I need your feedback
August 31, 2006
My designer has given me his first concept for my new site. I think it still needs a little more work, bit it fits fairly well with what I asked for.
You can see it here.
I would appreciate any ideas or suggestions.
The joys of starting a new site
August 30, 2006
The new site is coming around slowly and I have a designer coming up with hopefully an attractive design.
It can be a bit depressing, because unless I get lucky it could take a couple of years before it really starts to take off. My main sites that I work on fairly regularly all have gradual but steady gains in traffic.
One site that I don’t even work on much these days but started in 2004, gets very decent traffic from Google now, without even doing much to optimize it. If I had the money and could have found the right site, I would have much preferred buying an exisint travel related site.
In some ways time is the best SEO.
Dating affiliates
August 28, 2006
I am currently with two dating affiliat programs, friendfinder.com and Meta 4 Group, which I think are run out of Hong Kong.
Both programs perform fairly well, but one of the best things is that income grows slowly, but steadily over time.
If the programs offer a percentage of the monthly charges, income can really grow as people who join the free program become paying members. Of course, people drop out occasionally, but you usually get more people signing up month to month than dropping out.
Friendfinder also has a good webmaster referral program and my referral income is currently about the same as my own site’s income. My sites are travel based, but somehow dating converts fairly well.
If you are interested in joining Friendfinder you can sign up here.
Wordpress SEO plugins
August 27, 2006
I was listening to ShoeMoney’s podcast today at the gym and one piece of information I picked up which could be hurting this blog is by having the same Meta description for every page.
I did some searching to find out how I can get dynamic meta information set up and came across this blog posting.
For now I just installed the Head Meta description plugin.
Replicating other peoples success
August 27, 2006
With the plethora of ebooks and internet marketing courses that are becoming available on the internet, I am constantly thinking about whether these people are truly interested in helping others create useful and interesting websites.
A story keeps playing in my mind a friend told me a long time ago. An advertisement was placed in a newspaper: “How to make a $100 in a week doing nothing. Send in $5 to get our report.”
The person sends in their $5 and gets the report. What does the report say? “Place an advertisement in a newspaper just like I did charging $5 to get a report on how to make $100 in a week doing nothing”.
Just because one person was successful following their own methodologies, does it mean others will be able to have the success? I would answer no, not directly. It is definitely possible to get some new ideas and to learn things you may not be aware of, but how many people will go on to really learn and apply the principles they learnt in the information? Perhaps only 1 to maybe 5 per cent at the most.
I am strongly convinced that the only way to learn is to read all of the free information on the internet, read technical and marketing books and to experiment for yourself.
If anyone can prove me wrong please let me know!
Looking for a Joomla designer
August 25, 2006
I was in contact by email with a Joomla designer and after I got the site ready and asked for a final confirmation of the cost, he stopped replying to my emails.
There are probably a thousand reasons why he hasn’t responded, but it seems fairly strange. I am going to wait a couple more days before I start looking for someone else.
If anyone can recommend a good designer who has experience with Joomla, please let me know.
Planning a big new site
August 23, 2006
Just before holidays I wrote that I was planning on creating a social networking type site. I give it some more thought while I was away and I really want to create something that looks great, has lots of features and some great content.
For the past year I have considered buying a number of different websites. The problem with starting a new site is that you just cannot get the advantages of having an old domain with lots of inbound links.
The advantage though of creating something completely new is that I won’t have to deal with any legacy issues or have the fear of messing up the site and its search rankings.
I have decided to go with Joomla and to pay for a professionally designed template. It is something that I have wanted to do for a while. Even though I would love to learn more about design, the fact that you can pay to get someone to do everything for you, leaves you the time to get the content and website features set up.
I am always impressed by the number of great extensions Joomla has. Some are commercial products, but most are free. Extensions are like plug-ins for Word Press.
Some require some tweaking to get working, but most of the extension writers have websites with forums where you can post questions and problems you are having.
Another potentially interesting product I found was AroundMe. It is another interesting free product, which I hope catches on. Since the user base is still fairly small I have decided to stick with Joomla, but I might install it on another domain I have.
Leaving money on the table
August 22, 2006
You often hear this phrase when people talk about website monetization. It really is amazing how far you can go to monetizing a website.
I have continually been able to successful implement new affiliate programs with my Tokyo Essentials website. People may think that by adding one new program will reduce the income produced from another program. For me, this definitely has not been the case.
Of course not every program works out. For some reason programs like cj just don’t work for me at all.
Just because you think you might be making all the money you can from your site with links and Adsense, don’t stop looking for new affiliate programs and potential new advertisers to your site.
Opt in lists and passive marketing
August 18, 2006
When I started getting into ebooks and internet marketing I came across some people making some really big money with their courses and products.
The butterfly marketing course costs $1500! I think personally think you could learn more by using the money to experiment with PPC, but some people have had success with it (just listen to some podcasts by shoemoney first). Like anything else though, the majority of people buy the product and don’t do anything with it.
Internet marketers don’t rely on SEO, fancy design and only limited advertising. They do however have big email lists which they use to promote their products and they good at writing copy.
To get people to give away their email address, they usually give away some kind of free ebook to sign up. The free stuff is generally good info which encourages people to send it to their friends.
One sneaky way they use to get viral traffic is to make a page that looks like a page which is used to download the product after purchasing. No matter how good or bad the product is, if looks like you have found a “secret page” to get a product without paying for it, most people cannot resist the urge to send it to their friends or to link to it in their blog.
The smarter people even include affiliate links so a cookie is created and they can then later get credited for the people who buy the product.
Great advice for getting links
August 17, 2006
SEO book has a great article on link building.
I couldn’t help laughing at some of things at what not to do.
76. Ask questions about who provides the best [WIDGET], where [WIDGET] is an item that you sell. From the same IP address create another forum account and answer your own question raving about how great your own site is.
Found via Mr. Shoemoney.com
Looking forward to listening to his podcast from San Jose SES 2006.
