A very inspiring podcast
July 26, 2008
Yaro Starak has recorded a very interesting and inspiring podcast with Alborz Fallah who started the website caradvice.com.au.
Caradvice is ranked in the top car websites in Australia, just behind sites that are run by big media companies like NewsCorp.
Alborz created a blog on a topic he loves and is passionate about and has turned it into a successful business. I think we see people all of the time creating websites purely for profit, sometimes they work, but mostly they fail. Just check out the sites for sale on sitepoint, most of them are crap. I am just as guilty as anyone though.
I think a lot also can be said for just working on one or two websites at the most and putting everything into them. Running multiple websites in many ways is just not practical and I think you waste time running from one niche to the next. Pick a niche that you love and write good content - it can be as simple as that.
This has worked for me to some extent with my Beijing site. At first I was running around trying to get links, but after a while I realized that if I wrote a funny/interesting/informative post, people would just link to it naturally. I think Google also prefers this. Link exchanges, link swaps and blogrolls are basically dead.
The hardest part to this of course is finding a niche that you are passionate about and is profitable. It is something I am going to have to spend some time thinking about once again when the Olympics are done.
My first media interview
July 24, 2008
A Brazilian journalist contacted me this morning about my Beijing Olympic site. I answered a few questions by email and he followed up with a phone call.
It’s exciting to finally have people interested in the site and getting different emails from people. It was a pretty long wait, but I am starting to feel more confident that the site will do well.
And if anyone would like to help out blogging about their favorite athlete, team or country in exchange for some links, please drop me an email.
Finally some love from the big G
July 17, 2008
It has only taken three years, but I am finally getting some love from Google with my Beijing Olympic site. Perhaps it is too early to mention this, but I couldn’t help writing about it.
Search engine traffic has jumped from 10 to over 70 per cent overnight. It’s weird because I have ranked well in MSN and Ask for some keywords.
I have some good inbound links and have done everything above board. I have spent zero on advertising but have spent many hours writing guest posts and trying to craft good content that gets links.
Persistence is the key to anything. I think many people would have given up long ago if they were in the position I was in with my site.
It might sound corny but I believe:
persistence + passion = profit
I know you can make money from researching obscure, long tail key word phrases, but if you have no interest in that particular topic, I think your only passion will be in making money rather than making a website or info product that is any good.
Success in small steps
July 2, 2008
I have been battling away now on my Beijing blog for nearly a year now and it is just over a month until the the games start in August.
The Wall Street Journal linked to the blog today and Problogger published an article I wrote on Facebook.
Traffic from Google still isn’t great, but I am expecting that to change when the Olympics are on and in the next thirty days as media networks go into Olympic coverage overdrive.
I still have no idea as to how the site will fare, but I am fairly confident I have done enough to at least get it to a point where it should do well.
I keep thinking of the analogy of someone publishing a book or releasing a movie - no matter how much work you put into something you have no idea as to how successful it will be until it is actually released. The site is live of course, but the start of the Olympics is going to be our “premiere”.
