Jul 31
Hidden Content Sources for Your Website
I thought this was a clever idea for addiing content to websites Read on…
-Smitty-
Hidden Content Sources for Your Website
By Kim Roach (c) 2006
As I travel through the Google search engine, there is one
element that defines almost all of the top-ranking websites. It’s
great content. People come online for information and those that
offer the best content reap the greatest rewards.
Unfortunately, this type of content is hard to come by. In most
cases, you either have to spend hours in front of the keyboard or
outsource the job to others. Both of these options are very
costly. One requires your valuable time and the other requires an
investment of around $10 - $20 per article.
That’s why I have scoured the net in search of valuable free
content sources. I’m still not quite sure why I’m revealing my
treasured piles of free content, but I certainly hope you enjoy
them.
One of my favorite sources of content is public domain. This
comprises the body of knowledge without a copyright. Anyone can
use this material for commercial or non-commercial purposes.
Below are some excellent sources for public domain material.
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg is a library of 18,000 free ebooks whose
copyright has expired. “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”,
“Pride and Prejudice”, “The Time Machine”, “The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer”, and “The Canterbury Tales” have all passed into the
public domain.
This means that you can put these on your website or even sell
them in electronic or book format.
Explore a wealth of free content at http://www.gutenberg.org
Archive.org
At Archive.org you can find thousands of works that are currently
in the public domain. Want to put some cartoons on your web site?
Check out the “Film Chest Vintage Cartoons”, which is full of
classic animated cartoons from the 1930’s and 1940’s. The
collection includes Popeye, Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, Woody
Woodpecker, The Three Stooges and Betty Boop.
They also provide tons of other reproducable content including:
Brick Films: Commonly called “LEGO Movies”. Brick films are
dedicated to the art of stop motion animation.
SabuCat Movie Trailers: The world’s largest collection of
theatrical trailers.
Feature Films: A large number of classic feature films and
shorts.
Universal Newsreels: Newsreels were shown before every
feature film in the pre-tv era.
Computer Chronicles: Was the world’s most popular television
program on personal technology during the height of the computer
revolution.
Net Cafe: Television series covering the revolution during the
height of the dot com boom.
All of these content sources are available for you to put on your
website. check them out at http://www.archive.org .
Another popular public domain destination is Wikipedia.org. Here
you will find over 1 million articles ranging from Greek
mythology and Egyptian history to business, health, and
technology.
Go to http://www.wikipedia.org for a huge collection of articles
you can reprint on your own website.
Creative Commons
Every creative work receives copyright protetion as soon as you
put pen to paper, hit save, or press record. Because of this, no
one can use that work without express permission from the author.
Creative Commons provides a new content license that allows you
to share your work with others. If you want, you can even allow
other people to expand upon your existing work. This allows for
creative co-authorship.
The Creative Commons license has made piles of content available
for use on your web site. Whether you are looking for audio,
images, video, or text, you can find an abundance of reusable
information within the creative commons.
To search for content to put on your own web site, go to
http://www.creativecommons.org
Government Web Sites
Works produced by the U.S. Federal government are not
copyrighted. If you obtain a government document from the net, you
are free to copy and distribute the document. I have found plenty
of great content about finance, retirement, health, business, and
traveling on government websites.
To search for content offered by the United States government, go
to http://www.google.com/unclesam .
Article Directories
There are thousands of writers on the internet and many of them
would love for you to reprint their articles on your website. You
can find thousands of free web articles at the following article
directories.
http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.ezinearticles.com
http://www.articlecity.com
Interviews
I consider interviews to be one of the best sources of quality
content for your site. Simply interview industry professionals
and post the recording and transcript on your website. This
allows you to create original content very quickly.
Don’t be afraid to ask for an interview, most experts would be
delighted to speak with you. Remember, this is probably one of
their greatest passions. If you ask them politely, your chances
for landing an interview are good.
You can conduct an interview in person, over the phone, or even
through an e-mailed questionaire.
RSS Feeds
RSS is changing the way we consume information online. In
addition, it has also provided thousands of new content sources
for the online publisher. RSS is simply a file format similar to
XML that is used by publishers to make their content available to
others in a format that can be easily understood by web
publishing software and content aggregators.
By using RSS feeds, you can enhance the content on your site
without ever writing a single word. And remember, on the
Internet, content is King.
Want to put Amazon products on your site, updated news from the
New York Times, financial advice from Motley Fool, or press
releases from PRWeb?
This is all possible with RSS. No matter what type of information
you are looking for, RSS can provide you with a constant stream
of updated content for your web site.
To search for an RSS feed to enhance your own website, go to
http://www.syndic8.com .
You can even mix and match a variety of rss feeds at
http://www.rssmix.com/ .
Facts & Statistics
Looking for facts or figures to put on your website? Take a look
at some of the sources below. You’ll likely be surprised how many
facts, figures, and definitions are available in the public
domain.
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html : The
CIA World Factbook provides a number of statistics on countries,
territories, and dependencies. Each profile tracks such
demographics as population, ethnicity, and literacy rates, as
well as political, geographical and economic data.
http://www.census.gov/ : One of the largest repositories for data
and statistics related to the U.S.
http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Main_Page : One of the best
encyclopedia’s ever written was published over 90 years ago.
Search over 40,000 articles, all of which are available for
publication on your own site.
http://www.bibliomania.com/2/3/257/frameset.html : A searchable
interface of the 1913 public domain Webster’s dictionary
Private Label Articles
Private label articles can be bought for pennies per article.
This is possible because they are sold in bulk.
Many people criticize these articles and have declared them as
worthless. However, I am here to tell you that private label
articles can be very powerful when used appropriately.
Unless you have hours of free time every day, it is unlikely
that you are going to be able to create the amount of quality
content that your web site deserves. This is where private label
content enters the picture.
You can use private label articles to:
- Add content to your web site.
- Acquire hundreds of inbound links by syndicating the articles
to article directories.
- Create a free report for your visitors and other website
publishers.
- Create an information-packed RSS feed.
However, the key to using private label articles effectively is
to optimize them. Straight out of the box, these articles are
near worthless. To give them value, you must add your own touch.
Inject your personality into the article. Combine multiple
articles and do some additional touch-ups to ensure that the
article is in top shape for your readers.
Once you are finished you can add your resource box and send it
off to article directories and website publishers.
If you are looking for one of the top private label article
providers, go to http://www.infogoround.com
Images
Quality images can make your content much more inviting and keep
people at your site for longer periods of time. Fortunately,
there is a site that offers thousands of pictures completely
free of charge.
Check it out at http://www.sxc.hu
Quotes
Quotes can give your website a special touch. Quotes provide
interesting content in addition to an element of credibility. I
often like to add related quotes to my web site simply to engage
the reader’s attention.
To find some quotes for your website, go to
http://www.quoteland.com
In the end, you always want your content to be unique. Not for the
search engines, but for your visitors. With quality content comes
quality links. Once you have built up a reputation for delivering
unique content, you will never have to worry about having an
audience eager to visit your website.
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Kim Roach is a staff writer and editor for the SiteProNews
(http://www.sitepronews.com) and SEO-News (http://www.seo-news.com)
newsletters. You can contact Kim at: kim @ seo-news.com
This article may be freely distributed without modification and
provided that the copyright notice and author information remain
intact.
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