Ideas for getting links to your site
January 31, 2007
Sometimes I find it useful to just search on my site’s domain name without the www or extension. You can uncover some interesting places where people have written about your site, but backlink tools don’t always find.
It can also work by doing it on other sites in your niche, that have good page rank. I must admit, I don’t spend much time on trying to get links like I used to. Now that I have extra time I have been trying to get some new links to my sites.
I found a close competitor to one of my sites tonight with PR5. A search revealed so many directories that I would not normally have come across. Some directories were on good, old content sites with high PR. Even better, some didn’t require registration or a reciprocal link back.
28 Day 28 Site Challenge
January 30, 2007
Since I am leaving the security of a nice house to stay in from March, I thought I would focus all of my efforts getting as many websites online before I leave. I think it will be easier to spend time just maintaining what I have than creating anything new while I am away.
I have a heap of domains just sitting there, so I thought I would set a challenge to get 28 new sites up and running over the 28 days in February. Of course these won’t be fully complete sites, and some might just be a single page, but the fact is I need to get them all going. So I have decided to create the “28 sites in 28 days” challenge.
I have to admit that I have started to work on a couple, but there is nothing like setting an extreme goal to get my arse into gear. I will be going through my list of domains tomorrow and selecting the 28 sites to work on. I will also be also providing a link here for every site each day, except for maybe a couple that I have ideas to sell some products with an Adwords campaign.
It will also be an interesting experiment to review the sites in six months time and see if they are making any significant amount of income.
Does it get easier
January 29, 2007
It is now the third year of running websites for profit and I was thinking to myself if it ever gets any easier.
In some ways I think the answer is yes. I have built up a number of websites that are making a reasonable amount of income. It is never an automatic income as you always need to be doing some kind of maintenance with your sites, doing promotion or looking for new revenue sources.
Once you have at least one site going, it is much easier to get traffic to the next one. You generally have an idea as to what is successful and what is not. I thought that I would now stop buying domains, but I keep thinking of new ideas to try.
I have now upgraded all of my Wordpress blogs and working on the Joomla upgrades. I have enough domain names now that I could spend everyday of the next month putting up a new website.
Perhaps that could be a good goal for Febuary - 28 days, 28 websites.
Doing business in your bathrobe
January 29, 2007
February 12th marks the 5th annual “Doing business in your bathrobe” day. The day was created by Webmomz and they describe it as:
“It’s an internationally national holiday to call attention to the millions of home business owners who have waved goodbye to the corporate rat race and settled into a better quality of life. We felt it was high time to recognize the efforts and dreams of entrepreneurs.”
Looking forward to celebrating my first day, although it could be too hot here for a bath robe.
Get a domain and get users to fill it with content
January 27, 2007
I don’t normally buy magazines, but I could help buying the latest edition of Business 2.0. The article which caught my attention was on Richard Rosenblatt. He is only 37 and helped broker the sale of MySpace. In 1999 he sold his company iMall to ExciteAtHome for $565 million.
His latest company is Demand Media. He sees the value of buying quality domain names and rather than just putting up a page of PPC ads, he is developing the site, or at creating a site which allows submit their own content.
I couldn’t help feeling that I am trying to implement a similar strategy, albeit on a smaller scale.
You can read the full article here.
Overture inventory tool gone
January 24, 2007
I kept finding the Oveture keyword inventory tool down the past few days, only to read the service has been disabled permanently.
People complained about its accuracy, but it was a great tool for getting ideas for keywords you may have missed. The page didn’t have any ads on it, so I am surprised Yahoo just didn’t keep it and placed some links to sign up for an advertising account.
Update: Strange but it looks like it is up again today.
Content creation
January 23, 2007
I have been trying to spend more time creating new content today. I had plans to submit articles to aritcle sites, but I think I will focus on just adding articles to my existing sites. After thinking about it some more, I think you would only benefit from those article sites only if you had a typical one page sales letter type of site.
Those sites are very difficult to obtain links. People will generally only naturally link to information which is useful or informative. I don’t mind writing - I am not a great writer, but if I can get into the groove I can pump out information.
Working on the internet, it is so easy to get distracted. I have been trying to set mini-goals throughout the day. Finish one small task and then take a break, or do something I find more interesting, like reading forums or researching new ideas.
I find I have to keep reminding myself I need to focus or a least spend a couple of hours a day buildining on stuff that is
Bum marketing
January 22, 2007
I have been concentrating so much lately on creating new sites, I haven’t been looking into ways to promote my existing ones. I often fall into this habit, but I know I have spend some time every day on getting links and promoting my existing sites to increase my income.
I have read a little on the “Bum marketing” method. At least the title sounded interesting! The information is free by signing up here. I suggest creating an email address primarily for these types of signups as you will get a tonne of email.
The author suggests writing articles and submitting them to sites like Ezinearticles and Goarticles. He also suggests using wordpress.com and squidoo.com. He suggests targetting longer search phrases with fewer search results.
With goarticles you can include affiliate links, where as ezinearticles you can only include a link to an actual website.
He also suggests using US Free ads to promote products. I have no idea how effective this would be, but for people who don’t have a website and can’t be bothered to write articles, it could be a way to get into internet marketing.
Nothing too original here, but I had kind of forgot about writing articles to get links.
Joomla meet up in Melbourne
January 19, 2007
There is a Joomla meet up planned for January 24th in Melbourne. I am planning on going. If anyone else reading this is going please let me know so we can have a chat.
Blog network up
January 18, 2007
I still have some work to do but I thought I would give a preview of my new site: Fusion Press.
Please send me an email if you would like to join, with a link to your blog and the category you would like it to be under. I would like to get a few more blogs on there before I try and start promoting it. I am accepting any “family friendly” sites, that are regularly updated.
The only requirement is that you place a link back to the site: http://fusionpress.com With display text of something like “FusionPress Member”.
