Hello All,

I've been incredibly busy lately.

I wanted to give you a run down on how http://Kitten-Pictures.com is doing in the Search Engines:

Keyword Phrase: "Cat Allergy"

google.co.uk -> 3
google.de -> 10
msn.com -> 18
google.com -> 28
alltheweb.com -> 54
yahoo.com -> 115

I'm stunned by the results of "Cat Allergy". I have two short articles about the topic, that's it. The reason that put them on my site in the first place is because 'Cat Allergy', as a keyword phrases garners a higher PPC payoff rate than say 'Kitten Pictures'. I'm thrilled with a google and yahoo ranking -- something that I've not been able to get for the keyword phrase "Kitten Pictures".

Keyword Phrase: "Kitten Ascii Picture"
alltheweb.com -> 1
msn.com -> 6
google.com -> 93
google.co.uk -> 93
google.de -> 93
yahoo.com -> 291

"Kitten Ascii Picture" -- this is really wild. Again, I've got placements in google and yahoo and #1 on alltheweb and #6 on msn.

Keyword Phrase: "Kitten Drawings"
msn.com -> 11
google.co.uk -> 285
google.de -> 286
google.com -> 290
alltheweb -> 305
yahoo.com -> 689

Again, this was a single post of a Kitten Drawing and I've got #11 on MSN.

Keyword Phrase: "Kitten Jokes"
msn.com -> 14
google.de -> 537
google.com -> 538
google.co.uk -> 538
alltheweb.com -> 634

#14 on MSN, not bad.

Keyword Phrase: "Kitten Pictures"
msn.com -> 6
alltheweb -> 419
yahoo.com -> 648

No google yet. This has been a tough nut to crack for this Keyword Phrase.


I added a Word Press plugin this morning called "Adsense Deluxe" which is going to help me infuse google adsense ads in the posts more easily -- still setting it up.

It was also recommended that I put more text in with my daily kitten pictures. In addition, it was suggested that I might want to set a teaser, where I would give some text, but then have the visitor click on the individual post to see the picture. I tried that, sort of this morning. I put up a feature of an kitten rescue shelter on the west coast.

Oh, yes, I also added a WordPress pluggin called "Post Teaser" which gives me the functionality of displaying only part of the text -- where the visitor has click on a "more" link of sorts to see the rest.

I've also created a Black Hat blogsite called www.infotate.com, which hosts subdomains that are Feline themed. I'm using some software called The Blog Solution to drive it. What it does is it allows me to create blogs very easily -- I've got about 50 subdomain blogs there now. And the software will also auto-populate the blogs with RSS feeds at whatever interval I choose. So, I'm creating no more that 10 blogs per day and I update the content daily. The software is set to ping the 'ping' sites 2 times per week. I'm trying to make it such that the blogs look natural to the search engines. Each of my blogs has a link back to http://Kitten-Pictures.com. So, if I can get my infotate blogs ranked, that will really bolster my http://Kitten-Pictures.com site.

I don't know if I've made sense with this. Let me know if you want more detail and I can provide it. I don't know whether it's going to work or not, but it's worth a try. If it is successful, I will elaborate in much greater detail.

Each day, I've been adding original content to my http://Kitten-Pictures.com site. I ultimately think that this is the key to success.

All, I make money every single day on my http://Kitten-Pictures.com site. Look how simple it really is. Start your own blog site today. You can do it!

Make it a great day!

Search Engine Summary

First, here are my stats for http://Kitten-Pictures.com
msn.com -> 5 for keyword "Kitten Pictures"
msn.com -> 10 for keyword "Kitten Jokes"
msn.com -> 14 for keyword "Kitten Drawings"
alltheweb.com -> 18 for keyword "Kitten Ascii Picture"
google.co.uk -> 19 for keyword "Cat Allergy"
google.de -> 26 for keyword "Cat Allergy"
google.com -> 46 for keyword "Cat Allergy"
alltheweb.com -> 103 for keyword "Cat Allergy"
msn.com -> 197 for keyword "Pet Recipe"
alltheweb.com -> 229 for keyword "Kitten Drawings"
yahoo.com -> 229 for keyword "Cat Allergy"
alltheweb.com -> 470 for keyword "Kitten Pictures"
yahoo.com -> 487 for keyword "Kitten Drawings"

Kitten ASCii Pictures - I had know I idea there was even such a category - Ha! This is a good example of just throw it up there and see what happens.

The search bots seem to love WordPress 'categories' - which are the items that you see on right-hand side (http://kitten-pictures.com).

Google.com is really tough to get ranked for.

Some reading around that I did yesterday - here are some misc facts:

• Google is responsible for 60% of all internet searches - this means you've got to take Google seriously.
• Google uses a different ranking formula that Yahoo and MSN - no kidding. Look at my MSN ranking for "kitten pictures" keyword verses Google.
• MSN seems to give more weight to keywords than for link popularity - This rings true to me. My keyword usage on http://kitten-pictures.com is very good.
• Google places an emphasis on quality and quantity incoming links along with other factors - again, that seems true. One my sites weaknesses is link popularity. And the links that I do have are from a mixed bag of sites, not just animal related sites. Hopefully this will change with my use of "TheBlogSolution" software, which I'm testing. And, I'm adding good articles all the time.
  

Although Google is a tough nut to crack, it is worth the pursuit.

Link popularity and good keyword strategies are both very important.

Have you started your blog today? Do you want to, but lack the confidence to start? Why not give blogger.com a try - it's free and its easy to setup. Just pick a topic or range of topics you are interested in a write about those. You can do it. Then put some AdSense ads out there and start making some money. If I can do it, you can too, believe me!

If you have any questions about how to get started, please let me know.

As always, make it a great day!

Stan

New Site Rankings

Hello All,

It's been a couple days since my last post -- I've been very busy!

Okay, for the search engine stats for http://Kitten-Pictures.com

msn.com -> #5 for keyword "Kitten Pictures"
msn.com -> #12 for keyword "Kitten Jokes"
msn.com -> #18 for keyword "Cat Allergy"
google.uk.co -> #22 for keyword "Cat Allergy"
google.de -> #26 for keyword "Cat Allergy"
google.com -> #45 for keyword "Cat Allergy"
alltheweb.com -> #187 for keyword "Cat Allergy"
msn.com -> #198 for keyword "Pet Recipe"
yahoo.com -> #363 for keyword "Cat Allergy"
alltheweb.com -> #815 for keyword "Kitten Pictures"
alltheweb.com -> #889 for keyword "Kitten Drawings"

Stilling making money with http://Kitten-Pictures.com with Google Adsense. Some days are slimmer than others, but it's more than paying for its hosting!

I've whittled down my links page to include only those who are linking back to me.

I'm playing with the look and feel of http://Kitten-Pictures.com - let me know what you think. For a photo site, I like the black background, because it makes the pictures really pop.

One of the weakest parts about my site is getting external, one-way links to it. This is just very tough to do. If you have been looking at http://Kitten-Pictures.com, you'll see that I'm putting more and more original content posts/articles up. This morning, I wrote one to help someone give their cat's Pill-form medication.

I've also been working with a piece of software called "The Blog Solution", which generates blogs, as many blogs as you want (http://infotate.com) which will contain links that point back to http://Kitten-Pictures.com. I just started using it a couple of days ago and the jury is still out as to it's effectiveness.

I've asked this question all over the net and have not gotten an answer -- maybe one of you know. How can you tell, for a particular search engine, like Google, what keywords your site is ranked for?

Start your blog today! Blogger.com would be a great place -- it's free!

Don't know what to talk about -- talk about anything. Just talk and you'll find your voice. Make daily posts. Don't worry about the grammer so much. If you need any suggestions or help in getting started, please let me know.

Make it a great day!

Stan

Adsense Rates have Doubled

Hello All,

I hope you had a great weekend and are ready for a great week.

Well some good news. For http://Kitten-Pictures.com -- my adsense earnings have doubled. Why, because I started targeting more valuable keywords -- in particular 'Cat Allery'. This little gem has more than paid for itself.

This is classic, "see what the market wants and give it to them". I looked for a keyword related to my blog that was in demand (had a low R/S ratio -- if you don't know what that is, read some of my earlier posts) and had a higher cost-per-click (again, explained in earlier posts).

Anyway, I wrote an article about 'Cat Allergies' and put it in a category (on Word Press) called 'Cat Allery' - and here are the results (so far):

www.google.co.uk - 18
www.msn.com - 18
www.alltheweb.com - 270
www.yahoo.com - 865
www.google.de - 26
www.google.com - 45

Not bad for a puny article -- it's actually pretty good.

Now, these rankings are super-impressive, but just think if I wrote another article or two about the subject and put them under the same category. The irony about this is that I wasn't intending to rank at all for 'Cat Alergy', I was just wanting to have some more expensive ads show up on the site, so this is truly a bonus.

I've been cutting my link exchanges through Link Metro down -- I've really cleaned up my link page. I don't like the non-related links, but at this point, I don't know whether it hurts me or helps me. I'm only considering links from sites that have a PR3 or better -- or the site has be directly related to my audience's interests.

Another spot of good news is that I've moved up on MSN for 'Kitten Pictures' - I went from 18 to #6 over the weekend. In case you didn't know, I started this as a blogger blog and the transferred it to a regular domain blog later. Well, at the the time, http://kitten-pictures.blogspot.com was #1 on MSN. So I had to build up http://Kitten-Pictures.com. So, #6 is on the 1st page!

One of the problems that I've had with Kitten Pictures is that there really isn't a lot text for a search engine to grab a hold of. I put the words kitten pictures in the tags of each of the photos, but that's about it. Also, I put the word Kitten, Kitty, Cat in the Post's title - which on Word Press is an H2 tag. Anyway, I wrote a little piece about 'Kitten Pictures' -- really as a way to attract comments, but primarily for the search engines.

I did a total rework of the site using a different WordPress template called 'adsminded' -- the jury is still out on whether it's going to help my conversion ratio -- I'll keep you posted on that. I still have some more tweaking to do. I'm also looking to create a more professional banner that's nice to look at.

I could go on and on...

Have you thought about starting your own blog? Are you hesitating because you don't know what to 'talk' about? Just write about some subjects you have opinions about or topics you know something about. Most of us, me included, underestimate the power of what we know. The beauty about blogging is that it is informal -- it's not like writing a research paper. Then you do some keyword research to determine what people are wanting to know. But, you've got to get started -- take that step! Create a free blog account in blogger.com. Contact me if you need some help -- I'd love to assist.

Also, please spread the word about this blog!

Make it a great day!

Stan

'R/S' Expanded

Hello All,

I was reading a piece yesterday that talked about targeting keywords based upon really low R/S ratios (If you are not sure what an R/S ratio, read some of my other recent posts where I go into great detail about that). We are talking about 'R/S's in the single digits level like 1 through 9 or even lower.

Especially if you are starting out - these are really easy words to dominate and get ranked for. The traffic isn't huge for 'R/S's that low, but if a person searches for one, make sure they visit your site on Google instead of another's site. Now this type of 'R/S' searching may be tedious without a tool like Keyword Elite - you may want to consider making the plunge.

At last count, http://kitten-pictures.com/ for the keyword phrase "kitten pictures" is still not ranked on Google or Yahoo. My ranking for MSN continues to shift around a bit - currently at 19. I may need to write an article about "Kitten Pictures" and submit that to the article sites, like articlecity.com. So much to do, so little time.

My links page is full of links with PR0 sites - and I'm wondering if that is hurting me. Anyone have any thoughts on that. I read a lot conflicting material on that. I've got a couple of link requests in linkmetro.com from sites that are A) unrelated and B) PR0. I've been trying to figure out the cost of this to me. The upside is if a site goes big and they have my link on their page, then I benefit - I know that for sure.

Remember, content is KING. Write, and write often. Practice with your own blog. Register it on blogger.com - if you have trouble, give me a shout and I can try to help you out.

If you are benefiting from the blog, please spread the word -- thanks! Even better, give a link on your site. I would appreciate it very much. Also, any questions, comments -- please feel free to leave them in the comment section on the blog post.

As always, Make it a great day!

Stan

I guess I should have checked my search engine rankings earlier -- they can really swing from one day to the next. For the keyword phrase "kitten pictures", for http://kitten-pictures.com, I've moved from 43 to 17 on MSN.com since the weekend.

Also, I just got a couple of hits from MSN.IE (Ireland) where I'm ranked #1 for "kitten pictures".

And I got a hit from MSN.CO.UK (United Kingdom) where I'm ranked #3 for "kitten pictures".

Every little bit helps. Google is still my goal!

A big dive in MSN.com

Hello All,

As you may or may not be aware, I started my Kitten Picture blog under a blogger.com account (http://kitten-pictures.blogspot.com), but then decided to move it to my own private domain (http://kitten-pictures.com). Anyway, I had been ranked in the top 4 on MSN for my blogger url, but I just took a big dive. The blogger url, at this time is doing little more than redirecting traffic to my http://kitten-pictures.com site.

Even with a ranking in the top 4 on MSN, I wasn't really experiencing any significant search engine traffic. Everything that I've read seems to suggest that MSN is good, but Yahoo is very good and Google is great. I'm really aiming for Google at this point. I could get listed in Yahoo a little quicker by paying a yearly fee of about $200/year, but I'm being a little cheap right now.

This weekend, I took down a bunch of links on my links page - links that I was pursuing via linkmetro.com. I'm amazed, but many people, even in a link exchange program were not responding to my link request, positive or negative, they just weren't responding. Anyway, I've removed a bunch of those that were 14 days old. I decided that 14 days was probably long enough. I still have mixed emotions about having links on my link page that have nothing to do with Pets, whatsoever.

I just wrote an article for http://kitten-pictures.com called Pet Insurance - An introduction - here is the link if you want to take a look http://kitten-pictures.com/152/pet-insurance-%e2%80%93-an-introduction/. Why did I pick that topic. Well, mainly because the keyword phrase "Pet Insurance" serves up some more expensive AdSense ads. I research what keywords pay the most/best and then write the article.

The more that I think about it, the 'easiest' way to have high Page Rank sites link to your 'newbie' site is to have great content. They are starved for great content for their visitors.

Make it a great day!

Stan

Getting Links

Hello All,

Trying to get links, as a new an unknown site (http://Kitten-Pictures.com), I'm finding, is a difficult and arduous process. It really takes time commitment and tenacity -- just giving you fair warning.

As far as I understand, the best links to get are one-way links -- links where other sites are linking to your site, but you are not linking to theirs. This is the kind of link you get when a site links to you because your content will enhance his own site's visitors experience. Did you catch what I said about 'Content' -- Content is King, yet again.

There is a linking scheme called 3-way linking. This where you set up two sites. One is your main site (we'll call it site 'A') and the other is your linking site (we'll call it site 'B'). You solicit a link exchange (this is where you trade links) from another site (we'll call it site 'C') where you set it up like this:

Site 'C' links to Site 'A'
Site 'B' links to Site 'C'

This may or may not be an attractive offer for site 'C', depending on the page rank of site 'B'.

There is also a lot of SEO talk about getting links only from relevant sites, only. If I’m a pet site (which I am – http://kitten-pictures.com), I should only solicit and accept links from other pet sites. In other words, don’t accept a link from a health insurance company. Then others say, get whatever links you can. I’m not sure who’s really right here.

Also, some say to only put your links on the front page. I’ve taken a hybrid approach. I’ve created a links page – http://Kitten-Pictures.com/links for my links that are either direct competitors for my site (other Kitten Picture Sites) or other non-directly related sites (Sites about Dogs, Fish, Insurance, etc). The other sites that are complimentary, I put those on my front page – sites about Cats or Kittens. In my mind, I need to serve my readership first and it’s in my readership’s interest to give the easy access to relevant links on the front page.

As it stands right now, http://Kitten-Pictures.com has 27 links from sites with a Page Rank (PR) of 0, 1 link from sites with a PR of 2, 2 links from sites with a PR of 3, 1 link from a site with a PR of 6, and 1 link from a site with a PR of 7.

Do you see my weakness here? My link count is okay, especially for how old the site is. However, most of my links are from non-known sites (PR=0). Google doesn’t regard those types of sites very well – and my Google ranking shows it. I need to solicit more sites with higher page rankings. How am I going to do that? With great content! Content is King.

Have you created your own blog site yet? What are you waiting for? Are you nervous that you don’t having anything to say. I’ve got a secret – start a blog at www.blogger.com and just start writing something you know something about. Write about model airplanes, your dog, politics, how you built your last computer – write about anything. Once you get in the mode of writing, it will become more apparent to you what topics and interests are easier to expound on. If you find that your interest are outside of the scope of the blogsite you’ve started, you can erect another blog site with the new theme and either disband the old or keep it going.

If this blog has helped you, please leave comments and tell others – that would be awesome.

Anyway, that’s it for now.

Make it a great day!

Stan

Articles, Articles, Articles -- Write them!

Hello everyone! I've been busy writing articles, articles, articles and rearranging my site (www.Kitten-Pictures) to help bolster my search engine rankings.

http://Kitten-Pictures.com is a blog site – really more of a picture site designed to attract visitors who will enjoy the site, but who will click on the Google AdSense ads. I chose a picture site, because I was copying the efforts of Jonathan Leger, who runs a similar feline pictures site also – I’m not trying to reinvent anything here.

So now, the site is up and running and getting respectable traffic on a daily basis. I spend a lot of time promoting it. One of the things that I’ve been noticing is that with the AdSense clicks that I’m getting, I’m only making a few pennies each time. And, what a thrill it is to make some money at something, do you know what I mean – it’s a move in the right direction. However, I’m ready for a bit more income. I’ve decided to start adding content to the site in the form of blog posts (I initially started to add them as pages, but in Word Press, I couldn’t figure out how to categorize the articles – but with posts you can) which I put into various categories. Well, how am I deciding which articles to write – it’s certainly not by chance that I’ve written what I’ve written.

Well, go to http://Kitten-Pictures.com for a second – this is a little easier to explain if you are looking at the site.

Notice on the right hand side, I have a section called “Kitten Categories” and underneath that heading, WordPress software list of the blog posts that I’ve put into various categories. The Kitten Pictures, I’ve listed as “Kitten Pictures …”. But look at some of the others, like “Cat Trees” – this is an post/article that I wrote last night. How did I come up with that? Well, I did some keyword research and determined that “cat trees” is paying about $2.62 per click by Google Adwords advertisers and that there about 5,000 searches done each month. Not a ton of traffic, but I would mind a share of that $2.62 per click either.

Do you see what I’m doing; I’m letting my research drive the content of the site. As you watch, you will see more and more articles/posts that focus on profitable AdSense click rates – this is not a hobby for me, this is a business and I’ve got to try to maximize the value of every visitor ‘visiting’.

Creating the articles and fresh content is work, but I believe it is the best way to ultimately win in the Search Engine wars. There are sites going up all around that are directory-only sites that have junk for content – how long are they going to last? Do they really add any value to the internet experience for people? How long before Google figures out a way to get them all de-listed? Why even go there and play that game.

All, take action today. If you’ve not started your own blog site, please get started. Write about anything. The weather, your travels, anything. Write about something that you are passionate about – keep it very ‘G’ rated. Once you start this site, send me an email and tell me about it. I’ll do what I can to get you as far as I have come. You can be sure, as I learn new things, I will post and share.

There is no real change in my search engine rankings just yet – they are about the same as they were yesterday – you can see them on yesterday’s post.

Well, that’s it for today. Enjoy!

Make it a great day!

Stan

Introduction to Cost Per Click

For Google AdSense advertising, effective keyword analysis is backbone of your endeavors. Without good key analysis research skills, you are just shooting in the proverbial dark.

We have already discussed in some depth how to determine the supply and demand for a keyword/keyword phrase using the 'R/S' (results/searches) ratio. The 'R/S' ratio is nothing more that an indicator of how easy it is to dominate a keyword/keyword phrase. The lower the number, the easier it will be to penetrate that market. If you need some more detail on this, read some of my earlier posts.

We also have discussed in an earlier post, that even though a keyword/keyword may have a low 'R/S' ratio, it may be because there is a low demand for that keyword/keyword phrase. Therefore, you have to establish a floor, a minimum volume of monthly traffic - say 5,000 to 10,000.

Okay, now we are ready to embark on the next topic: Selecting the 'Right' Keywords.

Let's give a little Google Adwords/AdSense background here - as best I understand it.

Google Adwords - when you open a browser and go to www.google.com and search a keyword, such as 'train', on the left, with a white background, you will see the 'normal' Google search engine, spidered, results. On the left, at the very top, in a shaded section and on the right you will see Google Adwords selections.

Advertisers bid on keywords, like 'train', and they tell Google that they are willing to pay a certain amount to get ranked at a certain position on the page. The more they are willing to bid for the keyword, the higher the position their ad will be on Google.

The cost per click for 'train' for the #1 spot on Google is $1.24. That means that the advertiser, every time they get a click, pays Google $1.24.

Simple enough.

On the other side is Google AdSense:

Google AdSense is a vehicle where Google and a website owner partner up and display Google Adwords ads on a web page. So, let's say you have Google AdSense set up on your website page. A visitor comes to your site page, and clicks on a Google AdSense ad link - what happens? Well, assuming that the visitor clicked on the top link (links that are ranked higher on the page are worth more), the advertiser is charged $1.24 by Google (the bid amount for that keyword). Then Google splits a portion of that $1.24 with you, the site owner. The exact amount is product of calculations that Google does. But the idea is, the more expensive the keyword to the Google Adwords advertiser, the more you get paid. Do you see the connection?

So what does this mean for you, an AdSense participant? You want to optimize your site pages on keywords that have a high amount of traffic (searches), a low amount of competition (results) and that have a high Cost Per Click (CPC). If you get all three of these, you have a winner.

Signing up for Google Adwords
https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=16768. Reference Document.

Basically, you are going to create an account for the purpose of research for AdSense. When Google Adwords prompts you to enter in ad information, don't be concerned about the ad running - it won't run until you actually fund the account.

http://google.com/adsense

Sign up now "Click to Begin" button

Starter Edition radio link and continue button
1. location and language - choose you location and language
2. write your ad:
What site will your ad link to? http://www.bogussite.com
What will your ad say?

This is a great product
This is line # 1
This is line # 2

3. Choose keywords: bogus

4. Choose your currency: Choose your currency

5. Set you budget: $30/month

Click the "Continue" button

Setup Account

Email: -- your real email address

Password: - a real password

Click on "Continue" Button

You will receive an email confirmation from Google Adwords. Click on the link in the email.

Okay, now go to this link: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

For our example:

Enter one keyword or phrase per line: trains
Choose data to display: "Cost and ad position estimates"
How much would you be willing to pay per click (Max CPC): 10.00

Click on "Get More Keywords" button.

What you will see is a list of keywords and each associated cost per click.

Now you know how much an advertiser is paying for a keyword. Why settle for a keyword worth $.05 per click when you get one for $5.00 per click. Do you see what I mean?

You want to build your pages around this higher CPC keywords.

Okay, that's enough for today on that.


Assignment

Sign up for your Google Adwords account

Perform searches on your favorite keywords/keyword phrases and try to identify those that have the lowest R/S ratio, with a good amount of traffic and with a high CPC

Activities for http://Kitten-Pictures.com since my last post:

Was solicited by 3 or 4 websites for link exchanges via link metro (www.linkmetro.com) - and I accepted.

Posted new photo

Search Engine Rankings for Keyword Phrase "Kitten Pictures" on http:Kitten-Pictures.com since my last post:

www.alltheweb.com - 0
www.altavista.com - 0
www.google.co.uk - 0
www.google.com - 0
www.google.de - 0
www.msn.com - 41 (unchanged from last time)
www.yahoo.com - 0


Search Engine Rankings for Keyword Phrase "Kitten Pictures" on http://kitten-pictures.blogspot.com (this site redirects to http://Kitten-Pictures.com)

www.alltheweb.com - 0
www.altavista.com - 0
www.google.co.uk - 0
www.google.com - 0
www.google.de - 0
www.msn.com - 3 (The same as yesterday)
www.yahoo.com - 0


Questions? Comments?

I welcome them. You can either post the question in the comments section at the bottom of this posting, or you can email me at Stan -@- StanBeck.com. Please feel free to tell others about this blog and/or my Kitten Pictures site.


Until next time…

Make it a great day!

Page Optimization Analysis

Today, we are going to analyze our competition's sites (actually, just the #1 site in Google's rankings or this will be a really long post), looking for potential weaknesses that we can exploit…
There are three major factors search engines use to evaluate your site:

1) Page Optimization - how well you page is 'search engine friendly'
2) Links from other sites
3) Site Content

Let's focus on Page Optimization analysis for the #1 ranked site in Google for the keyword phrase "amtrak train schedule". This happens to be ole' Amtrak themselves (www.amtrak.com).

So, let's get everything set up. Open a web browser (I am using Internet Explorer) and go to www.google.com. Search for "amtrak train schedule'. Click on the highest ranked site, which at the time of this writing is www.amtrack.com.

We need to look at the html code that comprises this site. In Internet Explorer (I.E.), it is <view> and then <source> (from the drop down list). A notepad window will pop-up with Amtrak's main page's html code. If you've never looked at html before, this is going to look a little strange - but I'm going to help you.

These are the elements that we are going to look for:

1) Title Tag
2) H1 Tag
3) Bold/Underline/Italics Tags
4) Image Alt Tags
5) Keyword/Keyword Phrases within the first 25 words
6) Keyword/Keyword Phrases within the last 25 words

Okay, now what is our keyword phrase?

"amtrak train schedule"

In notepad, search for the following items listed below.

Title Tag (<title>amtrak train schedule</title>)
Search for "<title>"
Here is www.amtrak.com's Title Tag -> <title>Amtrak</title>

Notice that only the word 'Amtrak' exists in the title tag. This is an area of weakness that we can exploit.

H1 Tag (<h1>amtrak train schedule</h1>)
Search for "<h1>"
There is no <H1></H1> tag .

Bold Tag (<b>amtrak train schedule</b>)
Search for "<b>"

<B><a HREF="javascript:if(location.href.indexOf('espanol.amtrak.com/amtrak/enes')!=-1){idx=location.href.indexOf('mp_act_url');if(idx!=-1){pidx=location.href.indexOf('&',idx);uidx=location.href.indexOf('=',idx)+1;url=unescape(location.href.substring(uidx,pidx));pms=location.href.substring(pidx+1);location.href=url+'?'+pms;}else{location.href=location.href.substring(location.href.indexOf(';')+1);}}else{location.href=location.protocol+'//espanol.amtrak.com/amtrak/enes/?24;'+location.href;}" CLASS="NavBarWhite">En Espa&ntilde;ol</a></B>

<B><a HREF="http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=Amtrak/HomePage" CLASS="NavBarWhite">Home</a></B>

<B><a HREF="http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=Amtrak/Help" CLASS="NavBarWhite">Help</a></B>

<B><a HREF="http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=Amtrak/ContactUs" CLASS="NavBarWhite">Contact Us</a></B>

<B><span CLASS="NavBarWhite"><a HREF="http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=Amtrak/Search/AdvancedSearch" CLASS="NavBarWhite">Search</a></span></B>

<b>Departs:</b>

<b>Departure Date:</b>

And so on - you get the idea

There are no bold tags

Italics Tag (<i>amtrak train schedule</i>)
Search for "<i>"
There are none - the would look like <i>text</i>

Underline Tag (<u>amtrak train schedule</u>)
Search for "<u>"
There are none - the would look like <u>text</u>

Alt Image Tags (Look for the text "alt=")

These are the pseudo pop-up labels that are displayed in browsers or browser configurations that block images from displaying.

Search for "alt="

Here is what I found:

ALT="Amtrak"
alt="spacer-blue"
alt="spacer-blue"
ALT="spacer"
ALT="Nav Angle"
ALT="Reservations"
ALT="spacer"
ALT="Schedules"

And so on - you get the idea.

"amtrak train schedule" appears in none of the Image ALT tags.

Keyword/Keyword Phrases within the first 25 words
Search for "amtrak train schedule".
The keyword is not found.


Keyword/Keyword Phrases within the last 25 words
Search for "amtrak train schedule".
The keyword is not found.


Summary
From a page optimization standpoint, this page is very weak for "amtrak train schedule".

Assignment
Perform the same analysis that we've just done on sites ranked 2 through 10 on Google.


Activities for http://Kitten-Pictures.com since my last post:

Solicited about 30 more link exchanges.

I changed my main text font on my site to Arial 8pt so that I more closely matches the Google adsense font and size

Posted new photos each day

Wrote another article called "Cat Dander Allergy - The Mystery Solved" - I didn't submit this one to the article submission sites. I'm going for the keyword 'Cat Dander Allergy" - it has a Google adword cost per click at about $.87


Search Engine Rankings for Keyword Phrase "Kitten Pictures" on http:Kitten-Pictures.com since my last post:

www.alltheweb.com - 0
www.altavista.com - 0
www.google.co.uk - 0
www.google.com - 0
www.google.de - 0
www.msn.com - 41 (was 0 previously)
www.yahoo.com - 0


Search Engine Rankings for Keyword Phrase "Kitten Pictures" on http://kitten-pictures.blogspot.com (this site redirects to http://Kitten-Pictures.com)

www.alltheweb.com - 0
www.altavista.com - 0
www.google.co.uk - 0 (I've fallen from 751 to zero)
www.google.com - 0
www.google.de - 0
www.msn.com - 3 (I was #1 yesterday and floated back down to #3 this morning)
www.yahoo.com - 0


Questions? Comments?

I welcome them. You can either post the question in the comments section at the bottom of this posting, or you can email me at Stan -@- StanBeck.com. Please feel free to tell others about this blog or my Kitten Pictures site.


Until next time…

Make it a great day!

R/S Weighting Further Explored

Yesterday, we looked at a formula to determine the relative weighting of how possible it is to dominate a keyword/keyword phrase. I call it the R/S formula and it is as follows:

Results / Searches = RS Weighting

I was going to talk today about estimating clicks in Adsense, but it has been requested that we slow down a tad and take more time to develop the Results / Searches topic. So that's what we'll do.

I took the liberty to put into an Excel spreadsheet the keywords/keyword phrases and their respective searches, results and "r/s". Remember, this was generated for the keyword 'train'.

And I sorted them by "R/S" ascending.

Now, remember, the lower the "R/S", the better.

Let's walk down the list…
























What catches my attention? "amtrak train schedule". This keyword has an "R/S" of 77 with monthly searches near 10,000. If you compare that to say, "train photo", which has an "R/S" of 46,121. This is very low, especially for the traffic level.

Hmmm, my curiosity is definitely piqued. We need to look at the competition a little bit. Let's do a query in google.com and search on 'amtrak train schedule'.

Here is a list of the top 10 in order:

1. www.amtrak.com/
2. www.dot.ca.gov/hq/rail/depots/stops/emy.htm
3. www.dot.ca.gov/hq/rail/amcalroutes/rtes.htm
4. www.roomsatpar.com/global/train_schedule.html
5. www.trainweb.org/amtrak/
6. www.amtrakcascades.com/
7. www.primetravels.com/rail.shtml
8. www.amtrakhiawatha.com/
9. www.acerail.com/schedules/bus-schedule.htm
10. www.concordtrailways.com/maine_bus_schedule.htm

The next step is that we need to analyze the competition's sites to see whether or not there is a vulnerability that we can exploit. We will deal with that next time…

Assignment
For the keywords you had chosen, perform the same type of analysis that we did above.


Yesterday's Activities for http://Kitten-Pictures.com

• I didn't solicit any new link exchanges
• Posted to my favorite google group
• Placed a free Ad in AdlandPro Classifiedso Put up a new post on http://Kitten-Pictures.com
• Began to work on a new feline-related article (content is king!)
• Submitted to search engines using Web Position 3

Today's Activity Plan for http://Kitten-Pictures.com

• Put up a new post on http://Kitten-Pictures.com (done)
• Post in my favority google group about cats (done)
• Submit more link exchange requests (have already done 8 today so far)
• Put up a new post on http://Kitten-Pictures.com (done)
• Work on my feline-related article

Search Engine Rankings for http://Kitten-Pictures.com

www.alltheweb.com - 0
www.altavista.com - 0
www.google.co.uk - 0
www.google.com - 0
www.google.de - 0
www.msn.com - 0
www.yahoo.com - 0

Search Engine Rankings for http://kitten-pictures.blogspot.com (this site redirects to http://Kitten-Pictures.com)

www.alltheweb.com - 0
www.altavista.com - 0
www.google.co.uk - 751
www.google.com - 0
www.google.de - 0
www.msn.com - 3
www.yahoo.com - 0


Questions? Comments?

I welcome them. You can either post the question in the comments section at the bottom of this posting, or you can email me at Stan -@- StanBeck.com. Please feel free to tell others about this blog or my Kitten Pictures site.

Until next time…

Make it a great day!

Today has been a busy day of promoting and learning – more about that a little later in the post…

The Next Step

If you recall from yesterday’s post, I recommended that you:

o Make and inventory of your skills and hobbies
o Download Good Keywords and get familiar with the demand for keywords which represent your skills/interests.

Let’s move on to the next step.

With Good Keywords, we looked at the keyword ‘train’ and saw that over the last month, there were over 147K searches.

Now, let’s talk a little economics for a second. Do you remember the laws of supply and demand? Let’s, in our mind, think of the number of searches returned by Good Keywords as a representation of demand. Does that make sense?

Now what about the supply? Well, here is the cheap way (not necessarily the easiest) to get this information. (I generally recommend that you do things the hard way the first time, so when a tool comes along to automate the process, you have a greater appreciation for it.) An easy way to get the supply numbers is from a search engine, like Google.com.

Open Google.com and type the word ‘train’ in the search box and press the “Google Search” button.



















Notice the words just above where you typed ‘train’. They say “Results 1 – 10 of about 448,000,000 for train”. That 448 Million represents the number of pages that searching on ‘train’ returns. That number is your supply.

So what we are going to do now is divide the Results by the Searches or the ‘Supply’ by the ‘Demand’.

What are our Results (Supply)? – 480,000,000

What are our Searches (Demand)? – 147,000 (approximately)

480,000,000 / 147,000 = 3,265.31


Now, let’s play a ‘what if’ game for a second.

What if these were the numbers?

Results (Supply) – 240,000,000

Searches (Demand) – 147,000


Our demand stayed the same, but our supply has been cut in half. What does that mean? Well, if the demand is the same and the supply is cut in half, that means there is less competition, right? Right!

Let’s put this in our equation:

240,000,000 / 147,000 = 1632.65.

Did you notice what happened to our resulting number? It was cut in half.

So, we can say that the lower the resulting number, the less the competition, right? Do you understand?

If you are not following this, then reread this section.

So, what you are going to do next is figure out which keyword combinations have the lowest resulting number of our Results/Supply formula.

Look down the list of your keywords/keyword phrases in the Good Keywords tool and for each phrase that is appealing to you, do this calculation. In addition, you should set a minimum traffic goal – say 10K searches per month. If you get too low below 10K searches, you run the risk of there not being enough demand for your topics. However, 10K is completely arbitrary – that’s just the number that I use.

In the next posting, I’m going to show you how you can run some estimates to give you an idea of the money making potential of a keyword/keyword phrase using Adsense.


Assignment

Run your keywords through the R/S equation and determine which keywords/keyword phrases you should focus your time on.


A summary of yesterday’s activity:
o Yesterday, I solicited about 40 more link exchanges in Link Metro (http://www.linkmetro.com/). I’ve got about 100 exchange offers outstanding that I’m waiting to hear on. I had 8 successful link exchanges yesterday. Most of all of my exchanges are with Pet related sites.

o I posted to my favorite groups.google.com forum.

o I uploaded a new Kitten Picture – you can see it at http://kitten-pictures.com/.

o I setup and article page and added an article to it: http://kitten-pictures.com/articles -- the article that I wrote is “An Introduction to Pet Photography”.

o Added to the top of my site a note that let’s people know that I am interested in exchanging links with them.


Today’s activity plan:
o Solicit more link exchanges in Link Metro (already started)

o Write this posting (almost complete)

o List more articles off of the article page (done – a total of nine so far)

o Start working on another pet-related article

o Make a post into my favorite groups.google.com forum (done)

o Upload a new Kitten Picture (done) (www.Kitten-Picture.com)

Here are my search engine standings for “Kitten Pictures” as of this morning:

http://kitten-pictures.com/:
Google: not found
Yahoo: not found
MSN: not found

http://kitten-pictures.blogspot.com/ (this site redirects to http:Kitten-Pictures.com):
Google: not found
Yahoo: not found
MSN: 3

Still not seeing much movement in the search engines. Everything that I’ve read seems to suggest that I’m doing all of the write things – advertising my site on forums, publishing original content articles, actively seeking link exchange partners. I believe it’s just a matter of time, especially for Google, which is tougher to get ranked on.

I may also want to start thinking about publishing some content along with my pictures – just to give the search engines something to grasp onto. I’m going to looking into that.


Tomorrow’s Plan:
o Pursue Link Exchanges

o Post to my favorite Google Groups

o Work on my original-content pet-related article

o Work on this sites next post

o Do a lot of reading on various forums.


Questions? Comments?
I welcome them. You can either post the question in the comments section at the bottom of this posting, or you can email me at Stan -@- StanBeck.com. Please feel free to tell others about this blog or my Kitten Pictures site.


Until next time…
Make it a great day!

Still #2 at MSN & Internet Marketing Tutorial

Good morning all. I'm experimenting with the setup of my posts, so please bear with me as I try to figure out the best structure. There is a lot here, so make sure you take time to read through it.

Getting Started

I want to talk a little bit about getting started in this big world of Internet Marketing -- with your own website or blog. If you weren't interested in that, you probably wouldn't be visiting this site.

Most successful sites are those that start with clear objectives in mind. Written is best. Get it down on paper!

Are you trying to make money or are you feeding a hobby?
How do you plan to get visitors to your site? Are you planning on paying for advertising, or are you going to try to get your site ranked by search engines organically?
Who is your target audience?
Do they have money to spend?
Are you selling a product, service or advertising (or any combination of the three)?

You must commit to focusing your site on a niche -- a small narrow band of interests.

My site is about Kitten Pictures -- pretty narrow, right?
It's not about 'Pictures';
It's not about 'Animal Pictures';
It's not about 'Cat Pictures';
It's about 'Kitten Pictures'.

Pictures -> Animal Pictures -> Cat Pictures -> Kitten Pictures

Do you see the progression from very broad to narrow?

So, how do we find this niche? Great question.

Let's start with your hobbies and skills.

What do you like?
What are you good at?
Even more important, what would other people say that you are good at?

** Be careful not to downplay the value of your skills, believe me, there is an audience of people who can benefit from what you know.

Let's say you have a love for trains. You have loved anything about trains since you were a kid.

Let's see if we can find a niche that we can exploit.

For this next exercise, I'm going to use a free tool called "Good Keywords" http://goodkeywords.com/. Free is good, right?

Now, let's open Good Keywords and do a search on the word 'trains'. I'm going to use the Overture US as my source for data. Make sure you download this tool and try it along with me -- this is great practice.





























Notice that the word 'train' garners approximately 147K clicks per month in overture. That's a lot of traffic. However, the word 'trains' is much too broad of a niche, especially when you are starting out. We need to find something a little smaller and more targeted.

Notice that 'Thomas the Train' is also very popular with 54K searches per month. Lionel trains gets about 11K searches per month. That's probably a little more like it.

Just because a keyword or keyword is phrase is popular and gets a lot of traffic, that's only one part of the equation. We need to know how much competition there is for that keyword or keyword phrase.

My next posting will show you how I figure out how to assess the competition for a keyword/keyword phrase.


Assignment
Make an inventory of your skills and hobbies.
Download Good Keywords and get familiar with the demand for the keywords which represent your skills/interests.


A summary of yesterday's activity:

For my site http://kitten-pictures.com/, I posted on the front page that I wanted to do link exchanges. I also looked around a bit for some link exchange software that was free to use. I reviewed some, but haven't come to a decision. I like the link metro (http://www.linkmetro.com/) directory, but their advanced membership which maintains a lot of the mundane link tasks is more than I want to pay per month -- at this time anyway.

I spent most of yesterday pursuing link exchanges on link metro (http://www.linkmetro.com/). I really like this directory because it's not hard to sell -- these people are already predisposed to the idea of link exchanges and so that's one less hurdle to have to jump. There are other link exchanges out there that I noticed when looking on Google, but I've not had time to pursue yet.

I posted a really great picture on the http://kitten-pictures.com/ site -- you all should check it out (small plug :>) ).

I received notice from more article submission sites that my article "An Introduction To Pet Photography" was accepted. I got a couple declines, but mainly due to the content matching the theme of the submission site. The big score is getting into http://ezinearticles.com/ -- they are fairly selective compared to most.


Today's activity is going to be spent doing:

Advertising this blog on several of the Google groups with theme of 'work from home', or 'internet marketing' -- done already!

Post on my favorite Cat Health Google group -- done already!

Writing this post -- almost done :>)

Continue to work on my link exchanges on Link Metro (http://www.linkmetro.com/).

Set up my Article page on http://kitten-pictures.com/ -- ran out of time yesterday.


Make it a great day!

Link Exchanges are happening...

Well, this morning finds http://kitten-pictures.blogspot.com in #2 on MSN -- that's good, I'm pretty happy with #2 at the moment while I'm still learning the ropes :). http://Kitten-Pictures.com is still not indexed yet. I still don't quite understand how having one site redirect to another plays out in the search engines. If anyone knows, please let me know.

The Link Metro (www.linkmetro.com) site is working well. I'm getting more and more successful link exchanges each day. I'm keeping all of my cat links on the front page and I created a separate link page (http://kitten-pictures.com/links) for my non-cat links. Remember, the link metro service has a free and a paid subscription option -- I'm going free for right now to keep my expenses low.

Today, I'm going to set up an articles page so I can start listing Cat/Kitten related articles -- content, content, content.

In addition, I'm going to put on the front page of http://Kitten-Pictures.com some sort of message asking folks to link to my site. Someone told me (I think that I read it somewhere) that all you have to do is ask, right?!? We'll see what the response is on that.

That's it for now -- enjoy the rest of your day!

Bouncing Around Again - #3 on MSN today.

I checked MSN this morning and http://kitten-pictures.blogspot.com is now #3. -- Bouncing around again!

My article "An Introduction to Pet Photography" has been published in a couple places -- great! The idea is that when google/yahoo etc. re-spider these sites, they will see my article and then will trace it back to my site http://kitten-pictures.com. That will in turn lead to them spidering my site. I will keep you posted on this progress. I'm not sure how often the search engine spiders crawl already-indexed sites.

In addition, I signed up for a free service called Link Metro (www.linkmetro.com) -- a free link exchange service. It's a pretty nice service in that their link partners are broken down by category, so it was easy to find which sites where complimentary to my http://Kitten-Pictures.com site. I sent about 20-30 link exchange requests yesterday morning and I've already picked up 2 accepts. Both sites have a page rank of 3, which is pretty good; certainly better than http://Kitten-Pictures at this point.

If you look at my http://Kitten-Pictures.com front page, you will see lots of links there. Each link represents a link request that I've sent out to various sites. I've telephoned all that I could find phone numbers for and for the rest, I sent an email. The sites that I've not heard from, I'm going to resend my request in about 3-4 weeks. If I don't hear from them again in 3-4 weeks, then I'm going to remove the link.

Now, let me show you a nifty trick on how to easily tell which ones are linking back to me, automatically. I'm going to use the tool SEO Elite:

I launch SEO Elite, I go to option #4...




Option 4 is where I can check who is linking back to my site.

Now I press the "ok" button:



The light green symbolizes those on my site that are linking back to me. The ones that are light red (pink) are not. Pretty cool, heh?

Enjoy the rest of your day!

#2 in MSN again!

I guess it must be common to bounce around a little bit in your search engine ranking -- I really don't know that for sure -- just my observation. My site http://kitten-pictures.blogspot.com which redirects to http://kitten-pictures.com has moved from #4 to #2 overnight. Here's what I did for http://kitten-pictures.blogspot.com -- NOTHING! However, I did a couple things for http://kitten-pictures.com.

1. I moved my title tag right up next to the head text tag.


2. Second, I added "Kitten Pictures" close to the very bottom of the page.


3. Third, I wrote an article called "An Introduction to Pet Photography" and submitted it manually to: http://goarticles.com, http://ezinearticles.com, http://articlecity.com


4. After those submissions, I decided that that was a huge amount of laborious work, so I purchased some software called Instant Article Submitter to assist. I attempted to submit to about 200+ article sites and about half succeeded. The other half didn't succeed because I need to establish actual accounts on those -- and that's what I'm doing this morning.

Well, I'm off to submit a new kitten picture to http://kitten-pictures.com and submit posts to my groups.google.com cat newsgroup.

Getting Smashed on MSN

Wow -- I need to back off here a minute. Yesterday was a tough day, getting down-graded from #1 on MSN to #2. And today, I've been moved back to #4. Arrrggghhh.

Now it's time to regroup and start cranking it up.

I was trying to figure out what might have happened. You might notice that http://kitten-pictures.blogspot.com is the site that is ranked on MSN, not http://kitten-pictures.com. What I did is I started with the http://kitten-pictures.blogspot.com and but quickly came to want to add articles which would give me content. So I put in a redirect on http://kitten-pictures.blogspot.com to http://kitten-pictures.com. I wasn't too sure how that may play out with the search engines -- this may be part of that. In addition, I'm no longer promoting http://kitten-pictures.blogspot.com, only http://kitten-pictures.com.

What am I going to do to rectify this. Well, I'm going to study my competitor's sites and try to figure out if they have a better optimized site than what I have. Also, I'm going to cranking out some articles -- in the 400-600 word range on topics related to kittens and submitting those to article sites. I've got one that I've been working on today -- and it's coming along great.

The other thing is, I've start contacting more sites for link exchanges -- not junk or generic sites, but sites that are related to my key words. I have a lot to do today -- primarily, I need to finish my article and get it posted.

More about my first foray into the world of Adsense

Based on the materials that I read by Jonathan Leger (Adsense Gold), I constructed a Blogger.com page about “Kitten Pictures” (http://kitten-pictures.blogspot.com). Well, how did I come up with that? Well, I’m pretty un-original and I think originality can come after you learn and can duplicate what others who are successful have already done. I digress.

Anyway, I noticed Jonathan Leger had a page on blogger.com called http://felinephotos.blogspot.com/ and the page is about “Cat Pictures”. CAT PICTURES – it was so simple -- he wasn't writing anything at all. Not only that but he had very high Google and Yahoo rankings. I don’t remember back what the ratings were when I first checked, but here’s what they are at the time of this writing:

For the keywords ‘Cat Pictures’, for the site http://felinephotos.blogspot.com/:
http://www.alltheweb.com/ – 4
http://www.altavista.com/ – 4
http://www.google.co.uk/ - 108
http://www.google.com/ – 121
http://www.google.de/ – 57
http://www.msn.com/ – 3
http://www.yahoo.com/ – 4

I use the SEO Elite software to generate this list! It’s a great tool.

Then I opened up a tool called Adword Analyzer – this was a tool that I bought back when I was doing Google Adwords advertising. If you want to read about it, here is the link: Adwords Analyzer. I did a search on “Cat Picture” and I saw that Google had 36 thousand hits in a single month – not an insignificant amount of interest.

Then I looked up “Kitten Picture” and I saw that it had roughly 1/3 the traffic of Cat Picture (about 11K), but I would be able to use it to get my feet wet. Of course, I copied everything about Jonathan’s site (http://felinephotos.blogspot.com/). The look was identical. If you go to my site now (http://kitten-pictures.blogspot.com/ / http://kitten-pictures.com/), you will see that it has since changed – I’ll talk more about that later.

I started my site, http://kitten-pictures.blogspot.com/ on around 4/28/2006 with zero rankings in the search engines and the time of this writing, I am now #1 in MSN.com. I still have no ranking in the others.

Well, that’s all for now – more later.

Now to the Present - (Google Adsense)

I’m quickly coming to the present. Recently I received an advertisement via email from Gary Baker – Gary runs a site called jempublishing.com and somewhere in time, I signed for his newsletter. Anyway, here is a copy of the ad that he sent me (only a few lines just so you can get the flavor).

Stan,

Michael Cheney, is one of the most-respected names in the field of Internet marketing.

I've actually learned quite a bit from this guy and you will too.

Chances are that you've already read one of his many, many marketing articles that are dotted throughout the web.

In this unique interview we gained insights from him on how he has managed to build up several successful Internet businesses that now earn him thousands each week.

Hey, I really grill him for you and he dishes out some very juicy nuggets of money making info.

So read on...

And so the letter goes on. I was intrigued because Gary is a credible internet marketer, so I clicked on the link he provided and that took me to Michael’s Adsense Video’s Course.

I looked over the site and some of the resources that Michael has produced and I decided to take the plunge. The video course is excellent and I have learned a lot from it so far.

In addition, I purchased 2 other products which came recommended from Michael’s course:

Adsense Gold, by Jonathan Leger
Jonathan has put together a very well done adsense tracking system so you don’t have to guess why a campaign is succeeding or failing. Plus, he gives away thousands of free to use articles. For me, just getting started, this was a very attractive option.

SEO Elite, by Brad Callen
Brad’s software is a competitor spying tool – Using, I went from zero search engine exposure to #1 on MSN inside of two weeks time.

I use these products daily and I highly recommend them. In my next post, I will show you more about them how they have helped me.

Internet Marketing History (Part 4 - Google Adwords)

I saw some ebooks out there on ClickBank that talked about Google Adwords –- that just by running these cheap (for my I was bidding .30 per keyword, so I all depends on your perspective – the cheapest is .10 per) ads promoting clickbank products. So I took a stab at it. I looked around for products that seemed less competitive but still had a reasonable demand and I began marketing those. The one that that I did the best with was a French Language course – made a few bucks over the price of the advertisement, but nothing to get really excited about. However, I was moving in the right direction – this was PASSIVE income and it felt good. I worked for me 24x7 and that was exciting.

Internet Marketing History (Part 3)

So that’s what I did, I stopped, stepped back and thought about all of the things that I didn’t like about eBay and dealing with products. Inventory and shipping were at the top of the heap. Information products seemed to be the way that I wanted to go. It’s cheap to produce and distribute. So I created a website called www.EveryEbook.com using shopping cart software called X-Cart Gold. I purchased the resale rights of a bunch of eBooks and began selling them from eBay and www.EveryEbook.com.

On eBay, I was practically giving the books away to build up a contact list. I built up around 100 or so, which is pretty good. I also sold some off of the website, considering the only way that I was promoting it was via my About Me page on eBay. But again, I still didn’t like having to manage all of the listings on eBay – it was just too time consuming for me. I want to build something that builds me wealth without having to work to hard at it, if you know what I mean. Plus, another thing I really don’t like about eBay is the mentality of the customer base – they are largely folks looking for incredible deals – to the point were you aren’t making any money. So aside from a few items that I sell now and then, I’ve backed off of eBay.

Internet Marketing History (Part 2)

Well, after I had sold everything, I started looking around for other things to sell. I have an interest in music and so I thought I would try to sell Computer Audio equipment – the type of gear a home studio would contain. I signed up as a dealer for Edirol (a subsidiary for Roland) bought a bunch of inventory and began selling it on eBay – all over the world, in fact. It was pretty cool to be selling to Israel, Europe, Russia, etc. The problem was I was barely making any money and was spending huge amounts of time running the thing – organizing inventory, writing listings, managing listings, shipping, etc., etc., etc.

Well after a few months of this, a great thing happened to me. Roland changed their policy and decided that Edirol equipment could not be sold on auction sites anymore. Arrggghhh. Just when I was in the middle of this ‘thing’ that I created – I had just gotten a Silver Power Seller rating and everything – the bottom fell out. I had no backup/contingency plan. So what was I going to do now?

Well, I scrambled around looking for new suppliers of new inventory. INVENTORY – they all wanted minimum orders; they wanted me to keep a certain amount on hand. And they there was the learning curve of getting up to speed on some fairly sophisticated equipment – it was mind numbing. I decided that it was best to just cut it loose, sell my remaining Edirol audio gear and call it an experience.

Internet Marketing History (Part 1)

I’m going to give a brief summary of my history and when I’m caught up to the present, I will then give it to you blow by blow.

I’ve had the desire to market via the internet for several years now. Having a technical background, I understood the techie stuff, but not the marketing. For a techie, unless you are exceptional, marketing is a foreign language. I really hate to self promote – sounds kind of odd doesn’t it. I have the desire to sell something, but I don’t want to say anything to anybody about it.

One of my first forays into the online world was on eBay – a very natural place to start since the barriers to entry are low. I could just find some junk around the house and sell it, right?!? Right. And that’s what I did for a while – actually, I was selling a lot of my wife’s clothes that were out of style and that she was no longer wearing. Free Inventory for me.

My Journey Through Internet Marketing

This blog is a place where I am going to document my Internet Marketing Journey in hope that my successes and failures will somehow assist you on your journey.