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10 Books About Outsourcing You Should Read

Jay — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 12:25:29 +0000

This is a guest post by Tom and I just wanted to apologize to him for taking so long to post this article! Check out his website at the end of this post.

Fortunately or unfortunately, outsourcing continues to be a hot topic among many industries. While it helps some and hurts others, it’s hard to deny the business logic behind this strategy. And by costing them stable jobs and careers, it’s the bane of many blue-collar workers’ existences in certain developed nations. Meanwhile, it is building previously considered third world countries into economic
powerhouses.

As outsourcing begins to level the world’s economic playing field, it would behoove people in many sectors, industries, and economic classes to understand more about this process and its effects on people, companies and nations. The more you know about outsourcing, the more prepared you can be to deal with its effects or harness its power. And what better way than by reading a book? That being said, here are a few titles that might better help you understand outsourcing.

1. The Black Book of Outsourcing: How to Manage the Changes, Challenges, and Opportunities (by Douglas Brown)

Published in 2005, this book has recently been revised and is broken down into three parts. Part one focuses on how to plan for and manage outsourcing, part two deals with finding an outsourcing career, and part three is a guide for outsourcing entrepreneurs.

2. What’s
This India Business?: Offshoring, Outsourcing and the Global Services Revolution(by Paul Davies)

India has been a hotbed for outsourcing activity during the last decade. If you’re interested in learning more about how this country has succeeded in building itself into a massive outsourcing provider as well as how you may be able to take advantage of this revolution, this could be the book for you.

3. The IT
Outsourcing Guide (by Rob Aalders)

Understanding why you want to outsource, as well as how you plan to execute your outsourcing initiatives is often critical in the success of your overall outsourcing plan. The IT Outsourcing Guide can help guide you through topics such as IT outsourcing decisions, criteria, management principles, and a number of other
aspects of your outsourcing needs.

4. The Outsourcing Handbook: How to Implement a Successful Outsourcing Process (by Mark J Power, Kevin C. Desouza, Carlo Bonifazi, and Mark J. Power)

This handbook could be the perfect way for you to familiarize yourself with how to implement your outsourcing. From traps to watch out for, to vendor assessment and managing your outsourcing relationship, this book covers a variety of outsourcing subject matter.

5. The
Manager’s Step-by-Step Guide to Outsourcing (by Linda R. Dominguez)

Sometimes it’s nice to have a step-by-step guide to make your outsourcing efforts a little less complicated. Broken into three parts, “The Fundamentals”, “Benefits and Barriers”, and “Commitment to Succeed”, Linda Dominguez’s step-by-step guide could be a critical resource in your outsourcing education.

6. Strategic Outsourcing: A Structured Approach to Outsourcing Decisions and Initiatives (by Maurice F. Greaver)

It’s hard to deny that a structured approach to outsourcing is appealing. When you are rolling the dice and taking a chance with outsourcing, a little structure can be reassuring. In Maurice Greaver’s book, you’ll find plenty of information to help you plan, analyze, and manage your outsourcing processes.

7. Offshore Outsourcing: Business Models, ROI and Best Practices (by Marcia Robinson and Ravi Kalakota)

If you’re outsourcing, you’ll probably want to know how to structure your change and what your ROI will be. In their book, Marcia Robinson and Ravi Kalakota cover topics like why you should outsource, best practices, and how to create and execute your strategy.

8. Outsourcing for Dummies (by Ed Ashley)

Okay, so you’re no dummy. That’s all right. It doesn’t mean that you still can’t learn something from this book. The “For Dummies” series wouldn’t still be around if they weren’t doing someone some good. From understanding the costs of outsourcing to preparing your team, there is plenty here to help you with your outsourcing needs.

9. The Services Shift: Seizing the Ultimate Offshore Opportunity (by Robert E. Kennedy
and Ajay Sharma)

Most of us are aware of the services shift, but do we truly understand how to seize the opportunity that lies before us? To realize your outsourcing opportunities and make them real, The Services Shift might be the book to set you on your way.

10. The Handbook of Global Outsourcing and Offshoring (by Ilan Oshri, Julia Kotlarsky, and Leslie P. Willcocks)

The Handbook of Global Outsourcing and Offshoring, reviews a number of topics including sourcing models, strategies for growth, and the IT outsourcing lifecycle, among others. The book combines these informational chapters with relevant case studies.

Tom writes and designs for a UK based company offering HP LaserJet 1000 toner, inks and refills. You can read more of his writing about the arts and design on their blog.

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How To Get Listed In Google News

Jay — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 13:35:03 +0000

How To Get Listed In Google News – If you guys have been following this blog for at least the last month or so, then you would have read my post How I Plan On Getting Accepted Into Google News. Well, it is official, one of my sites got accepted! (Not DatMoney)

It was a little bit of a relief but this morning I received an e-mail from “The Google Team” that started off like:

Hi Jason,

Thank you for your note.

Great news! This message is to confirm that we’ve reviewed and added your site to Google News. The inclusion of your articles should be processed within the next few days. Please retain this message and refer to it should you have any issues with your site in Google News.

Of course, the rest of the e-mail went into technical stuff that I need to do to make sure my articles are getting picked up.

So, what did I do to get accepted into Google News? Well, if you didn’t read my previous post that I linked to above, here’s a quick overview on what I did.

Quick Outline On How To Get Into Google News

- Created a professional looking news site
- Created an “About” page showing a list of writers
- Created a “Contact” page
- Created a “Privacy Policy” page
- Recruited a team that would post articles
- Posted at least three times a day
- Submitted to Google News to inclusion

Although, there are more details than that, this is just a quick outline on what I did. Eventually I’ll end up writing an eBook or some sort of case study going into every detail/step-by-step once I’m getting the traffic and revenue from Google News.

It’s funny because I know a few people who have their sites included in Google News and they have told me nothing but good news from it. Recently I had a discussion with a buddy of mine who probably just got his site included into Google News a month or so ago and he said he has been receiving around 50,000 unique visitors on a daily basis ever since.

How I Plan On Quadrupling My Adsense Income

Based on my stats on how to make $100/day from Adsense this should at least quadruple my earnings on that site alone.

Here’s how I estimated… first, I took an estimated 50k unique visitors on a daily basis (based on a friends similar site) and say three percent of those people click on Adsense ads. That would mean 1,500 have clicked on the Adsense on the site.

Now each click can vary, as we all know, but I’ll just take an estimate on the clicks that made me $100/day. The last time I went over that amount was on Sunday (I didn’t check yesterday’s stats) and it was around 400 clicks.

Now if I divide 1500 (estimated clicks per 50k visitors) by 400, I’ll get 3.75. If I multiply 3.75 by 100, I’ll get 375 which could potentially be my daily Adsense revenue. And if you multiply that amount by 30 days in a month, that would equal $11,250!

I know this is all estimates but you can always set your goal you should be hitting. On top of that, I’m not even including any other streams of revenue such as CPM ads, affiliate links or whatever else.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure I won’t be making over five figures monthly just off that one site but not only can I hope, I can actually work to hit that goal similar to getting the site included into Google News.

But I’ll keep you guys updated and if it becomes successful, then you’ll probably see a case study/eBook in the near future!

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How To Convert Word Document To PDF

Jay — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 17:55:36 +0000

How To Convert Word Document To PDF – I just finished my first eBook/guide so I figured I would share how you convert Word docs to PDF format manually for free. Honestly, it’s quite easy and there’s no additional downloading required.

For the most part, I try to type out everything in Microsoft Word so I can see if there are mistakes that really stand out and easy to catch. Since I just finished my eBook (which will be distributed later this week), I figured I’d share with you guys on how to convert these Word documents to PDF format without going through any other website or downloading some program to do it for you.

Of course, I’m sure there’s easier ways of doing this but this is how I have been doing it.

In your Word document, click on “file” and “print”. Simply change the printer name to “Adobe PDF” or “Adobe Distiller”. Next you want to check the box “Print to file” and then press enter.

It should look like this:

When you press enter, it should prompt you to name your file and then save it.

Next you want to open either “Adobe Distiller” or Adobe Acrobat”. One or the other should be already installed on your PC if you’re using Windows. If not, I believe you can download that for free on the Adobe website.

Once you have the program open, simply click “file” and “open” then look for the file you just saved. It should look like “myfile.prn”. Once you open it, it’ll convert to a PDF file for you and all you have to do is save it.

Now wasn’t that as easy as pie? I’m sure there are easier ways of doing this like a simple click of a button but the way I do it is pretty easy as well.

Hope that helped! And yes, the eBook/guide will be sent out this week!

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Outsourcing Pros and Cons

Jay — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 16:35:39 +0000

Outsourcing Pros and Cons – More recently I have been outsourcing some of my work because of the lack of time I have on working on so many projects. There are actually a lot of benefits to outsourcing but unfortunately, there are also some negatives that come with it.

What Is Outsourcing?

I’m sure you guys already know what outsourcing is but incase you don’t, it’s basically hiring a third-party person/service to do work for you that you need to get done.

An example of that would be if a company needed to get a lot of filing and processing of paperwork done, they would probably hire a temp to do that. More than likely, the reasoning behind that could be the company may have more important work at hand to get accomplished so they can’t use that time filing paperwork. Though, that simple task does need to get done at some point.

Outsourcing Pros

There are plenty of pros to outsource work besides the obvious fact that you’re getting necessary work done by paying a third-party service. But here’s a list of advantages I see when I outsource some of my work:

Huge Time Saver – I’m only one person who always has a lot on his plate and if I were to try to do all of the work by myself, it would take forever. Okay, maybe not forever but a lot of people like to think that “time is money” and if you can’t ever finish something then you’re losing money.

Cost Efficient - I just mentioned above that “time is money” and in most cases it is. But if you find the right price to outsource your work, at the end of the day you’ll actually be profiting.

Let me give you an example. Say it takes you two hours to review a product as well as write a paid review and you charge $100/review, I’m sure you can find plenty of people to do the work for you for $20. So, in this example you get to spend more time finding advertisers while someone else is writing your actual review.

That might not be the best example. Let me give you another one. Say you find someone who has a good reputation in SEO and they charge $50 for their service, you could cut out a majority of your work for the day to focus on something else. In the long run, you’ll be profiting if you use your time wisely.

Also, you can save money outsourcing especially if there are programs and other things that you would need to buy to get the work done.

Quality Service – Most people who does outsource work has a reputation to withhold so they should provide you with good quality service. If they don’t provide it, they may be hurting you a little bit with not accomplishing the work at hand but they’ll probably hurt their own reputation more than anything.

Targeted Accessible Specialized Skills - When you outsource work, a majority of the time there are people who specialize in the work you’re looking for so there’s no need to teach or train. It’s basically letting them know what needs to get done and they do it.

For example, if you wanted to get design work done, there are tons of designers who are more than capable of getting that done for you. All you have to do is tell them what you want and it should get done.

Outsourcing Cons

With the pros, there are always the cons. And I usually find more pros than cons when it comes to outsourcing needed work.

Doesn’t Meet Time Requirement - One of the worst things that can happen is if you have time sensitive work that needs to get done, you outsource and they simply don’t meet your deadline.

Luckily for me, I actually don’t outsource time sensitive work.

Miscommunication - With working online, there will always be some sort of miscommunication. It could simply be someone misinterpreting your message, a language barrier between the two or simply not being on the same page but yet proceeding with the work.

Quality of Work Not Up to Par – Whenever you outsource work that you could be doing, you probably have your mind set on how it should be done “the right way”. In your eyes it should be done in a specific way but that same quality of having someone do the work for you just might not be up to par.

Conclusion

There will always be pros and cons for just about anything that you do. When it comes to outsourcing your work, I would be careful on who you hire. But if you find that right person or service that meets your standards, that can actually benefit you a lot more in the long run.

And if you think about it, outsourcing work is tax deductible.

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Tax Brackets 2009 Single | Tax Brackets 2009 Calculator

Jay — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:33:09 +0000

Tax Brackets 2009 Calculator - Since we’re still in tax season and a lot of people like to wait until the last minute to get their taxes done (including myself), I figured I would continue on our discussions of taxes by getting out the tax brackets 2009 calculator.

First, let’s go over the tax brackets for 2009 singles. The reason why I’m focusing on singles is simply the fact that I am “single” which basically means I’m not legally married with a spouse living in the same household. Plus, a lot of internet entrepreneurs aren’t married so this list should help them a little bit, especially if this is one of the first times they are filing taxes (or they’re doing it themselves without an accountant).

Here is the tax brackets 2009 single:

- 10% on income between $0 and $8,350
- 15% on the income between $8,350 and $33,950; plus $835
- 25% on the income between $33,950 and $82,250; plus $4,675
- 28% on the income between $82,250 and $171,550; plus $16,750
- 33% on the income between $171,550 and $372,950; plus $41,754
- 35% on the income over $372,950; plus $108,216

If you’re in need of help trying to figure this out, well, I’ll try to explain it.

Basically, whatever amount of money you make within a calendar year would determine your income amount. Of course, you want to minus your tax deductible expenses from that total amount. Once you find out your actual income then you would find out which tax bracket you fall under.

I think most people would fall under the $33,950 to $82,250 so we’ll use that as an example. Say you make $50,000 then you would automatically pay $4,675 which is a flat rate for that bracket. You would also pay 25% of the income as well.

So, until you hit the next tax bracket, you will be paying that amount.

In addition, a lot of people use these tax brackets to figure out other ways you can save by increasing deductions.

I hope I explained this somewhat right LOL!

Anyways, I was trying to embed the tax brackets 2009 calculator but it’s not working out the way I wanted it to so here is a link to a calculator that figures out your estimated tax amount you’ll be paying. The link is http://www.cpasitesolutions.com/content/calcs/Tax1040.html

I hope that helps!

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Tax Deductions You Didn’t Know About

Jay — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:45:12 +0000

As we continue with tax season, I figured we’d go over some tax deductions you didn’t know about. Well, maybe not necessarily you but me.

I previously wrote a few posts on tax stuff so you can read them at List of Tax Deductions 2009, Tax Deductions for Self-Employed and Tax Deductible Expenses for Self-Employed Online Entrepreneur. But since there’s less than two months left to file your taxes and get your refund, I figured we’d cover a few more things here.

I’m constantly reading about tax stuff because it’s becoming more and more important to me as my revenue increases for my online entrepreneurship. As you guys know, we have to file for taxes on all the money that we make so deducting expenses become more and more important so we’re not actually losing out on money that should belong to us and not Uncle Sam.

Matter of fact, I don’t even have a Uncle Sam so why would we want to donate our money if we don’t have to. (By the way, that was my lame attempt to add an unnecessary joke somewhere randomly in this post)

Anyways, let’s get down to business. Let’s go over some detailed tax deductions we didn’t know about…

Write Off Travel Expenses – There are a few things about travel expenses and I’ve mentioned in the past but I would like to correct a couple of things I found as well. I mentioned that you could write off travel expenses if you’re moving outside of 50 miles to a new job. Well, apparently you need to have been hired prior to the move to qualify for writing off travel expenses.

Also, I mentioned if you attend a business meeting or convention (like Affiliate Summit) then you can write that off. But the key is the fact that you need to justify it as an business expense and it needs to be related to your business rather than a vacation in Las Vegas.

What I Didn’t Know… Say you have a spouse that wanted to attend the convention with you, well, you can write off their travel expenses and half their meals if they are an employee of your business or a legal partner. (And living with your girl/boyfriend for two months might not really qualify)

For everything you purchased on your trip, save your receipts and put them all in an envelope just incase you need to trace back to it.

Write Off Your Home Office – I mentioned you can write off just about anything for your home office (desk, computer, chair, etc) but there are a few things to avoid to trigger red flags with the IRS. Well, the main thing is to not purchase more than you make. For instance, don’t remodel the entire room with carpeted flooring, redo your walls, etc.

What I Didn’t Know… It’s not good to mix business with pleasure. If you purchase things for your business and you write it off then make sure you’re not using those same things for personal use. A good example would be purchasing a computer for business but also using it for personal use (playing World of Warcraft or something) because then you would have to figure out the percentage of the time you use it strictly for business.

Write Off Rent For Home Office Deduction – Every year you should be able to write off a portion of your rent if you are renting an apartment.

What I Didn’t Know… actually, I did know this but you can still write off home office space if you’re renting. I think there’s different ways of doing this and may require you to fill out additional forms so ask an accountant if you know one!

Write Off Personal Expenses (Including Clothes) – Again, don’t get things all twisted here, you simply can’t mix business with pleasure. A good example I read was the home office theme and you simply can’t deduct gardening right outside your “home office” because it doesn’t relate directly with your business.

What I Didn’t Know… Say you have to buy a suit to attend a business meeting, well, technically you shouldn’t be writing that off because you can actually wear the suit to other events not related to your business. Basically, any types of clothes you can wear outside of business then you shouldn’t write off.

Those are the main things that I can think of that really effects me directly and I’m sure it’s the same for many of you.

Next up, tax deductions and how we can avoid red flags/getting audited… stay tuned!

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How to Limit Bandwidth Usage

Jay — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 14:57:52 +0000

How to Limit Bandwidth Usage – Since I recently upgraded to a dedicated server, one of my main objectives was to limit my bandwidth usage especially since it’s no longer a shared server and I don’t want any of my sites to load extra slow. There are quite a few ways in which you can limit your bandwidth and I’m still working on a few myself!

Don’t Host Images… Or At Least Minimize Or Outsource

A large portion of your bandwidth usage comes from hosting images on your server. The logical thing for people to do is to simply avoid hosting images on their own server but not all of us can do that. Or at least, I know I don’t want to.

There are quite a few places in which you can outsource your image hosting. A few places include Imageshack, Flickr, Photobucket, etc. Though, some of these sites give you a limit on the bandwidth usage you can use and some of these places charge a small fee.

In my experience, the larger (or the more images) you have hosted, the slower your site gets and the more bandwidth it uses. If it is completely necessary for you to use images and you don’t want to outsource, I would simply put small images, if you can.

HTTP Compression

I’m finding out more and more with this upgrade to a dedicated server and HTTP compression is something that will be extremely helpful. Basically, what it does it compress your content so your site can load faster. Just think about it like it’s a zip file for your website.

By doing the HTTP compression, you can actually save up to 75 percent on your html page size. Again, this helps extremely well with load speed for your content. I’m actually still trying to work this portion out on my websites.

If you want to check your website and see how much space you can save, go to this HTTP compression checker and just type in your URL and it’ll tell you how much space you can save, if its uncompressed or not, etc. And don’t worry, it’s free to check and you don’t have to sign up for anything.

Prevent Hotlinking

Yes, I have definitely done my research because now I have to take things more seriously since my upgrade. One of the things that can actually increase your bandwidth is letting people directly link to your images and content. Well, particularly your images since that takes up most of your bandwidth usage.

When people link directly to your image that’s hosted on your website, it’s known as “hotlinking”. Basically, they are stealing your bandwidth from your hosted images. So, say 100 people decide to hotlink to your image and they get lots of traffic, your bandwidth is going to spike very high.

There’s a way to put a coding in so people can’t do this. I’m actually in the middle of trying to figure this out so I’ll try to update you guys with how to do it once I do it correctly.

There are more ways to limit your bandwidth usage but here are just a few that are pretty important. I figured I would share this with you guys but we all want to keep our spikes in bandwidth low, right?

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List of Tax Deductions for 2009

Jay — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:02:47 +0000

As internet entrepreneurs making money online or running a business, you’re going to need to budget and deal with taxes. Since I’m getting more into the business aspects with my online entrepreneurship, I figured I would get you guys a list of tax deductions for 2009 so you can deduct as many things as you can to save money.

I already mentioned on previous posts Tax Deductions for Self Employed and Tax Deductibles for Self Employed Online Entrepreneur a few of the big things you can deduct but below is a bigger list that I tried to get together for those of you guys that will be doing your taxes for your online businesses.

On this post, I will try to list as many things as I can that you should be able to deduct mainly regarding your online stuff. This is to help you guys out especially if this is the first time you’re doing taxes for your online business… or maybe you just want to find out more things you can deduct.

Okay, so here we go…

- Office Rent
- Utilities for your work space (electricity, internet, work phone)
- The interest on business loans
- Work supplies (for instance, you need a desk, chair and computer to work online)
- Rental of business property
- Repairs and maintenance (computer crashed and you paid to get it fixed)
- Domain names
- Web hosting
- Travel (for instance, you go to an affiliate convention or something business related)
- Car mileage for business
- Advertising (Google Adwords, paying for reviews or ad spots)
- Hired Help (paying for an article writer, someone to design your site, consulting, your employees)
- Partial self-employed health insurance (it’s required in MA to have health insurance so it gets pretty costly)
- Business insurance
- Printing and Copying
- Postage
- Entertainment and Meals (business related entertainment and meals but I believe only half is deductible… for instance, you take a potential client out to a sports event)
- Research, Education, Books (paying for eBooks, learning how to do something to helps your online business)
- Charitable Donations or Gifts (for instance, you donated your old laptop)
- Professional services for your taxes (hey, if you’re paying someone to do it for you, you might as well save money doing it!)
- Stock and Business Losses

I’m sure there are a lot more but these are the ones that I can think of right now. I think you can write off just about anything directly related to your business and I believe you have to have made a certain amount within the year as well.

When it comes down to it, I would consult with an accountant or professional because everybody is different, every state has different tax related things you should know about and so on and so on. But you can feel free to ask questions here and I can do my best to help out too!

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Tax Deductions – Self Employed

Jay — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:25:19 +0000

It’s getting close to that time to get all your receipts ready for your tax deductions for self employed especially if you are an online entrepreneur such as myself. And yes, any money that you make online (in United States) will be taxed. And yes, you are supposed to report all of it. But of course, you can potentially save a lot of money by writing some expenses off.

I know the year isn’t officially over and technically you have until April to get all your tax documents in but it’s always good to get an early start. Matter of fact, you should have probably been tracking all of your income, expenses and remembering to save all those receipts to begin with.

Before I go on, this post is directed towards people paying taxes in the United States who have made money online or by being self-employed in any way. I know there are other countries in which they don’t need to pay any taxes whatsoever. And for the ones that do, I don’t know the details for them.

Earlier this year, I wrote a post on tax deductible expenses for self-employed online entrepreneur in which I listed a few key things that you can write off. You can check it out especially if this is the first year you’re going to do taxes for your online income.

Of course, I will have a list of tax deductions for 2009 posted within the next week or two so you can go through a checklist to make sure you don’t forget anything.

But let’s at least get you started with some of the key tax deductions you should be able to write off…

Travel - Say you need to travel across state to attend a business meeting or maybe you went an affiliate convention. Well, those travel expenses should be written off. And yes, that includes gas money, tolls, plane ticket, etc.

And say you move across country because you just accepted a killer job. Well, if you happen to move more than 50 miles from where you previously lived, then you can write off those travel expenses as well. If you used your own car, you should include 24 cents per mile and also parking fees and stuff like that.

Home Office – I mentioned this in my other post but if you work from home and you have an “office” specifically for work purposes then you can write off just about anything in there. For instance, the chair, desk, lamp, etc you bought to help you work. And it doesn’t stop there… the computer, the electricity, the internet, the phone, your fax machine, etc.

You need all of that to help you function and “work” so you should be able to write those off.

Money Spent Back onto your Business – Say you spend money to make money, ex. affiliate marketer, well, you can write off that as well. Or maybe you spend money on advertising your products? Well, you can write that off. Bought an “how to make money online” eBook recently? Well, you can write that off too!

Those are just a few things that you can write off. Again, I’ll have an entire list of deductible things within the next week or two in full detail so look out for that.

At the end of the day, if you made more than $400 of net income, you’re supposed to report everything to the IRS. I think that number varies by state as well. But all and all, you should always check with an accountant or a professional when handling your finances. I’m just posting what I have learned and what I will be writing off.

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Tax Brackets 2009 Single | Tax Brackets 2009 Calculator

Should You Include WWW or Not?

Jay — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 18:14:11 +0000

This discussion has been going on for quite sometime and it still goes on. But should you include the “www” in front of your domain name or not? We have different reasons for doing one or the other but which one should we really stick to?

Yes or No with the WWW?

Honestly, it doesn’t really matter which one you use but whichever one you decide to use, it should remain consistent throughout your site. For instance, if you don’t include the “www” in front of your domain then you shouldn’t all of a sudden include it on certain pages.

The reason is the fact that when search engines come to your website, they see those two as completely different URLs. So, “http://www.datmoney.com” and “http://datmoney.com” are technically two different URLs according to the crawlers that crawl your site.

So, in essence, if the search engine crawlers check out your site, see the two different URLs (although they are both the same), there is a risk of duplicate content and both of those pages not getting indexed. I know there is a whole debate on if duplicate content is just a myth or not but I read that if its duplicate within the same site, then there might be a penalty.

Personally, I wouldn’t want to risk it. Feel free to try it out and let me know though!

But luckily, most of us use Wordpress so there’s an option to edit both the “Wordpress address (URL)” and “Blog Address (URL)”. Both of these should be the same. To access this, go to your Wordpress panel, click “settings” and “general”. (see the screenshot below):

Don’t worry, for you Blogger users, its basically the same thing. They even have a redirect of “http://datmoney.com” to “http://www.datmoney.com”. To do this, simply go to your Blogger account panel in “advanced settings” is where this option is. (see the screenshot below):

What Do I Do?

Personally, I put the “www” in front of my domain names because it looks more formal. Plus, growing up with the internet around me, how many times have you told someone a website address and included the “www” when you were telling them? Like “if you go to www dot datmoney, um, it’s ‘dat’ with a ‘D’, dot com…”

I know everyone has their own preference and some people just could careless. But whatever you end up doing, make sure it stays the same throughout your entire website. It only really takes two seconds, well, maybe like 10 seconds, to make the change if you’re using Wordpress or Blogger anyways.

So, why risk duplicate content with search engines if its that easy to change? But duplicate content is another topic on its own… plus, the more I hear, the more its a “myth” than anything.

Do you guys include the “www” or not? And why?