Internet Cash Checklist

Choosing the Best Free Blogs

2009-06-27T19:27:00.000-07:00

Whenever you're first starting on the Internet, there is going to be a lot of information coming your way that seems to be conflicting. A good example of this is whenever you are first starting to put up a website. Some people will argue that static pages are by far the best type of website to establish, but to tell you the truth, that is rather old thinking. Personally, my experience has proven that it is a much better idea for you to choose from some of the best free blogs that are out there in order to get your message across to the masses.

There are a number of different blog services that you can choose from, some of which will run directly on your domain and others that are outside services which are free to use as well. Choosing from these best free blogs really depends on what you plan on doing with your business on the Internet. For example, if you're interested in getting started on a shoestring budget you can pick up an account at Blogger.com and have your blog online within just a few minutes. Since this blogging service is owned and operated by Google, you should not have a difficult time attracting traffic from the search engine.

Another of the best free blogs that you can choose from is Wordpress. You can either get an account directly with Wordpress and use their servers or you can download their blogging software and install it directly on your own servers. One of the reasons why you might want to avoid using Wordpress directly on their servers is because they do limit the amount of advertising and commercial blogging that you do. If you are simply interested in blogging in the pure form, you should be perfectly fine using the service directly. If, on the other hand, you're interested in how to make make from a blog then you most certainly should buy a domain name and put the Wordpress software directly on your server.

Whether you are going to use these blogging services on your server or on their servers is not something that should be taken lightly as the effects can really be overwhelming. If you choose your keywords wisely and if you are persistent in your blogging efforts, you can use any of these best free blogs that are available in order to take your business to the next level.

To learn how to use the best free blogs to make money on the Internet, make sure to sign up for our FREE Blogging Secrets e-Course at http://www.BloggingProductAnalysis.com

4 Kinds of Link Building Campaigns

2009-06-26T13:40:00.000-07:00

Anyone that has spent any time studying SEO, researching algorithms or reading internet marketing blogs and forums knows that link building plays a huge role in a website’s marketing campaign. If for some reason you didn’t know that link building was such a big deal, then it’s imperative for me to tell you now. Backlinks (links pointing to your website) are considered web votes in the search engine popularity/ranking formulas. The more websites there are with links that lead to your site, the merrier. However, it does not stop there. Who links to you, why they link to you and what they say about you are arguably more important factors than how many websites “voted” for you.

There are 1,000’s of ways to build links back to your site and for a variety of reasons. Some will build links to increase rankings while others are looking to increase PageRank. Whatever the case may be, it is necessary that you understand the different types of link building.

Building Links to Increase Total Backlinks

In some industries, depending on the competition link building could entirely just be a popularity contest. For example, you could check the backlinks of your competitors rankings for the terms you are targeting and notice that they have over 100,000 backlinks compared to your 112. Also, for some search engines, having a plethora of links plays a role in your search engine positioning. Furthermore, the more links you have pointing to your site, the more paths you have for bots to find your site and to cache it. Building backlinks to increase your total in-link count in Yahoo or Google is usually done because this is something that can easily be seen by anyone online. Having a site that only has 50 backlinks says a lot. Much can be said about a site with over 40,000 links as well.

A few techniques to increase total backlinks include site-wide link building, blog rolls on blogs with a lot of posts, directory submitting and article distribution.

Building Links to Increase PageRank

Although you want a lot of sites to point to yours, you also want these sites to have high PageRanks. Google uses PageRank as a measure of importance. PageRank is an algorithm that measures how many sites are pointing to you and how many sites are pointing to those sites pointing to you and so on. Google still makes it clear that PageRank is the heart of their search engine algorithm, so getting links from websites with high Page Rank is a must. When you obtain links from sites with a lot of links pointing to them, it shows Google that a trusted domain has linked to you. Another reason you may want to increase your PageRank is because you want to sell advertising placements or blog reviews and noticed that the higher the PR of your site, the more money you can charge.

This form of link building is a very common technique performed by directories. They buy links from pages with a lot of PR to inflate their PR so webmasters will want to pay for inclusion into their directories.

A few techniques to increase PR fast is to get links from sites with a PR4 or better, sitewide/blogroll links, social bookmarking, mass press releasing, text link buying and link baiting.

Building Links that Increase Search Engine Rankings

As mentioned before, backlinks counts as votes. However it is not only the number and type of backlinks that matter, what they say about you could make all the difference in the world when it comes to search engine positioning. The anchor texts of your links are labels that help the search engines bots categorize and rank your site according to relevance. Sometimes getting a few links saying the keywords you’re going after can go a lot further than how many links you may have. So if you are looking to build links to increase search engine visibility, find relevant sites to give you links saying the keywords you’re going after for optimal keyword placement.

A few techniques to increase rankings are niche directory submissions, article distribution, link exchanges, blog reviews, links from sites already ranking for terms you’re targeting, and press releases.

Building Links that Generate traffic

So we can build links to increase PR and we can build links to improve our rankings. However, isn’t the ultimate goal to generate traffic? It’s easy to build links to indirectly generate traffic via the SERP’s and to forget about generating links that send visitors. While some links may increase your PR or even help your search engine positions, links that send relevant traffic directly to your site from a site related to yours could be a better investment than building links in hopes to get some love from the search engines’ proprietary algorithms.

A few ways to generate traffic via backlinks, is through affiliate marketing, paid links, links on pages with top Alexa rankings, reviews from bloggers with a lot of subscribers, forums in your industry, social networking and press releases.

While all of these techniques are valid, the important thing to remember is that major search engines like websites that generate traffic naturally. So not only do you have to figure out which route you want to take (if not all of them), you should also devised strategies that will give your website a natural link building profile.

Backlink tips provided by James Harrison; Link Building Expert & Online Marketing Specialist.

Using social networks for search engine marketing

2009-06-23T14:36:00.000-07:00

Some businesses have been reluctant to adopt social networking as a marketing strategy, with companies even blocking access to social networks as part of company policy. Whilst this may seem a good move when trying to keep employees busy doing their jobs rather than completing their Facebook profile, marketing and communications departments have been slowly but surely become more frustrated at lost opportunities.

Social networking is an innate human trait, and in the business world, networking is vital. Hence the rise in networking events, business network breakfasts and so on. Moving this online was inevitable with the rise of the Internet, and businesses who fail to engage in the social network world with a cohesive marketing plan are more than missing a trick.

There are now many case studies of well-known brands who are successfully using social networking, not just for raising brand awareness and PR, but also for getting in contact with new and existing customers, for promoting products and services, offering white papers, freebies, coupons and discounts, and possibly most importantly, for listening to feedback from their customers.

Some companies have been flamed for the lack of interaction on blogs (for instance, disabling or removing comments), and it has not taken long for the lessons learnt by the likes of Johnson & Johnson and the damage allegedly done to reputations, to sink in. Businesses are realising that, whether you like it or not, your customers are sometimes going to make negative comments about your company, products and services. Those comments are going to be out there on the Net, and the realisation that they are better made in a place where you can at least spot them and respond is dawning on many of the large brands.

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Ecademy are different types of social networks, but each is valuable if it is the right tool for the job for your company, and is included in a marketing strategy that understands the opportunities and limitations of each network.

Twitter for instance is a great place to disseminate news about your products, to make an offer to your followers, to easily contact your customers at minimal cost, to create a following and conversation. The brand that is Stephen Fry has become synonymous with Twitter in the UK, and as a least cost marketing tool has proven very effective, bringing Stephen's products to a global audience with very little effort. It has also minimised the costs, in both time and money, in dealing with customers and followers through more expensive channels, such as advertising, email, website updates and so on.

Facebook is being used successfully by many global product names to create fan pages and product pages, which then offer viral opportunities when the product is pushed through users' feeds, thereby bringing in more fans and 'groupies'. Facebook users are no longer just bored teens, and many silver surfers are also using Facebook as an easy way to share information with friends and family. This means that the Facebook demographic has changed, and creating pages or groups which are of interest to a particular target audience, geographic region and so on is a desirable, low cost strategy for many businesses.

LinkedIn is primarily a business network, and whilst being effective in bringing your business to the attention of others in the same sector, it has wider uses. Firstly, the chance to develop contacts with your suppliers, potential suppliers and customers, and others within the industry. The value of these contacts can never be underestimated, and there are many deals brokered through LinkedIn which would have been difficult or impossible without some expensive real world networking at conferences etc. Another aspect of LinkedIn which is frequently overlooked by the business world is the ability to create or join groups, where both promotion and discussion are the norm. By contributing to discussions, your company or yourself can be seen to be an expert in the field, and this in itself is valuable in online promotion. Additionally, there are many groups for promotion of products or services, as well as recruitment for specific sectors, and these add to the arsenal of promotional spots for articles, white papers, jobs, discounted services and so on.

Ecademy is similar to LinkedIn but, having been established for longer, has a wider range of available opportunities within its website, reaching both on and offline. Ecademy can be more time-consuming purely because of that, but equally as valuable as LinkedIn when seeking business contacts, and opportunities to bring your knowledge and expertise to a wider audience.

As with all these networks, it is essential to put time into the developing of relationships and holding conversations in order to reap the rewards. It is vital to remember that this must be a two way process. Hard sell will not work on any of the social networks, just as it is not a popular mechanism in much of real life. It is very much about giving first and foremost, and acquiring respect from your peers, customers, followers, as well as listening and showing an interest. The payback can be huge though if you are successful, and many of the internet marketers who tweet are garnering increasing amounts of custom by regularly talking as well as listening.

Phil Robinson is an experienced online marketing consultant and Founder of ClickThrough Marketing - an international Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing agency

If You Build It, They Will Come but a Little Help Doesn't Hurt

2009-06-21T19:24:00.000-07:00

You have just finished setting up your first blog, got it looking just right, posted your first article and now you wait. Your content is good, you have viewpoints you want to share with others but how to attract visitors (ie traffic) to your door?

"If you build it, they will come" might be true but how long must you wait before anyone realizes that your site actually exists. A blog like any other business needs traffic in order to survive. There is no harm in using tools, which are already available to you, to increase your exposure and the best thing about them is that they won't cost you a dime.

Probably the most ignored and useful tool that a blogger has at his disposal is the RSS feed. Say what? RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is the equivalent of having a 100% free ezine subscription service. The trick is to submit your RSS feed URL to as many RSS directories as possible. Then each time you post new material on your blog, this is syndicated to your RSS feed and the directories display your latest posts. Lists of RSS directories can be easily found with a simple Google search. Most blogging software such as Wordpress and blogging sites such as Blogger.com come with a built in RSS feed - so make use of it.

Leaving a comment on others blogs is another effective method to attract targeted traffic and to establish firm one way backlinks to your site which in the long run also improve your search engine listings. Find blogs which are somewhat similar in content to your own and post relevant insightful comments in an area in which you are familiar. If your comment is “O.K.'d” by the blog owner then your link will go live. There are numerous free software packages available, one being “ Blog Detective 2.0 ”, which can save you time and effort searching for blogs manually to leave comments on and building backlinks. It also displays the Page Rank of each of the individual blog posts, the home page of the blogs and whether you have left comments on this blog before. A very useful tool and free!

Social bookmarking is of paramount importance in promoting your website but submitting your link to each individual site can be a time consuming task. However there is a site, www.SocialMarker.com, which can greatly reduce the time and effort needed to socially bookmark a website and it is free. Here you can atomatically submit your blog to over 120 Social bookmarking sites. All that you supply is the title of your site, it's URL, a brief description and the keywords (tags) that you wish to be searched for. Voila! All done and the backlinks to increase your page ranking and targeted traffic should soon follow..

These are just 3 of many ways to explode your blog traffic. It's possible to reach dizzy levels of traffic for your new blog right from day one when you have an arsenal of blogger’s traffic tactics at your disposal. Check out http://blogging4bucks.youwanted2know.com for more details... and pick up your free copy of 'Blog Detective ' at the-Savvy-Shopper.com

Article Marketing - for brand awareness or making money?

2009-06-18T16:31:00.000-07:00

Should you just use articles to gain brand equity and raise awareness of your business, or should you look to make money from your articles?

Once you have created articles, it is worth considering whether, in this age of the free content mentality, it is worth attempting to make money from your articles and information products, through, for instance, a subscriber or membership model.

There are plenty of websites who do offer premium and paid content, who are very successful in doing so, but there are also many other websites who have chosen to raise awareness of their brand and expertise by giving away the content for free.

The choice is entirely yours, and it is worth looking at the different models that may be available to you to experiment with. No decision needs to be locked in stone, so if you find a partiuclar model does not work for either your users or your business, you can change the model, but bear in mind that this may cause dissension in the ranks of your users if you do so.

1.Partial Access/ Sample Chapters

Many of the online bookstores (eg Amazon) and publishers (eg O'Reilly) offer sample chapters to whet the appetite of the customer and encourage them to buy the whole book. This can also be done with white papers and so on, as well as with music or films, by offering a summary or clip, and selling full access at a cost. The software industry has used this for years by offering a time limited or restricted trial version of the software to allow potential customers to try before they buy.

This model allows you to promote the samples in many different places, whilst maintaining control of the complete document, film or music and controlling the data harvesting from those who purchase the whole product. This data is the basis of your marketing list for existing customers, and hence is very valuable for all future promotions and marketing.

2.Extended Content with Bonuses

Another mechanism is to offer bonuses or additional content in the paid version. This has been successfully used by the movie industry, offering DVDs with extra footage, inside information, director's cuts and so on, but can equally be used with white papers, ebooks, articles and so on.

3.Time Limited Access

There are a growing number of sites who either offer articles free for the first few weeks after publication and then you pay to access historic content (eg Marketing Sherpa), or who offer newly published articles as premium content and then the archive of older articles for free.

The point with all of these models though is that the content needs to be of high enough quality to encourage people to pay for access to it. It is vital to produce unique, quality content for your search engine rankings, to increase your market share, and for brand equity. Whether you also use the articles to increase your income or revenue from your website is a decision that needs to be made based on knowing your target audience and understanding your competition. If similar content is available elsewhere for free, it is inevitable that your potential membership and hence income will be reduced. In which case, it may be better to provide the information in your articles for free to help develop brand awareness and show your company's expertise in the field, rather than seeking revenue gain.

Phil Robinson is an experienced online marketing consultant and Founder of ClickThrough Marketing - an international Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing agency

What Blog Software Should I Use?

2009-06-15T19:21:00.000-07:00

So you want to create a blog but you aren't sure what blogging service will best fit your needs. Welcome to the club! There are a number of great options out there but each service has its own strengths and weaknesses. To help you find the best service we've gathered up all the important data so enjoy the read and hopefully when you're done you'll be better prepared to pick the best service for your needs!

The first thing you need to understand about blogs is that there are two main types: hosted and self-install. Some of the blogs offer both versions, but basically what this means is with hosted you will simply join a service somewhere and the blog software is ready to go. The second type, self-install is a bit more tricky for the less tech savvy user. You'll need to find a hosting service and then install the software yourself. Either way the real question here is which blog service is going to best fit your needs so let's have a quick overview of the main blogging software options.

Blogger

Cost: Free

Blogger is a free, hosted service. It is one of the older services and has a lot of users. Getting setup with blogger is pretty fast (about 10 minutes from start to blogging) and the system is pretty simple to use. The real issue with blogger is that its simplicity is also its limit. You won't find many professional bloggers using it though as you are more limited in some aspects such as performance and customization.

Blogware

Cost: ~$8 - $15 a month (varies by reseller)

Blogware differs from most blog services primarily in how you purchase it. You will need to purchase it through a reseller so you'll find that the prices and packages vary from reseller to reseller. Again with Blogware you'll have trouble if you want to make major customization changes to the looks of your blog, but there are a good number of options that let you tinker with the setup without editing the templates themselves.

Expression Engine

Cost: $149 (non-commercial) - $199 (commercial)

Expression Engine is actually more than just a blogging software. It would be better categorized as a content management system. Unlike some services it also includes things such as image galleries, mailing lists, and other useful tools. Again all this power comes at a cost and that cost is ease of use. You'll be able to do most anything you want but how to get it done will always be the big question.

Movable Type

Cost: Somewhere likely between $69.95 and $199.95

Very powerful, but difficult to both setup and use. One of the strengths of Movable type is that you can set it up to not appear like a blog at all. The feature set is large and you can do most anything you want but each time you update your template you'll have to rebuild your blog. If you really want to do some interesting customization this may be the blog service for you, but the faint of heart need not apply due to the technical skills required to accomplish the changes.

Typepad

Cost: $4.95 - $14.95 a month (depending on what service you choose)

With Typepad you have three options: Basic, Plus, and Pro. Each option gives you a distinct set of options and naturally the more you pay the better your options will be. Typepad is another very popular service and works well with journalistic bloggers who aren't much interested in messing with the sites templates. Once again customization is possible but difficult so most users of Typepad simply stick more or less to the defaults and do not worry much about the looks of the blog.

WordPress

Cost: Free

WordPress is both free and poweful. Many professionals use WordPress both due to its many customizable features as well as its ability to handle large traffic loads. Wordpress also supports third-party plugins which offer you many features that other services cannot provide. With WordPress you can both use their free service or add the blogging software to your own host. Some hosts also offer it as an easy one-click install feature.

Ed Grier is a writer for Best of the Web Hosts http://www.bestofthewebhosts.com - news, reviews, and more for webmasters and bloggers.

Build More Twitter Traffic

2009-02-19T15:29:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of social networking sites out there that are quickly replacing Blogs as the preffered method of generating traffic, Facebook and Twitter are two of the best examples that come to mind.

Thats why when I found out about a way to increase the number of followers for any Twitter account I had to try it out.

Unless you are already super popular or follow tons of other people it is an uphill challenge to build as many followers as the TwitterGetter says they can get for you.

Besides which it is free and fully automated. I had 5 new followers in just a few seconds.

So give it a try. http://tweetergetter.com/rankbullet

Site Wide Keywords

2009-01-01T11:14:00.000-08:00

Back in late August I started an experiment in using Public Domain Material and incorporating it into an existing website.

The Public Domain Material increased the amount of pages on the microsite from 6 to 43 pages. It was assumed that the increase in long tail keywords would improve traffic and add value for the existing traffic.

Only what happened was something totally different.

As you can see the traffic drop off started right after the late August incorporation of the public domain material.

The Problem: The Site Wide Keywords were no longer focused.

In effect my microsite went from a very focused few pages concentrating on a single set of keywords. With the addition of the new material the bulk of the website was now a nonfocused jumble of cooking related keywords.

The effect on search engine traffic was devestating over time. Both a 50% drop in page views and income from what was once a decent performer.

The Lesson: If your ENTIRE website isn't focused for a set of keywords then your search engine results will not be as strong.

The Cure: I now have two options,

Eliminate the Public Domain Pages that I built and find another more relevant place for them with another website returning my microsites focus back to its original keyword.
Create more content focused on my original keyword so that the Public Domain Content does not out weigh the value of my core content.

Hate Christmas, Love Xmas

2008-12-21T15:44:00.000-08:00

XMAS.com that is.

What a great 4 letter domain name. I don't know who owns it but they are one lucky son of a bitch.

Think about it, 550,000 searches a year for the word xmas, with 2/3rd's of that all occuring in December, almost the rest of 1/3rd in November.

But do a search and the domain name isn't there, whoever owns it is using it as a pure parking play and hasn't sought out any kind of development.

I think thats crazy. Sure the Per CLick Income level is only slightly above $1 at best but I think you could easily dominate the entire XMAS Market.

Search for XMAS and you'll find 102 million competing pages on Google, with xmasfun.com @ #3, also @ #3 on Yahoo with 295 million competing pages.

You telling me XMAS.com couldn't take them on? XMAS Ornaments, XMAS Greeting Cards, XMAS Trees, you name it the traffic is there.

Then there is XMAS.net owned by a guy in Tokyo, that name was first registered in Oct 1996.

Just Parked.

So for Christmas this year I would like a sizable chunk of money to make an offer for either domain name with enough left over for development throughout the year.

May 2009 be Christmas, or XMAS, everyday.

Keywords, Page Rank and Link Building

2008-12-06T12:17:00.000-08:00

Got tired of the boring repetition of Article Marketing this morning and started browsing YouTube looking for a way to find out how often certain words were searched for.

I didn't find that, but I did come across one persons channel and their website and I can only say Wow!

34,045 inbound links, Page Rank 5.

Not going to mention exactly what site it is, actually why not? Its HotforWords.com run by Marina Orlova.

Basically a hot chick talking, promoting her videos on YouTube for traffic (with a radio show and random tv appearences to back it up).

With only 340 videos she has over 150 thousand subscribers. She has a well designed channel, her website is run by Wordpress and looks great. And Hotforwords.com has a traffic rank of: 58,029

Awesome.

Forgot where I was going with this post but her site would make a great case study for the value of YouTube Video Marketing.

Free PLR Articles

2008-12-04T19:32:00.000-08:00

Insuring the quality of your PLR, Private Label Rights, Articles is very important esp. when you are working with non anonymous article directories. You don't want the same content, or anything that could be considered as duplicate content, on any of your own websites.

Converted PLR should in my eyes be used for backlink generation only. OK there are a lot of other uses for PLR but this is the one I use most and am most familiar with.

First lets start with a basic understanding of what to do with your PLR articles. Fortunatley a video has already been created which explains most of this:

* Just a warning: a lot of article directories will not accept your article if it includes affiliate links.

In the video she uses Dupe Checker Pro but there is also a free download at Coach Tyler's Duplicate Content Checker which is very cool and VERY Free!

PLR is everywhere and should be taken advantage of because the way I see it article marketing will be seriously phased out in later updates to the Google alogorythm.

Just like recip links and directories.

Only someday Google will be so smart they will be irrelevant.

Targeting MSN Search Traffic

2008-12-02T10:12:00.000-08:00

Recently I have been looking into the differences between search engines and their algorithms.

MSN specifically comes to mind, not just because it is in the top three search engines, despite handling only 7% of the search market, but because of the Search Engine Loophole Product that was recently released which claims to show exactly how you can achieve first page, and even first place, listings on the MSN Live search network.

Even with the smaller amount of viewers the ability to dominate your chosen keyword would prove highly advantageous. The authors give several examples in their videos which with a little research still seem to dominate the top of the SERPS's on MSN. (for the examples in the first video at least)

Upon further inspection, and without having yet purchased their product, it looks like the goal is a keyword specific domain name, with or without hyphens, a good title banner link, not to index.htm but to the url itself, along with relevant keyword specific text broken up into three paragraphs with a link to the url in each paragraph.

Oh and also a copyright mark at the bottom referencing the keyword specific domain name.

Is that it? I don't know, I have yet to purchase their product.

But in the meantime here is another video describing the specifics of MSN.

Domain Parking - What it REALLY means

2008-11-15T10:44:00.001-08:00

As a low budget Domainer I am entering the industry by purchasing new, never before owned (or rarely, dropped) domain names. I do not have the cash or credit on hand to buy the top level domains that I would really love to own such as single keyword domains like Candy.com, Nachos.com or the ultimate Mortgage.com.

When you have quality domain names like Fund.com going for $10 Million dollars or Invest.com for over $1 Million dollars there is no way I can compete at that level.

Actually the $9 a year registration fee seems excessive to me when my domain name portfolio is reaching the levels that it has in recent weeks.

In the begining I did what most people do, I turned to parking as a way to potentially monetize any traffic that that domain name saw.

The keyword is traffic. Parking a domain name is a way to monetize traffic that it ALREADY has. Once a domain name is parked it is a violation of the terms of service to continue building inbound links and traffic towards that domain name.

So unless a domain name has existing traffic the return on that domain name via parking with an aggregator is VERY limited.

Which is what became painfully obvious as I went on to develop my better domain names and watched my parking income dwindle.

I believe Jenny or I posted about the question as to what to do with domain names seeing no traffic. The best option seems to be creating even a single keyword dense page and some inbound links. From there you can gauge the traffic and the levels of development you want to get into.

And if all else fails you can go back to parking now that you have at least created some trickle of traffic and seem some slight increase in income.

TOTC.com Questions

2008-09-14T01:48:00.000-07:00

The recent sale of TOTC.com for $5,171 dollars over at Sedo happened to catch my attention this week.

As anyone knows who reads this blog I am always interested in 4 Letter Domain Name Sales. The difference this time was the high price coupled with the fact that it has no inbound links, has never been indexed in the search engines and for some reason despite having no Alexa rating has a thumbnail image which links back to a Page Rank 2 Outsource Credit Training Company website.

Can anyone tell me what is going on here?

Did they have the domain name frame redirected to the main site, somehow skewing the presale numbers?

I just don't see it the way sale prices have actually dropped over the last couple of months for the 4 letter dot coms. Hell, I even stopped parking most of mine and am using them as a playground for random experiments, like BNQO.com.

Still having trouble with the PHP but I'm working too much and have had a serious cold the last few days not to mention everything else that has gone wrong recently.

But thats another story.

Note: Suprisingly DEBI.com only recieved $5,000 at auction last week, even with 23 inbound links and a real Alexa rating.

Public Domain Web Content

2008-08-24T17:46:00.000-07:00

It started simple enough, a friend had an old book and was thinking about turning the contents into web based content for their website. For some reason I was the one who had to research the Public Domain/Copyright Expiration information as I had happened to mention that I heard you could repurpose old content as new material and resell it.

I had saved an article on a guy who took an old sales book on selling Model T Ford's and used the find and replace feature in wordpad to create a whole new book about selling modern cars and sold it as an eBook with a premium price tag. Only I gave the article to someone else.

Then I came across this amazing tidbit of information at Paul Allen's Blog:

Payscale used public domain data from the federal government to attract search engines and go from 10,000 monthly visitors to 1.2 million, primarily through natural search traffic (and word of mouth) without spending any money on advertising. And now, it has wage data on 5.5 million US employees, nearly 5 times as much data as the leading traditional wage consulting firm. Using public domain data to attract initial customers, and user generated content to keep people coming back and signing up for your free salary comparison reports, so you can upsell them to your $19.95 for six months subscripton to more detailed reports that can help someone get a pay raise, is a brilliant business plan. I'm very impressed with this company and its model. It generated $5 million last year.

So using Public Domain Material is in no way the small potatoes or rare occurence that I had previously thought.

Unfortunately I don't have as much talent or resources as Payscale to boost my traffic like they did. I do however have some public domain material that I am currently working into fresh web content and have found a few sources for more.

The problem is that the public domain stuff available online has been picked up by at least one or two other websites; and more if the content is somewhat more relevant or useful or related to high paying keywords.

So I'm starting my Public Domain experiment with some I found Offline, working some other online stuff into the mix later.

It's crazy to think that this one source will create a several hundred page website of useful information which isn't available anywhere else online.

Domain Names Vs. Pay Per Click

2008-08-19T13:45:00.000-07:00

I have a problem.

I get bored and I start doing keyword research to pass the time. Its worse when a new niche has entered my mind and I have new keywords to work and play with.

Thats what happened the other day. I started looking into a new hobby, like I need another, and started doing keyword research.

Using my standard approach I found a very good, available domain name. But I stopped buying domain names a while ago, at least until I can build out and develop all the ones I already own.

My mistake was doing the Cost Per Click research. You see the domain name I had found was a combination of threee keywords. Those three keywords in combination were getting as high as $3.50 per click from advertisers. With the domain name I would naturally rank high already and with some good content...

So I bought the domain.

I have to wonder about the advertisers that are willing to pay $3.50 per click when they could own the domain name for the price of two clicks and with very little effort create a long term stream of customers.

Well now I own it and can expand the keyword reach with subniche keywords and increase the expected revenues without ever having to sell a product.

In fact it is those advertisers who overlooked this domain name that will be paying me for the traffic I will be generating.

Another Craigslist Secret

2008-07-17T15:00:00.000-07:00

I was scrolling through some articles online and came across an idea to streamline your Craigslist Postings that I don't think I ever shared before.

Its an email organization idea found here.

Basically it involves creating a master email account to which all of your other email accounts will be forwarded. (You use different email accounts to post similar ads to improve your chances of not being flagged as spam)

That way the only thing you need to do is log into one email account to confirm your new ad postings.

Its a quick idea but it saves a ton of time and eliminates the hassle of constantly trying to remember every password for every email account.

Craigslist Marketing Refinement

2008-07-08T17:51:00.001-07:00

I'll admit that I use Craigslist sporadically to help increase my web traffic. It doesn't always bring in the tons of traffic I had expected when I first got started but it is a steady trickle and its easy to use. Sign up for an account and you can keep track of all of your listings and automatically relist them when they expire.

That being said I came up with an interesting idea today while playing with Google Trends. I put in several search terms for one of my websites to compare the amount of searches for each one. It returns a handy graph with Search Volumes for each of your keywords as well as pages of interest (good for comments if its a blog) and where the searches come from.

That last part is what got me thinking. They narrow it down to not just countries but states and cities in the United States.

What good is that?

Well now I know that two cities with the highest search volume by far are from an area easily covered by Craigslist. All I have to do is work my link into the appropriate category.

No more randomly targeting cities or competing against the flood of posts in NYC, LA and SF for a little extra traffic.

Mashup Websites

2008-07-06T08:54:00.001-07:00

A quick way to easily compile an auto updating website is to use the developer API's from the leading websites online such as YouTube, AMazon, Ebay and others.

Thankfully there are people out there working on this and publishing their work with a creative commons liscence. People like Chris Sampson over at http://www.c-online.co.uk/

His latest version of the EbayYouTube Amazon Mashup works great. To see a sample test that I did this morning look at my Traditional Archery Equipment website. Of course you have to sign up as a developer at Ebay and Amazon but thats free.

The rest is mostly cutting and pasting your code into the stufftochange file and your product list into the products file.

Click Here to Download Chris's Version of the Mashup Script

Or if you want to know a little more about it try checking this out at 45n5.com

Let me know if you have any luck implementing this script. I would love to see the variations people come up with.

Development VS. Parking

2008-07-03T12:53:00.000-07:00

Last year, or maybe a little more than that, I told everyone to buy into the 4 letter domain names as they would be a great investment opportunity.

And they still are if you can find them cheap.

However a recent post over at Jenny's Blog has me thinking about the difference between parking and development.

You see each of my 4 letter domain names are considered a long term investment. I'll maybe resell in a few years for a good ROI.

But they, for the most part, have been parked since purchase. They get a decent amount of traffic for a non promoted domain name. The problem is that they dont make any money from the pay per click ads that the parking companies provide.

So I have been thinking that over the last year and a half I would have been better off developing something, even if it was a simple couple of pages of content to get indexed, rather than parking and forgetting.

There was an ebook floating around about increasing the value of your domains but it was out dated and mostly contained black hat techniques.

So now I'm thinking that any parked domain that isn't at least paying for itself needs to be removed from parking and have a site built on top of it, wether advertising is included or not.

That way in a few years the domain will be indexed, have a few backlinks and maybe some decent traffic adding a little extra juice to the sales price.

How to REALLY Do Keyword Research

2008-07-03T11:54:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to a free video discussing keyword searching.

It is an important subject that many people often over look. Personally I was targeting a narrow range of keywords and working my way to the top of the search engines for each site. Seeing how many sets of Long Tail Keywords they are going after in this video you can be assured that I will be looking for more.

How to REALLY Do Keyword Research:

"During that second Webinar, Jim Morris offered a KILLER resource. A free PDF that outlines a plan of action for your sites; based on how much time and effort you want to put in to your marketing. You can download that PDF here. You will absolutely want to implement what's inside, it's content, no BS (just like I like it).

Take a quick look at the single page PDF document offered with the video and you will see how much work is involved even with minimal web promotion.

Easy Content and Backlinks

2008-06-29T14:35:00.000-07:00

OK,

I just realised exactly how lazy I was, here I am recieving targeted news and blog posts in my email everyday and doing nothing with them.

I'm talking about Google Alerts.

I sign up for a free account, and they send me relevant newsworthy web pages and blog posts whenever they come up.

News to post about in any blog with any keyword that I want, hell I can use the Blog This! tool in my toolbar to over simplify the process, and a Google Blogs Alert that not only provides me with updated opinions but options to add a comment to any relevant post. (even nofollow tags create traffic)

So if content is your problem, and it shouldn't be, try Google Alerts. That and a few articles from ArticleYou.com and a Wordpress Theme and you'll be in business.

Blog Comment Backlinks

2008-06-28T22:53:00.000-07:00

Recently I posted about my new found appreciation for the Comment Kahuna Software in its ability to speed up my ability to build up relevant backlinks to any of my websites.

If you don't have it, get it.

Anyway, Blog comments on my mind I came across a competitors website that relies heavily on blog commenting to generate backlinks. It isn't something that I see all that often. But in viewing their backlinks I was able, if I wanted to, post a comment everywhere that they did without doing all of the research that they had already done.

And I could always out do them by generating links by other means.

Then I came across this video over at YouTube, it's sad that you have to wade through so much crap to find something this good but thats why I'm posting it here:

So you don't burn out your eyes squinting like I did here is a copy of the search terms he used so you can copy and paste that into your book of baclinking tricks.

"keywords" "powered by wordpress" "leave a comment" - "no comments"

Link Building Update

2008-06-28T07:47:00.000-07:00

Ok,

I apologize. I was supposed to post this picture and the amount of new links the other day and I totally forgot. Actually I was working on a new website using some potentially incredible software and lost ALL track of time.

Anyway here is the Link Building Information as of last Tuesday for RankBullet.com:

16 Inbound links from a one time use of Version 1 of the Rank Bullet System. As I mentioned before it has changed a lot since Version 1, Version 2 is a lot more powerful, however I have held off on attempting to use it as the end results for Version 1 have not fully come in yet.

And already I have a Version 2.1 in mind.

Building Social Media Backlinks the easy way

2008-06-20T12:19:00.000-07:00

Social Media and Social Bookmarking are all the rage right now in building traffic.

But I have to admit that I am woefully far behind on this gravy train. There are too many sites and too many differing rules at each for me to focus on all but a handful. Then it really comes down to the matter of wether this traffic is really worth the effort for your website.

But isn't more traffic always better?

No. Targeted traffic is better. The type of things on most social media bookmarking sites that get passed around are usually of the tabloid type of information. Something pop culture, current event related or really bizzare.

If that fits the content of your website then you are looking at a goldmine of traffic.

If however your websites sells your services as a nanny, or used car parts in the michigan area then the traffic will be of little use to improving the bottom line of your business.

So what to do?

Beyond bookmarking your own website on your favorite bookmarking websites there is something that I encourage all of my customers to implement on every page of their website. A simple bookmarking button that allows a visitor to say, "Hey, I like this site (or information) and I wanted to share it with everyone else online."

It is a passive, non-intrusive button that allows your website visitors to easily share the contents of your website with their extended internet community.

However there are a multitude of bookmarking sites from which to choose from, which buttons do you include and which do you omit?

Thankfully the people at AddThis.com have created a Free all in one button that can be quickly added to any page of your website.

Even if your content isn't something that gets people bookmarking it at a furious pace even one visitor bookmarking your website will help others interested in the same subjects to visit your website from their network. And these people will be more likely to also bookmark your content.

The passive role of the bookmarking button can be like a snowball rolling downhill as far as traffic is concerned. The longer its up there, the more visitors will be building relevant backlinks for you and your targeted traffic will continue to grow.