Many of us are (or are trying to) start our own websites. Whether it be a blog, social media idea, or business, there are literally hundreds of hoops to jump through before you can feel confident in your site creation abilities. Currently, I’m facing the issue of finding (or really cheap) quality images to use on my site. Last night I was getting more and more frustrated at the lack of quality, free, and searchable image databanks. Then I found this page. 

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/10-places-to-find-free-images-online-and-make-your-content-more-linkable/5979/

In case you didn’t read the obvious title, it provides no fewer than ten sites with free images, complete with commentary and opinion on those sites in each bullet point. Check it out for yourself; maybe you’ll find just what you’re looking for to finish off that page.

As we were attempting to coordinate a group project this past break, my team ran into a problem: Skype didn’t allow group screen sharing. We needed to both share a conference call and be able to see each other’s screens, but even after searching we found no solution. Skype had failed us.

Then one of us stumbled upon an absolutely fantastic service: join.me. Join.me is an easy, free, and brainless way to share your screen online. I’ll walk you through it:

1. Go to the page. 
2. Click the orange arrow (see right).
3. Click “yes” when asked to download the program (don’t worry, it only stays on your computer if you want it to).
4. A little box will appear at the top of your screen with a 9-digit number on it. Just tell anyone you want to share your screen with to type that in after “join.me/” in theirweb browser, and you’ll be sharing your screen with them! For free. For real.

Personally, I think the greatest capability of this service is the ability to share as many screens as you wish – each of them only takes up the space of one tab. Whatever you pursue, whether it be entrepreneurship or just socialization, join.me has a use. Perhaps the simplicity here might be keyfor anyone trying to solve their parents’ computer problems via long-distance. Just an idea.

Many companies have failed to see the benefits of collaboration, and continue to rely on their own internal strength, rather than partnering to become a greater business. Kellis Managements is a company that has “seen the light,” and decided to join with others to provide the best possible product to customers. The company is based out of Washington, D.C. Kalis incorperates Asset management, leasing and development. They provide unique locations for people hosting events, and in order to get the best places, they must partner with other people. A main mission statement of the company is this: “Working with others, we are able to offer a variety of advantages at a diverse choice of properties around the Washington, DC area.” So they partner with others to get a larger collection of properties, so they can offer a variety of benefits. Among these, are: naming rights, online marketing, product placement and promotion, incentive offers, advertising and signage, sponsorship events and advertisements in merchant newsletters. These different aspects of the company all fall under the leasing department of Kellis. While this company may be good on its own, it has become great by collaborating with others to offer the best and most versatile business to its customers.

One of my favorite things to do on April 1st every year is to visit all my favorite websites and see how they attempted to fool their users.  Google is one of the more mischievous, and this year they told users of Gmail that they were introducing an email system which would allow users to send emails using only hand motions.

Connecting with users on more than a business level such as this can build relationships which stretches into customer loyalty.  Internet users are constantly looking to be amused, and when they are amused in abnormal places, they are usually very ready to share it with others.

Consider using common sources of amusement to draw in users.

If you have a website and you’re not selling a specific product or service, you are most likely hoping to make money off your content.  Content is super important online.  People use the internet everyday to do research.  However, the task of writting new content every day can be danting and extremely time consumming.  Hence, we have our problem, we need new content, so that our users will keep coming to our website and we can keep making money by having advertisers, but we don’t have enough time to write the content.  There are two different ways to solve this problem.  First you can hire someone to write content.  Pay them $50 an article and hope that the ad revenues will dwarf that $50.  However, if you are frugal and a little more risk adverse, I would recommend user driven content.  So what is user driven content.  It’s basically just letting your users write their own posts.  It couldn’t be easier.  Especially with the new gravity forms.  All you have to do is create a form that allows users to fill out boxes and write posts that will be placed on your website.  Check out my current project for an example of how to use user driven content to feed a website: www.buyingaengagementring.com.