“I’ve compiled a small list (or rant) of some very basic and fundamental rules that all webmasters must learn and respect when developing a website that needs to make actual money. This list can also be used by companies looking to hire a web development firm or to evaluate an already deployed website project.”

Several usability findings lead directly to higher sales and increased customer loyalty. These design tactics should be your first priority when updating your website. I often write about the top mistakes in Web design, but what are the top things you can do to make more money? Following here are 10 Internet tactics with a particularly high return on investment (ROI).

“The heartbeat of Coudal Partners is its influential blog, which has generated its own community of like-minded followers and pumped energy into side projects that support the firm. Has playing around ever been this lucrative?”

“There are thousands of blogging related resources on the Internet which can create an overwhelming experience for anyone looking to get into blogging. Because of this I created a list of blogging resources that I use on a regular basis. Here is a list of 50 blogging resources that can be helpful to any individual and corporation looking to get into blogging or wanting to learn more about it.”

“No, neither Google nor YouTube is engaging in bubble-think — but watch for the onset of that condition in coming days and weeks, as the GoogTube deal gets turned into a valuation yardstick by hungry also-rans and competitors. ‘Let’s see, YouTube had X users and sold for $1.6 billion — therefore my company with 1/20th X users is worth at least $80 million!’ That sort of talk is cheap.”

“The rules for corporate disclosures are pretty damn weird. Especially given that things on Digg/Slashdot/Tech Crunch/GigaOM/ZDNet/TechMeme/Tail Rank go around the world faster than anything else I’ve seen. Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems, is working to change that. I hope he does. Seems to me that putting things up on a blog gets disclosure out there to more people than a phone call (quick, what’s the number for one of those disclosure phone calls — if you don’t know and you’re an investor in Sun, aren’t you being discriminated against?).”

“One issue that keeps coming up over and over again is how to measure the ROI of blogs. I’ve written about this in the past and have been stewing over how to go beyond the intangible ‘blogging is good for your business’ exhortations to quantify blogging’s benefit to organizations. Well, we’re getting close but we could use some help. My colleague, Chloe Stromberg, and I have been interviewing companies about how they measure ROI and realized that we needed to throw the net wider — this is where you come in!”

“Remember when web site traffic was talked about in terms of ‘hits’? You’d read about how many millions of hits Netscape got per month and other sites bragged about getting 30,000 hits a day. Eventually, we moved away from the term hit because everyone realized it was pretty meaningless.”

“Amazon used to be a large river in South America — but that was before the world wide web. This month the web is 15 years old and in that short time it has revolutionised the way we live, from shopping to booking flights, writing blogs to listening to music. Here, the Observer’s Net specialist charts the web’s remarkable early life and we tell the story of the 15 most influential websites to date.”

“In this fast-paced and synergistic world, buzzwords get the play. Non-technical people start companies and press ridiculous deadlines to their engineers, Web 1.0 burnouts start new companies that are just rehashes of the idea they couldn’t make work in 1999, and the technology you use is more important than the value you provide. Hell, VCs are getting sick of their clients making it big, so they’re starting half-assed ‘Web 2.0′ companies of their own which are off the map 1 month after beta…”

“Garett Rogers had this blog about ‘Google’s secret IPv6 plans.’ It appears that Google owns a block of IPv6 addresses numbering approximately 7.9 x 10^28 (79 billion billion billion addresses) or 2^96.”

“A good Web experience is rarely simple. It takes time, skill, effort and more to get right. It takes passion and a solid commitment from all parties involved. Again, for many the Web site is the first and primary touch-point as far as their brand goes. Even more traditional businesses know this. Still, it amazes me at how little some are willing to invest into their Web experience.”

“A little over a year ago, I met with Dave Young to talk about joining him at Joyent. I was intrigued from the start, but he hooked me with a 15-minute diatribe against the inanity of seemingly never-ending ‘public betas’ for web sites. It was a rant that could have come out of my own mouth. In short, we both agreed that permanent ‘betas’ are bullshit — as are any public betas that last more than a few weeks. You’re either ready to ship, or you’re not. Slapping a ‘beta’ badge on your logo doesn’t cover for any actual flaws or shortcomings in your software. It’s this decade’s equivalent of the 90’s ‘under construction’ GIF animation.”

“How easy is it to build a business on the Web these days? VC David Hornik writes a humorous post about how he had to help his eight-year-old son start his own skate brand. After trying to explain to his son what he did as a VC, his son mulled it over and came back to him with a business idea.”

“I have a friend–let’s call him Bob–who does double duty as a home repair/contractor and restaurant owner. He wants to talk to me about his web site. Bob, like a lot of small business owners starting out on the web, is dissatisfied with his web traffic. It seems to have peaked at around 300 unique visitors a month and most of this is due to referrals coming from Google… I explain to him about weblogs or blogs–how a lot of other organizations and successful entities like Microsoft, Mark Cuban, presidential candidates and even Donald Trump are using blogs’ unique ability to leverage influence to increase traffic and presence on the web dramatically. ‘Bob,’ I say to him, ‘you need a blog.’ And Bob looks at me and he shakes his head and he says, ‘Yeah, but that’s not my business.’”