So, after a few months off I'm finally back to the website game. A few things have been going on in the last few months since I last updated. Most importantly for web work is the fact that my web design group has been reduced to two.
The fun thing is that the current project that I'll be working on is a big one. I'll be giving updates as things progress but right now the plan is for a six month long experiment. This will be by far the biggest project I've worked on so hopefully things will be profitable.
The other thing that has kept me from staying up to date is that the doctor found I had a hernia. I spent one month before surgery afraid to do anything that would aggravate it and another month on the couch recovering from surgery. Lots of tv, little work. But that's all in the past now.
One other thing that I'm currently working on/promoting is SEO product reviews. I posted my a Build My Rank review last night. In short, it's probably my most recommended product at the moment.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
Going Fish
So, what are we up to this month? We have moved from the highly technical area of thermal imagers to the fairly low tech field of fishing. But we haven't gone completely away from technology. In fact, we're bringing as much technology to fishing as possible by creating a site to sell fish finders.
I was pretty surprised to discover the size of the market for fish finders. It was really just a random thing where we were going through products that we were considering selling and we ran across them. A little bit of research showed tens of thousands of searched for fish finders each month. Now I have no clue how many actual sales there are for fish finders but it seems like the market is a lot larger than I would have ever imagined.
The other pleasant surprise with our fish finder research deals with specific models. Many of the individual models have relatively low competition. What I mean is this: we know that there are a lot of searches for a product like cars on the internet. But there are also searches for specific models like say Ford Explorer. While there may be only 500 searches a month for a specific model of fish finder, most should be relatively easy to land on the first page of search results. This isn't a big deal for one product but if you can do it with 20 products, then you're getting somewhere.
It's looking like we may spend the month of June promoting our existing sites. It's not a very exciting thing to do but it's important. It doesn't matter how many sites you have if you don't get traffic on any of them. I'll be sure to update everyone on how to promotion goes and if it goes to plan.
I was pretty surprised to discover the size of the market for fish finders. It was really just a random thing where we were going through products that we were considering selling and we ran across them. A little bit of research showed tens of thousands of searched for fish finders each month. Now I have no clue how many actual sales there are for fish finders but it seems like the market is a lot larger than I would have ever imagined.
The other pleasant surprise with our fish finder research deals with specific models. Many of the individual models have relatively low competition. What I mean is this: we know that there are a lot of searches for a product like cars on the internet. But there are also searches for specific models like say Ford Explorer. While there may be only 500 searches a month for a specific model of fish finder, most should be relatively easy to land on the first page of search results. This isn't a big deal for one product but if you can do it with 20 products, then you're getting somewhere.
It's looking like we may spend the month of June promoting our existing sites. It's not a very exciting thing to do but it's important. It doesn't matter how many sites you have if you don't get traffic on any of them. I'll be sure to update everyone on how to promotion goes and if it goes to plan.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Seeing (infra)red
I haven't posted too much lately because of a crazy month of April with Easter and spring and planting flowers and all of that stuff. But I thought I'd share how our latest project has been going. In March we worked on creating a site to sell lock picks. I mentioned before how that didn't work out as planned. We've actually seen some success with this site and we've made some sales but we learned that lock picks aren't that expensive so you don't make much in affiliate income.
So, April's plan was to find a product that was expensive and would earn a considerably higher amount of affiliate income for each sale. We considered a big ticket item like televisions but decided that the competition was too high for that. What we finally settled on was thermal imaging equipment. This equipment isn't cheap (actually it's more expensive than an HD tv) but there are a number of uses for it and there are many different kinds of thermal equipment.
Because we all fell behind in April, we're just finishing up our work for April so there's really no telling how successful this venture will be. But we are bringing in traffic right now which is a good thing. In time this will hopefully translate into sales but for now it's just eyeballs. The first sale will be exciting because it will be worth our investment in time and money and provide proof that we're moving in the right direction.
So, April's plan was to find a product that was expensive and would earn a considerably higher amount of affiliate income for each sale. We considered a big ticket item like televisions but decided that the competition was too high for that. What we finally settled on was thermal imaging equipment. This equipment isn't cheap (actually it's more expensive than an HD tv) but there are a number of uses for it and there are many different kinds of thermal equipment.
Because we all fell behind in April, we're just finishing up our work for April so there's really no telling how successful this venture will be. But we are bringing in traffic right now which is a good thing. In time this will hopefully translate into sales but for now it's just eyeballs. The first sale will be exciting because it will be worth our investment in time and money and provide proof that we're moving in the right direction.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Dealing with a Lull
So, we hit kind of a lull in our website projects. This would be both a physical lull as well as a Google lull for lack of a better term. Easter and spring weather brought about a lot of difficulty in keeping people on the computer to do their work that was required. So that has set us back considerably and only halfway through May are we finishing our projects for April. I'm not terribly surprised by this as we're all still learning to pace ourselves and figuring out what is the best schedule for the group and individually.
The other problem is with Google. It doesn't seem as though the group projects have had this problem as much but my individual projects are having trouble with Google. From everything that I've read, you really go up and down in Google during the first few months of a site's life. Google has never officially acknowledged this and it may not actually be policy but rather a quirk in the search engine algorithm.
Whatever the case actually is, I had a couple of keywords that I was feeling pretty good about and then they dropped considerably. I'm hoping that they bounce back soon obviously and I suspect that they will come back within a week or two. But I can say that even knowing it was a possibility, it is insanely frustrating to be near the first page of Google only to drop back a couple of pages abd watch your meager traffic drop off completely while you wait things out.
My other issue is with Google, particularly Adsense but it is not Google's issue really. Instead it has to do with the fact that less people shop online in good weather. This means less affiliate sales and fewer clicks on ads. And fewer people are advertising which means that the ad clicks that I do get are worth less money. I've seen the phenomenom year after year so it's not a surprise, it just sucks because making more money is better than making less money. My revenue is down about 30% from last month right now which is a big hit. But on the bright side, it's still about 10% more than it was in May of last year. The other bright spot is that I used to see a significant dropoff in April and now it is pushing later. I don't know if this is coincidence, strange weather, or a change in consumer patterns but it has been evident for the last couple of years. I can't guarantee that it's a trend but I'll take what I can get.
The other problem is with Google. It doesn't seem as though the group projects have had this problem as much but my individual projects are having trouble with Google. From everything that I've read, you really go up and down in Google during the first few months of a site's life. Google has never officially acknowledged this and it may not actually be policy but rather a quirk in the search engine algorithm.
Whatever the case actually is, I had a couple of keywords that I was feeling pretty good about and then they dropped considerably. I'm hoping that they bounce back soon obviously and I suspect that they will come back within a week or two. But I can say that even knowing it was a possibility, it is insanely frustrating to be near the first page of Google only to drop back a couple of pages abd watch your meager traffic drop off completely while you wait things out.
My other issue is with Google, particularly Adsense but it is not Google's issue really. Instead it has to do with the fact that less people shop online in good weather. This means less affiliate sales and fewer clicks on ads. And fewer people are advertising which means that the ad clicks that I do get are worth less money. I've seen the phenomenom year after year so it's not a surprise, it just sucks because making more money is better than making less money. My revenue is down about 30% from last month right now which is a big hit. But on the bright side, it's still about 10% more than it was in May of last year. The other bright spot is that I used to see a significant dropoff in April and now it is pushing later. I don't know if this is coincidence, strange weather, or a change in consumer patterns but it has been evident for the last couple of years. I can't guarantee that it's a trend but I'll take what I can get.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
A Clear Winner
I have been running an experiment using two different services and techniques on two different sites, obviously using different keywords. So in reality, I'm comparing apples and oranges. One set of keywords that I'm trying to rank for is considerably more difficult to rank on than the other - at least from my perspective.
With all of this in mind, it looks like there is a clear winner between my two options. I won't name them at this point because the results are not complete and it will be at least a month before I can say for certain if one was more helpful than the other. For now we'll just call them option A and B.
I saw option A not long ago and thought it was a quick and relatively cheap way to get links for my site. They would write an article and submit it to article directories. For every hundred directories submitted to, they would create a different copy of the article. One of the keyword terms I decided to use was free seo tips which is a fairly low competition term and should be relatively easy to rank on. In addition to ranking on the actual term, it included free seo and seo tips, both of which are bigger terms that I'd love to rank on.
The problem with option A is a matter of quality. If you submit the same thing to 100 different sites, they are lower quality sites. This is especially true since Google recently changed their algorithm to penalize sites that don't have much original content. In otherwords, the sites that they submit to aren't high quality.
The second problem with option A that I didn't know going in was their actual articles. Google isn't able to determine what is good writing and what isn't, so this isn't a big deal. I don't get penalized because the article looks like a student wrote it without spellcheck. However, the article that I was given looked like it had been through an article spinner. This isn't an issue in itself as spun articles aren't necessarily penalized in search engines and I already knew that I wasn't going to have my article on high quality sites that didn't accept spun content. My problem is that I was supposed to have an original article written for me. This seemed like it was a spun version of an article that has probably been sold to other people 100 times.
So those are my problems with option A. Because of the writing process, my articles were just submitted yesterday so I haven't received any rankings boost yet. Oh, and that is a third problem that I partially misunderstood and still don't understand. The site says that the duration for my 200 articles is 12 days. All 200 articles were posted on one day. I expected them to be distributed over a period of 12 days. After rereading the site, only orders of 500 and 1000 are submitted slowly, 100 per week. So I have no clue what the 12 day duration actually means. Either way, search engines may assume that you are spamming if 200 links to your site show up in one day.
Option B is a monthly service. It requires an original article for every submission and has a network of high quality sites. You can write your own articles or pay someone to write them for you. Basically, your routes are time consuming or money consuming but the end result is high quality links. During the first week I worked under a 15 day free trial period. This trial only allowed me to submit 10 links. I figured I would wait to see if I got decent results before plunging in with a monthly subscription.
What I can tell you is that at ten days in I went ahead and activated my monthly suscription because I had used my links and I was happy with my results. My only disappointment with option B so far has been the fact that it is too high quality. I had hoped to use an article spinner and pump out dozens of articles at a time and watch the links roll in. Because the service only wants original content, it does not accept my spun content. And it caught me on my test of this. I plan to try again but my hopes are not high. I will probably end up having to write all of my own articles or pay someone to do it for me. So much for generating 100 links a month. I'm now hoping for about ten a week because this is what is more realistic for my schedule.
For the moment at least, I will not be making any more purchases from option A. And even though option B has standards that are actually higher than I'd prefer, I've already seen good results. And in the end, that's all that matters.
With all of this in mind, it looks like there is a clear winner between my two options. I won't name them at this point because the results are not complete and it will be at least a month before I can say for certain if one was more helpful than the other. For now we'll just call them option A and B.
I saw option A not long ago and thought it was a quick and relatively cheap way to get links for my site. They would write an article and submit it to article directories. For every hundred directories submitted to, they would create a different copy of the article. One of the keyword terms I decided to use was free seo tips which is a fairly low competition term and should be relatively easy to rank on. In addition to ranking on the actual term, it included free seo and seo tips, both of which are bigger terms that I'd love to rank on.
The problem with option A is a matter of quality. If you submit the same thing to 100 different sites, they are lower quality sites. This is especially true since Google recently changed their algorithm to penalize sites that don't have much original content. In otherwords, the sites that they submit to aren't high quality.
The second problem with option A that I didn't know going in was their actual articles. Google isn't able to determine what is good writing and what isn't, so this isn't a big deal. I don't get penalized because the article looks like a student wrote it without spellcheck. However, the article that I was given looked like it had been through an article spinner. This isn't an issue in itself as spun articles aren't necessarily penalized in search engines and I already knew that I wasn't going to have my article on high quality sites that didn't accept spun content. My problem is that I was supposed to have an original article written for me. This seemed like it was a spun version of an article that has probably been sold to other people 100 times.
So those are my problems with option A. Because of the writing process, my articles were just submitted yesterday so I haven't received any rankings boost yet. Oh, and that is a third problem that I partially misunderstood and still don't understand. The site says that the duration for my 200 articles is 12 days. All 200 articles were posted on one day. I expected them to be distributed over a period of 12 days. After rereading the site, only orders of 500 and 1000 are submitted slowly, 100 per week. So I have no clue what the 12 day duration actually means. Either way, search engines may assume that you are spamming if 200 links to your site show up in one day.
Option B is a monthly service. It requires an original article for every submission and has a network of high quality sites. You can write your own articles or pay someone to write them for you. Basically, your routes are time consuming or money consuming but the end result is high quality links. During the first week I worked under a 15 day free trial period. This trial only allowed me to submit 10 links. I figured I would wait to see if I got decent results before plunging in with a monthly subscription.
What I can tell you is that at ten days in I went ahead and activated my monthly suscription because I had used my links and I was happy with my results. My only disappointment with option B so far has been the fact that it is too high quality. I had hoped to use an article spinner and pump out dozens of articles at a time and watch the links roll in. Because the service only wants original content, it does not accept my spun content. And it caught me on my test of this. I plan to try again but my hopes are not high. I will probably end up having to write all of my own articles or pay someone to do it for me. So much for generating 100 links a month. I'm now hoping for about ten a week because this is what is more realistic for my schedule.
For the moment at least, I will not be making any more purchases from option A. And even though option B has standards that are actually higher than I'd prefer, I've already seen good results. And in the end, that's all that matters.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Trouble with Links
So...one of the most important things a webmaster can do for their site is to provide links to it. While those links will organically drive some traffic they are far more valuable in regard to search engines. Probably about 80% of my traffic on my established sites comes from search engines. So, you want links for two reasons.
Over ten years ago when I first started doing websites, quantity was king. You would try to get your site listed on as many directories as possible. Now, most of those directories are considered garbage and spam and some can even hurt your ranking.
Today, you want links from highly ranked sites. There are a couple of ways you can do this. The cheapest and most organic way to do this is to write articles and submit them to article directories. There are a huge number of quality article sites. I have a list that I may share some time but really you just need to search for article directory and you'll find what you want.
My trouble is that I want a lot of links and I want them quickly. I don't have the time to be creating websites and writing articles for these directories. This means that I have to pay for either someone to do this for me or for software that will speed the process up. I don't like paying for anything that I can do for free but in order for me to get the ranking that I want, I'll need to cough up some money in advance and hope that it pays off in the end.
So, I've made three investments. The first is pretty straightforward. I paid someone to write an article and post it on a bunch of directories. I provide the topic of the article and the keywords that I want used. The rest is not my responsibility. I'm using this service to promote my SEO site using the terms free SEO tips and learn SEO.
The downside to this approach is that the same article is used on multiple websites. Although they certainly don't mention it in their advertising, this means that the sites that they are posting to have lower page ranks. The better article directories require original content. So, basically I'm opting for quantity over quality to start.
My second experiment is to use another service. This one has a monthly subscription whereas the first was a one time deal. I can submit for up to 5 domains for one price and then it is tiered beyond that depending on how many sites you'll be promoting. So, I can create as many links as I want for one monthly fee.
The problem with this service is that it requires original content. The links back to my site are all high quality ones but I have to write a new article for each link. Or I can pay someone to write each article for me. That gets pricey though.
Ideally, I'd like post 100 links in a month. There isn't a science to this and some people speak of creating a lot more than this but I have a feeling that they are lower quality. I'm fine with 100 a month or about 3-4 a day. But this goes back to my original problem that I don't have time to write 3-4 original articles a day and if I did I wouldn't be paying a service for it.
So, enter my third purchase, an article spinner. In short, it takes an original article, randomly adds synonyms, and spits out a new article. Done right, it is a completely different article as far as search engines are concerns. The problem for me is that my submission service doesn't accept spun content. And that's not just the rule, I had my spun articles rejected on account of this.
So, here's my conundrum. I can pay for a high quantity of links with lower quality and basically no work. Or I can get higher quality links with considerably more work for me and a considerably few number. Or I can pay someone to write the articles for me which will run more money than I'm willing to pay at this point. I don't know what the best option is at this point. What I do know is that I've made a total of about $6 off my web experiments so far and I will have about $190 invested in the three things I bought if I carry my subscription past the trial period. Not a good return on my investment but I have to believe that it will eventually pay off.
Over ten years ago when I first started doing websites, quantity was king. You would try to get your site listed on as many directories as possible. Now, most of those directories are considered garbage and spam and some can even hurt your ranking.
Today, you want links from highly ranked sites. There are a couple of ways you can do this. The cheapest and most organic way to do this is to write articles and submit them to article directories. There are a huge number of quality article sites. I have a list that I may share some time but really you just need to search for article directory and you'll find what you want.
My trouble is that I want a lot of links and I want them quickly. I don't have the time to be creating websites and writing articles for these directories. This means that I have to pay for either someone to do this for me or for software that will speed the process up. I don't like paying for anything that I can do for free but in order for me to get the ranking that I want, I'll need to cough up some money in advance and hope that it pays off in the end.
So, I've made three investments. The first is pretty straightforward. I paid someone to write an article and post it on a bunch of directories. I provide the topic of the article and the keywords that I want used. The rest is not my responsibility. I'm using this service to promote my SEO site using the terms free SEO tips and learn SEO.
The downside to this approach is that the same article is used on multiple websites. Although they certainly don't mention it in their advertising, this means that the sites that they are posting to have lower page ranks. The better article directories require original content. So, basically I'm opting for quantity over quality to start.
My second experiment is to use another service. This one has a monthly subscription whereas the first was a one time deal. I can submit for up to 5 domains for one price and then it is tiered beyond that depending on how many sites you'll be promoting. So, I can create as many links as I want for one monthly fee.
The problem with this service is that it requires original content. The links back to my site are all high quality ones but I have to write a new article for each link. Or I can pay someone to write each article for me. That gets pricey though.
Ideally, I'd like post 100 links in a month. There isn't a science to this and some people speak of creating a lot more than this but I have a feeling that they are lower quality. I'm fine with 100 a month or about 3-4 a day. But this goes back to my original problem that I don't have time to write 3-4 original articles a day and if I did I wouldn't be paying a service for it.
So, enter my third purchase, an article spinner. In short, it takes an original article, randomly adds synonyms, and spits out a new article. Done right, it is a completely different article as far as search engines are concerns. The problem for me is that my submission service doesn't accept spun content. And that's not just the rule, I had my spun articles rejected on account of this.
So, here's my conundrum. I can pay for a high quantity of links with lower quality and basically no work. Or I can get higher quality links with considerably more work for me and a considerably few number. Or I can pay someone to write the articles for me which will run more money than I'm willing to pay at this point. I don't know what the best option is at this point. What I do know is that I've made a total of about $6 off my web experiments so far and I will have about $190 invested in the three things I bought if I carry my subscription past the trial period. Not a good return on my investment but I have to believe that it will eventually pay off.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Thermal Imaging
As I've mentioned before, we're on to a new project now. We're approaching this one a bit differently than last time. Before we had one guy posting all of the products while we each came up with articles to link back to the products. This has changed for two reasons.
The first is that the guy who posted the products was doing double duty because he was also writing promotional articles. This hardly seemed fair so we designated that he, or whoever was doing site work for the week, would not have to promote. The other reason we changed was the simple fact that there are a lot more products to promote than with lockpicking.
So what we decided was that we would each have an area to promote within thermal imaging. We'd do cameras, scanners, goggles, etc. I ended up posted thermal imaging scanners. In another "learn as you go" moments we discovered/decided that scanners are pretty much the same as cameras but different people call them differently. So, even though they are the same product, it doesn't hurt to promote them as both scanners and cameras.
Week 2 will be more promotion of the site, presumably. There is a possibility that we will want to add more products to the mix before we start promoting. I'm definitely interested to see how we do once we start picking up traffic.
The first is that the guy who posted the products was doing double duty because he was also writing promotional articles. This hardly seemed fair so we designated that he, or whoever was doing site work for the week, would not have to promote. The other reason we changed was the simple fact that there are a lot more products to promote than with lockpicking.
So what we decided was that we would each have an area to promote within thermal imaging. We'd do cameras, scanners, goggles, etc. I ended up posted thermal imaging scanners. In another "learn as you go" moments we discovered/decided that scanners are pretty much the same as cameras but different people call them differently. So, even though they are the same product, it doesn't hurt to promote them as both scanners and cameras.
Week 2 will be more promotion of the site, presumably. There is a possibility that we will want to add more products to the mix before we start promoting. I'm definitely interested to see how we do once we start picking up traffic.
Friday, April 1, 2011
SEO Tips
I have used this blog as the story of my personal journey into launching new websites with a group of other guys. This contains our successes as well as failures. And as riveting as that may be, you may be more interested in how we're actually doing the things that we're doing. Well, wonder no more!
I've launched a new site: Free DIY SEO Tips that explains the ins and outs of not only launching a website but getting a good search engine ranking. Why do I do this? Because I like talking about myself! Honestly, it's another experiment in SEO tactics. Hopefully I pull a meager profit from my articles with the help of Google Adsense but otherwise it's just for the experience.
Of course you may wonder why I'm giving away all of my secrets. The truth is that there are no "secrets." All of the sites that claim to have discovered the secret are full of it. I'm simply passing along what I've discovered works. And I'm not worryied about you using my SEO techniques to beat me at my own game. Frankly there are millions of opportunities out there and you're probably not going to stumble into one of mine.
So that's it. If you're interested in launching a better website, head on over to mine and learn from my experiments.
I've launched a new site: Free DIY SEO Tips that explains the ins and outs of not only launching a website but getting a good search engine ranking. Why do I do this? Because I like talking about myself! Honestly, it's another experiment in SEO tactics. Hopefully I pull a meager profit from my articles with the help of Google Adsense but otherwise it's just for the experience.
Of course you may wonder why I'm giving away all of my secrets. The truth is that there are no "secrets." All of the sites that claim to have discovered the secret are full of it. I'm simply passing along what I've discovered works. And I'm not worryied about you using my SEO techniques to beat me at my own game. Frankly there are millions of opportunities out there and you're probably not going to stumble into one of mine.
So that's it. If you're interested in launching a better website, head on over to mine and learn from my experiments.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
The next project
So, we're getting ready to wrap up the first month of our project. As it stands our lock picking site has done well for one month. Because of our own failure to research as thoroughly as we should have, we're limited in what we can sell. But for one month we're pretty happy with our search rankings and we've made a couple of sales. (Mind you that it's not enough to retire on - or even to bother splitting between the group.)
But it's off to the next project. I won't be divulging all of our strategy here (and neither will all of those sites that you pay big money for either.) For our next project we'll be selling thermal imaging equipment. You might wonder what these are. They are heat detectors that will show you whether someone is hot or cold. They are big for detecting energy leaks in your home. Also, if you're into that sort of thing, they are supposedly used to detect ghosts because they might give off cold or something. I can't say that I'm a believer in that kind of stuff.
For the next month we'll be focusing on thermal imaging and doing some routine maintenance work on the lock picking site. And then there's no telling what we'll do next month. Our plan for the moment though is to work on one site a month with some of the work outsourced so that we can move faster.
But it's off to the next project. I won't be divulging all of our strategy here (and neither will all of those sites that you pay big money for either.) For our next project we'll be selling thermal imaging equipment. You might wonder what these are. They are heat detectors that will show you whether someone is hot or cold. They are big for detecting energy leaks in your home. Also, if you're into that sort of thing, they are supposedly used to detect ghosts because they might give off cold or something. I can't say that I'm a believer in that kind of stuff.
For the next month we'll be focusing on thermal imaging and doing some routine maintenance work on the lock picking site. And then there's no telling what we'll do next month. Our plan for the moment though is to work on one site a month with some of the work outsourced so that we can move faster.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
New projects
As I mentioned earlier, we're moving away from our lock picking sets project and onto some new projects. We haven't officially launched our new project yet so I got bored. Ok, I didn't get bored. In truth I'm doing three jobs and I probably have more work than I should be attempting. That aside, I started work on some new projects anyway.
The idea behind starting a few new projects on my own is that I would get a head start on some ideas that I like and when the group was ready for a new project it would be a quick launch.
With that in mind, I'll be working on a couple of sites to get them started preliminarily. My first site is Sous Vide Equipement. You might wonder what sous vide is. That is actually the attraction behind the site. It is a specialty that doesn't have a lot of searches but also doesn't have a lot of competition. So we'll see how that works out.
By the way, in case you're wondering, you can always head over to the sous vide site to find out what it is. But in short, it's a way of cooking meat to make it extra tender. You might hear more about it in the future as it catches on and becomes a bigger thing.
The idea behind starting a few new projects on my own is that I would get a head start on some ideas that I like and when the group was ready for a new project it would be a quick launch.
With that in mind, I'll be working on a couple of sites to get them started preliminarily. My first site is Sous Vide Equipement. You might wonder what sous vide is. That is actually the attraction behind the site. It is a specialty that doesn't have a lot of searches but also doesn't have a lot of competition. So we'll see how that works out.
By the way, in case you're wondering, you can always head over to the sous vide site to find out what it is. But in short, it's a way of cooking meat to make it extra tender. You might hear more about it in the future as it catches on and becomes a bigger thing.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Backing Up
htt One thing that I've learned in life is that failures can be just as good as successes. Sure they are a pain at the time and they are always temporary setbacks but in the long run they can actually be good. Failures force you to go back and reevaluate things. You get to determine what went right and what went wrong. And then you can start again with a clean slate and fix the problems from the first time.
I write this because we have encountered an unexpected problem in our project to market lock pick sets. The problem is a legal issue. While lock picks can be used for very legitimate reasons like locksmithing, they can also be used to nefarious purposes.
In many instances a salesman can't be held accountable for what a person does with what they buy. If I buy a hacksaw at Walmart and use it to saw a padlock off of my neighbor's shed, Walmart isn't responsible that I used an item that I purchased illegally.
However, lock pick sets are apparently a different issue. The issue comes down to a law that forbids the shipping of such items through the mail. So essentially, if we can't ship an item through the mail, we can't really sell it.
What we don't understand is why Amazon can sell some sets at all. We will continue to affiliate market the items that Amazon has but their selection is limited, most likely because of the law. What I'm noticing is that Amazon doesn't sell these items at all, only third party sellers are selling through Amazon, possibly breaking the law.
So, this means back to the drawing board. We'll continue to keep the lock pick set site but there isn't much that we can add to it because of the laws concerning shipping. The good thing is that we can take what we learned from this first experiment and apply it to our next project. Hopefully we can do even better getting the next project started
I write this because we have encountered an unexpected problem in our project to market lock pick sets. The problem is a legal issue. While lock picks can be used for very legitimate reasons like locksmithing, they can also be used to nefarious purposes.
In many instances a salesman can't be held accountable for what a person does with what they buy. If I buy a hacksaw at Walmart and use it to saw a padlock off of my neighbor's shed, Walmart isn't responsible that I used an item that I purchased illegally.
However, lock pick sets are apparently a different issue. The issue comes down to a law that forbids the shipping of such items through the mail. So essentially, if we can't ship an item through the mail, we can't really sell it.
What we don't understand is why Amazon can sell some sets at all. We will continue to affiliate market the items that Amazon has but their selection is limited, most likely because of the law. What I'm noticing is that Amazon doesn't sell these items at all, only third party sellers are selling through Amazon, possibly breaking the law.
So, this means back to the drawing board. We'll continue to keep the lock pick set site but there isn't much that we can add to it because of the laws concerning shipping. The good thing is that we can take what we learned from this first experiment and apply it to our next project. Hopefully we can do even better getting the next project started
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
The first sale
I have to say that I am pretty impressed with the results that we have had on an online marketing project. We have already made our first sale through the website. I have never had such luck with any previous attempts to market. And luck is probably the right word because I realize now that I really was leaving things up to luck rather than properly marketing.
I've actually been working on websites for a long time now, long before it was readily accessible for just about everyone to build a website. I don't know when it started but when I started doing websites, there wasn't talk of search engine optimization. You made your site, promoted it by submitting it to search engines, and tried to find some other sites to link to you. The rest really came down to luck because no one talked about how search engine rankings worked. You couldn't gear your site around a few key words to come up in the search engines because no one thought about that.
Now, I'm realizing that you absolutely have to promote your site and gear it around a couple key search words. If you can't get on the first page of Google results for a couple of relevant search words, your site isn't going to get any traffic.
That's what has me excited about our current project. I feel as if I'm finally getting a handle on how to properly promote my websites. So I'll be using these techniques to promote some of my existing websites. In the meantime we have added some more pages to our project site including How to pick a lock. This is an informational guide on lockpicking that explains the basics.
I've actually been working on websites for a long time now, long before it was readily accessible for just about everyone to build a website. I don't know when it started but when I started doing websites, there wasn't talk of search engine optimization. You made your site, promoted it by submitting it to search engines, and tried to find some other sites to link to you. The rest really came down to luck because no one talked about how search engine rankings worked. You couldn't gear your site around a few key words to come up in the search engines because no one thought about that.
Now, I'm realizing that you absolutely have to promote your site and gear it around a couple key search words. If you can't get on the first page of Google results for a couple of relevant search words, your site isn't going to get any traffic.
That's what has me excited about our current project. I feel as if I'm finally getting a handle on how to properly promote my websites. So I'll be using these techniques to promote some of my existing websites. In the meantime we have added some more pages to our project site including How to pick a lock. This is an informational guide on lockpicking that explains the basics.
Monday, March 7, 2011
One post down
One of the most important things that one can do with affiliate marketing is to promote their website. These days basically anyone can create a website with just a little bit of know how. But having a website really isn't enough. Sure, you can tell your friends and family members to visit your website but if you want more than a dozen visitors you have to do more.
Google is still, by far, the largest search engine. You absolutely have to get your website listed by Google to draw traffic. Fortunately this is pretty much automatic. Any site or business that claims that they'll get you listed in Google for a fee is an outright scam, same thing for anyone who claims that they can speed up the process. Google is constantly indexing new pages of the internet as it finds them. I have actually had websites that weren't finished - and in some cases didn't have more than an index page - get listed in Google and return searches.
So, getting listed isn't the issue. What you want is to be the top result for your term. Or to at least be on the first page for your subject. That's what I'm working on now along with a few others. There are many factors which make up Google's ranking and the algorithm that is used is a very closely guarded secret. However one thing that is definitely known is that you need links to your website, the more the better. But you also need quality links. There are lots of places that you can post links and thousands of services that will do it for you for a fee. My experience - and I've tested this to prove it - is that services that put links to your page are completely worthless. They don't have your ranking at all. In fact, some sites are considered spam and can actually get your site black listed from Google.
This is where articles come in. This is one way to create quality links to your site. There are numerous sites that you can post articles on. Each one has different rules but what they are looking for is quality content. Tell a story, offer an opinion, or explain how to do something. Within the context of your article you can work in a link to your site. If it is obvious that the only purpose in your article is to create a link the good sites will not approve your article, so you have to submit quality, not garbage.
So yesterday I created my first article to promote the site. The other guys that I'm working with wrote articles as well so we should have at least 5 quality links to the site by the end of the day and soon we'll start climbing up the search engine rankings. If you're interested in my first article, I went with humor. You can find it at http://therealowner.com/humor/what-happens-when-the-dog-eats-your-keys/
Google is still, by far, the largest search engine. You absolutely have to get your website listed by Google to draw traffic. Fortunately this is pretty much automatic. Any site or business that claims that they'll get you listed in Google for a fee is an outright scam, same thing for anyone who claims that they can speed up the process. Google is constantly indexing new pages of the internet as it finds them. I have actually had websites that weren't finished - and in some cases didn't have more than an index page - get listed in Google and return searches.
So, getting listed isn't the issue. What you want is to be the top result for your term. Or to at least be on the first page for your subject. That's what I'm working on now along with a few others. There are many factors which make up Google's ranking and the algorithm that is used is a very closely guarded secret. However one thing that is definitely known is that you need links to your website, the more the better. But you also need quality links. There are lots of places that you can post links and thousands of services that will do it for you for a fee. My experience - and I've tested this to prove it - is that services that put links to your page are completely worthless. They don't have your ranking at all. In fact, some sites are considered spam and can actually get your site black listed from Google.
This is where articles come in. This is one way to create quality links to your site. There are numerous sites that you can post articles on. Each one has different rules but what they are looking for is quality content. Tell a story, offer an opinion, or explain how to do something. Within the context of your article you can work in a link to your site. If it is obvious that the only purpose in your article is to create a link the good sites will not approve your article, so you have to submit quality, not garbage.
So yesterday I created my first article to promote the site. The other guys that I'm working with wrote articles as well so we should have at least 5 quality links to the site by the end of the day and soon we'll start climbing up the search engine rankings. If you're interested in my first article, I went with humor. You can find it at http://therealowner.com/humor/what-happens-when-the-dog-eats-your-keys/
Sunday, March 6, 2011
One Man's Journey
This blog is a chronicle of my journey in online marketing. I've actually been drawing a considerable amount of money (not enough to live off of but a nice bonus) from websites that I have operated for years but I have had little success in my attempts to sell products. I've sold products before but only with the help of paid advertising and I have always spent more on advertising than I've made from sales.
This time I am working with some friends on a new project. The first positive is that it holds us all accountable. It is easy to do nothing and just forget about doing the necessary work to get a project up a running but with other people counting on you it eliminates that aspect.
There's a lot of elements involved in creating a good marketing campaign. There a several ways to make money from a website and selling is just one way. You can market products specifically or you can advertise generally like the ad for the Amazon Kindle to the left. (Incidentally, I got one for Christmas and they are very nice!)
Over the weeks and months as I undergo this marketing campaign I'll be posting my thoughts and frustrations on the process. This time around I'm working with someone who did a lot of research before I even got involved. In fact I didn't even get involved until a few days before the project launch because someone else dropped out. But now I'm excited about the possibilities with this new marketing project.
Just in case you're interested, the first product that we'll be marketing are lock pick sets. (Only for legal purposes of course.) You can check out our first site at Buy lock pick sets.
This time I am working with some friends on a new project. The first positive is that it holds us all accountable. It is easy to do nothing and just forget about doing the necessary work to get a project up a running but with other people counting on you it eliminates that aspect.
There's a lot of elements involved in creating a good marketing campaign. There a several ways to make money from a website and selling is just one way. You can market products specifically or you can advertise generally like the ad for the Amazon Kindle to the left. (Incidentally, I got one for Christmas and they are very nice!)
Over the weeks and months as I undergo this marketing campaign I'll be posting my thoughts and frustrations on the process. This time around I'm working with someone who did a lot of research before I even got involved. In fact I didn't even get involved until a few days before the project launch because someone else dropped out. But now I'm excited about the possibilities with this new marketing project.
Just in case you're interested, the first product that we'll be marketing are lock pick sets. (Only for legal purposes of course.) You can check out our first site at Buy lock pick sets.
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