, you could be putting too much attention in the wrong areas.

Let’s also not forget that you can still generate plenty of traffic from commenting on nofollow blogs.  Even though you may not be earning a backlink for SEO purposes, you can still build quite the traffic flow if you perfect your commenting strategy.  (See How to Write Killer Blog  Comments.)

Remember, you are not just working to please spiders.  Humans read blogs too, and capturing their attention is just as important.

I wish people would stop obsessing over dofollow links (especially on blogs).  Posting solid comments on nofollow blogs can still lead to dofollow links in the long run simply because people may value your site and recommend it to their readers.

The case study I posted last week is a great example.  Because Kiesha has an outstanding blog that I wanted to feature, she still earned a voluntary dofollow link from a relevant blog.

Why did I feature her?  Because she has an outstanding blog with fabulous content.  Thus she was rewarded with a dofollow link.  These are the results you get when you publish quality content.

You’ll also find that you won’t have to spend so much time actively seeking out dofollow links.  Instead, they will find you.

Even though my comments are nofollow, most links in my posts are not.  So I’m happy to reward and recommend sites that are worthy of a mention.

What Does Google Say About This?

Matt Cutts (Google’s lead engineer) published a video about this a few months back, and it made me even more confident that I made the right decision about nofollow comments.

What’s your blog’s linking policy?  Why did you choose it?

Here is a case study of WeBlogBetter.com, a site acquired by Kiesha Easley in February of 2010.

Viewing this via e-mail?  Click here to go to my blog and watch the video.