Sins,the,Internet,One,the,most DIY Sins of the Internet

When starting a new work at home business it is very easy to become consumed by it. We spend so much time trying to get the business up and running that we may end up becoming burned out and lose our motivation. There is so much to learn and Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;mso-style-noshow:yes;mso-style-parent:"";mso-padding-alt:0in

One of the most common misconceptions among new (and sometimesadvanced) internet users is that "if you can grab something itmust be free". Add to that a touch of naiveté and a hunger forcash or fame, and you've got a formula for disaster ... or atleast for some sins.This leads directly to one of the most common and mostself-destroying sins of them all - that of the Signup Junkie.Just about everyone that I know went through this phase - it'stypical for most newbies. They sign up for everything. Why?Because so many companies and organizations make promises whichseem to offer solutions, riches and help that it's hard to resist.The end result is, at best, lots of useless spam and at worstthe loss of lots of money, time and effort.Other sins are more subtle. For example, one day I was looking atmy site statistics when I noticed something very unusual. Mybandwidth usage was way too high. You see, my site had been doingabout 15gb a month, which is about 500 mb/day. Suddenly my dailyreport showed my site was doing 2gb/day! At first I was thrilled -my site must have gotten a great ranking in the search enginesor been profiled in one of the big magazines!My joy was short lived, however, as I continued reviewing thereport. I soon realized that my site was not more popular -someone had linked directly to one of my images. It was a veryhigh traffic site so every time this page was displayed it hit mysite - hammered it hard. If it kept up it became obvious that Iwas going to get charged for bandwidth overcharges, and it wouldnot be a small bill.You see, webmasters usually pay a fixed fee for their bandwidthusage up to a certain amount. In my case, it was 27gb/month. Anyusage over that amount costs a small fortune, somewhere between$6 and $20 per gigabyte over the ceiling. I was glad that I looked at my statistics because I was able todo something about it. I added a few lines to my htaccess fileand more or less removed the link. If I hadn't looked at thereports, though, I may have had a bill of several hundred dollars.This is an example of one of the most common and most difficultto understand sins of the internet. It's called bandwidthstealing, and it's just theft, plain and simple.One very popular sin is that of copyright infringement. You knowwhat I'm talking about - you've seen it all over the place. Thosegreat Star Trek or Star Wars sites with lots of photos andscripts from the series? Guess what, they are infringing uponother's copyrights.Spamming is very popular, and a great way to lose friends, makeenemies and generally annoy people. It's not a wonderful way tomake any money, as all but the truly naive hate spam and deleteit immediately without reading. Spamming is a sin and has more orless lost it's usefulness long ago.A more obscure but still popular sin is that of spamming thesearch engines. You see, search engines try really hard topresent useful information to their users. However, some poormisguided souls want to manipulate the system to cause their ownsites to appear higher in the results list (and thus get morehits). They do all kinds of strange things to fool the littlesearch robots, then curse when their sites are dropped forever.If you really want to annoy your friends, you can send emails tolots of different people using the carbon copy feature. This is acommon sin among newbies who don't know any better. What's theproblem? Well, including a list of email addresses exposes all ofthose addresses to everyone receiving the message (and anyone it'sbeen forwarded to). This often results in quite a bit of spam, aswell as lots of useless messages being sent back and forth ifanyone replies to the message.Then you find people who seem to think that banners and popupsare good ideas. Don't you just hate surfing to a site whichconsists of dozens of mindless banners and two or more popups?And worse yet, it's not like they are advertising somethinguseful. Most often, these silly advertisements want you topurchase something that you don't need, don't want and wouldn'tgive to your worst enemy on a bad day.Oftentimes, all of these sins are the result of misunderstandingsas to the purpose and usefulness of the internet. I mean, youwould probably not be likely to purchase furniture from a bannerstapled to a telephone pole, so why would you buy one from abanner on a web site or based upon a spam email? Most peoplewould not run power cables to their neighbors house to get theirelectricity, so why would they steal bandwidth?How do you avoid all of these sins? By learning about theinternet; By understanding how to use it effectively to helpmeet your goals; and by acting ethically and responsibly. Whatdoes that mean? Think before doing, and don't do anything youwould not like others to do to you.It's as simple as that.Some other articles on internet sins that you may find of interestare listed below.Sins of the internet- Bandwidth Stealing http://www.internet-tips.net/Legal/sins_bandwidth.htmSins of the internet- Banners http://www.internet-tips.net/Legal/sins_banners.htmSins of the internet- CopyrightInfringement http://www.internet-tips.net/Legal/sins_copyright.htmSins of the internet- Not Using Bcc http://www.internet-tips.net/Legal/sins_notusingbcc.htmSins of the internet- Money Making Programs http://www.internet-tips.net/Legal/sins_moneymaking.htmSins of the internet- Pop Ups http://www.internet-tips.net/Legal/sins_popups.htmSins of the internet- Signup Junkie http://www.internet-tips.net/Legal/sins_signupjunkie.htmSins of the internet- Spamming Search Engines http://www.internet-tips.net/Legal/sins_searchspam.htmSins of the internet- Webring Spammer http://www.internet-tips.net/Legal/sins_webringspam.htmTo see a list of article available for reprint, you can send anemail to: mailto:[email protected]?subject=send_article_listor visit http://internet-tips.net/requestarticles.htm