It’s been a long time since I posted here and have decided to breathe some life back into this site. I have been working on building niche sites with Joomla specifically concentrating on web 2.0 type community and review sites. Even though this site doesn’t receive a huge amount of traffic, only makes a few sales here and there and the domain name isn’t brilliant (it was the first domain I ever purchased and I really had no idea what I was doing, I had no idea that 18 months later I would be working full time as an internet marketer) it is now reasonably well aged and has decent PR so I thought it was worth trying to put it to better use, only time will tell!
In fact soon I am planning on releasing a web site building service similar to PIPS 2.0 which will allow you to customize the site to fit whatever business or businesses you wish to promote.
This is now the third facelift this site has had, originally it was an “out-of-the-box” PIPS site which was my introduction to the world of internet marketing. It still uses the original PIPS newsletter however I will probably create my own in the near future.
The current design is called Populous and will be familiar to those who use Joomla and more specifically are members of the Rockettheme template club. The main site is built using Joomla 1.5.4 and this blog has been upgraded to the latest version of Wordpress 2.6 prior to that I think it was 2.1 so was well due for an upgrade. Upgrade went relatively smoothly however I had the category issue that a lot of others had and considering I seem to have accumulated a lot of categories was a bit of a pain.
Since the theme was designed for Joomla I had to create a version for Wordpress which I did using the Sandbox theme which is great for creating your own Wordpress designs without having to build the theme from scratch. I removed all plug-ins and started again from scratch as they were all out of date. Here is a list of all current plug-ins running on this blog.
Akismet
All in One SEO Pack
Dagon Design Sitemap Generator
Post-Plugin Library
Recent Posts
ShareThis
Similar Posts
Sociable
Wordpress Automatic Upgrade
I also plan on adding the Random Posts plug-in as well as the Auto Social Poster plug-in and one other which has unfortunately just slipped my mind, oh thats right the Google XML plug-in which can be submitted to the Google Webmaster tool I haven’t done all that much research into the tool yet.
Perhaps in a future post I will list the Joomla plug-ins which I am running also.
I plan to make this site a review type site where I will research as many tools, memberships, ebooks and anything else related to home businesses and internet marketing as possible. I have already started to map out the sections of the site and as you will see I have a lot of work ahead of me!
Each opportunity, product or service will have a comment section where people who have used the opportunity, product or service can leave their own review and give it a rating. The goal is to provide people with an unbiased, honest review to aid them in making their decision.
That’s all for now I will be posting again soon once I have some content up to hopefully encourage people to leave their own reviews, I will have to come up with some incentives for top reviewers.
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November 26, 2007 – 10:37 pm
Everyone knows that marketing a home business is one of the most tricky things about having one. You have to be sure that you are doing it correctly, because no matter what your business is, chances are good that there are a lot of people who have home businesses that are going to be able to compete with yours. Because the internet is open to everyone all over the world, you are going to find that it often comes down to people choosing the business that markets themselves the best.
Make Your Mark
So, how can you make your mark on the world and be sure that you are noticed? First of all, you have to have something that no one else does. Chances are good that other people have your same idea, unless you have come up with something that no one has ever heard of before. So, this means that there has to be something about your business that is unique, whether it is in your web site, the way that you do business, or the product that you are offering. You have to be sure that you can easily say that you have something no one else can offer, and that when you say this, you can actually mean it. If you can do this, you are going to be on the right track.
Market Market Market
Another thing that you have to be sure to do is to market yourself. No matter what you are doing, there is a place somewhere that is going to be able to market you. You have to rely on yourself and do your own research, and figure out where you can best market yourself. If you are just starting out, a good thing to do would be to search online for your product or service, and see what comes up. See what your competition is, and then figure out what they are doing to market themselves. Then, see where you can get your name out there and how you can make yourself known in the world where you want to be.
Another thing that you have to do is to get creative about how you market yourself. This could even be the thing that sets you apart from all the rest. If you can be sure that you really know what you are doing, you might be able to find your way to the top of something, and you might be able to be more of a success than you ever thought it would be possible for you to be. Get out there and market yourself, in the best way possible, and see if you can bring yourself to the forefront.
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November 12, 2007 – 3:59 am
If you are thinking about borrowing a huge amount of money from friends and relatives to start your own home business, you might want to put that thought aside and find other ways of starting your business without burying yourself in a pile of debts. Just because you do not have a lot of money for capital doesn’t mean you cannot engage in a home business. There are many ways of starting your own home business even with just a few dollars.
Offering Services
One of the best ways to do away with the huge start up capital is to start a business that will only require your talents and your time as capital. For instance, if have some special skills and trainings on dealing with children with learning disabilities, you can set up a tutorial service. There are many people all over the country that are offering home tutorial services for kids with learning problems and they are earning good money. On the hand, if you have some bookkeeping skills and you have some experience in this area, you might want to offer your service to the small business around your neighborhood. You will be surprised at how many people really need your services.
Use your present resources
Using your present resources as capital for your business can help you save a lot of money. For instance, if you have a big house with a lawn, you can turn your house into a child minding center or a day care center. There are a lot of parents out there who need a safe place where they can leave their kids while they go to work or do some shopping. A day care center is not really hard to promote in the neighborhood. Once the people in your community learn that you are offering this type of service, they will start coming to your doorstep.
Working Online
There are many online businesses that do not require you to put any capital at all. For instance, if you are a good writer, you can offer your services online. The good thing about working as an online freelance writer is that you can work anywhere you are. As long as you have a computer with internet connection, it doesn’t matter if you are working inside the mall, the coffee shop or by the beach for that matter. On the hand, if you have no writing skills, you can always join one of those online affiliate marketing programs and earn commissions from the sales generated from your site. Most online affiliate marketing programs do not require you to put capital to get started. The good thing about these online affiliate programs is that they give out big commissions. If your site generates a lot of traffic, you will most likely earn a handsome income out of these affiliate marketing programs.
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November 1, 2007 – 8:42 am
Starting, running, and turning a profit out of a home business does not have to be the tall task that most people make it out to be. While it certainly isn’t easy, it doesn’t have to be overly difficult either. With a little bit of forethought and planning, even the hardest, most complex of things can become relatively simple.
There are three golden laws in running a home business. If followed, these laws will help you create a dynamic home business, one that allows you make a decent living. If ignored, these laws will ensure that your home business does not rise above average operating results.
First, plan all the way to the end. You must have a concrete vision for the business. Where will it be five, ten, twenty years from now? What sort of scale will it have? What will it be doing differently, and what things will remain the same? Try to envision all the obstacles that may come up and prepare plans to meet them. To be sure, you will be unable to foresee all the crises that will occur. But mentally, you must be prepared for them as they come. Circumstances should not catch you completely off-guard; you should have a measure of preparation against ever-changing situations.
Second, work hard – and make your people work hard as well. With your home business, everything will start with you. You must work to become the greatest, most capable individual that you can become. Spare no expense in your education, within reason, as long as such education is helping you prepare for the future. Then, be sure that you work as hard as you can, learning all the ins and outs of the trade of which you are in. A good work ethic is important to success, and you should not neglect it. A corollary to this is that you should hire people who are just as hard-working as you are. Be sure to set targets for both yourself and others, and measure what gets done. Give reward liberally to those who achieve.
Third, utilize the power of personal networks. There is an old adage that says “It is not what you know, but whom you know.” While we may rebel against what this truism may imply, the fact remains that worldly success depends on a high degree to the number and quality of people who are kindly disposed towards you. Your personal network, as well as the networks of the people who work for you, should be utilized to their full potential, in terms of advertising and sales efforts. Treat those in your personal network well, provide the necessary services, and they in turn may promote your business to those in their networks.
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October 19, 2007 – 10:12 am
Here is a quick and easy way to find some potentially valuable long tail keywords using your Google Analytics data.
- Simply log into your Google Analytics account and click on view report under ‘Traffic Sources Overview’
- On the bottom right hand side click view full report under ‘Keywords’
- Under ‘Traffic Sources’ select search engines and then select Google
- I then like to select ’show 500 rows’
- Start from the top of the list and copy the term and paste it into Google (leave out any keywords which you know have high competition as we want to focus on low competition only)
- Check where you are ranked in Google
- If you are ranked in the top 10 then move on to the next keyword. If it’s a very high traffic keyword you may want to try and get into the top 3 but before you attempt that take a look at the competition. If the top ranked pages are PR5 or above and are well optimized for that particular keyword then it could be a challenge to out rank them.
- If you are getting 5+ hits a month from a particular keyword and you are on the second page or lower then remember that only 2% of people will browse to the second page of results. So 5 hits a month might not sound like much but by getting on to the first page in Google that number could increase quite dramatically.
- Make a list of the keywords which have potential and the page on your site which is showing up in Google’s results. Try to concentrate on the most targeted keywords which are closely related to your site as traffic from these keywords are more likely to convert into sales. You will be surprised at some of the random keywords you end up getting traffic for over time.
- The next step is to check your pages which are ranking and see if there are is any way of improving on site optimization. In other words is your page well optimized for the keyword it is ranking for or could it be improved? Just be careful not to hurt one keywords rankings for the sake of another’s. Sometimes it is best to create a new page fully optimized around the new keyword rather than trying to change a page which is already optimized for a different keyword. These are the things I concentrate on when it comes to optimizing a page for specific keywords.
- The most important place for keywords is in the title tag of your page. Wordpress, Joomla & Article Dashboard all automatically place the title of an article or post into the title tags of the page so it is crucial to make sure you put your keyword(s) in the title of your posts and articles. The more keywords in the title the less importance each one will have so don’t put too many.
- There is debate now over whether keyword density is important but a general rule I follow is to have the keyword twice in the first and last paragraph and once in paragraphs between but I wouldn’t get too hung up on this.
- You should also bold your keyword, again some say bold it throughout the page others say only once, I simply bold it once.
- Adding an image and putting the keyword in the alt tag will also help with rankings.
- Adding meta tags to the page are worthwhile doing, especially a meta description as this is what Google will show in it’s results most of the time, if you leave it empty Google will simply take a section of text from somewhere on your page which includes the keywords searched for.
- Although on page optimization is important off page optimization is by far the most important factor when trying to improve rankings. A poorly optimized page with lots of back links will always outrank a well optimized page with few back links and you see this all the time. So don’t spend too much time trying to tweak your pages to improve rankings when that time would be better spent getting back links.
- So there you have an effective way to find long tail keywords which you know are generating traffic and to improve your ranking for those keywords which in turn should further increase traffic. If your site is new or you haven’t added a lot of content to it then the best thing to do is install a blog or try my PIPS 2.0 site and start adding keyword optimized content. You can use Wordtrackers free tool found here to find some keyword ideas to get you started.
- Oh! And the best thing about this method, it is absolutely free!
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October 9, 2007 – 4:11 pm
Not everyone can put up a successful home business. Beginners usually find themselves at a loss especially in the first few months of operations. More often than not, when the going gets tough an entrepreneur would opt to forget about the whole thing and give up the home business. If you are one of those people who are having trouble getting started and are about to give, hold on a little longer. Things could change for the better if you give it a little more time. Never give up on something until such time when you feel that you have exhausted all your options and still things are not looking better. To help you get through the worst parts of setting up your home business, here are some tips for you.
Conducting Evaluation
When things go wrong, as they most likely will during the first few months of your business operations, take time to evaluate the past events that led to your present predicament. It is always worthwhile to retrace your steps and learn what happened along the way. In most cases, the past events could help you analyze the many aspects of your business and could help you see your business in another perspective.
Conducting an evaluation is the best way to determine what went wrong in your business. Once you know what went wrong, you will be in a better position to find solutions to your problems. When evaluating the causes of your problems, make sure that you look into all the aspects of the situation. Go to the roots of the problems. For instance, if you product fails to sell, you must not just assume that your product is no good. It is possible that you product is good but you did not advertise it enough, the packaging is bad and the price is unreasonable. Take a look at all the possible angles why your product did not sell as you expected.
Studying options
Once you know what caused your business problems, you must now try to find solutions. Make a list of all your available options and rank them according to viability. Choose the best option and implement it accordingly. If the first option does not work, then go on to option two. You can use as many options as you like until you finally find the right one. However, you should also know when to stop. Note that there are cases which are simply too far gone for you to do anything. When you are confronted with situations are beyond help, it is best to simply walk away and let things be. There is really no point of beating a dead horse.
Ask for help
When you feel that there are things which are out of your league, do not hesitate to ask for help. Do not pretend that you know anything and that you can everything on your own. Always remember that somebody out there may have some good ideas that you could borrow.
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October 5, 2007 – 6:21 pm
A lot of home businesses fail because they lack the necessary financial system to track down the flow of their money. More often than not, home based business owners are not really very keen at keeping their books of accounts, thinking that as long as money keeps coming in, they will be alright. Unfortunately, things are not really that simply when you are engaged in business. If you want to stay in business for a long time, you will need to keep track of your financial flow for your own use and for taxation purposes. Note that if you do not keep track of your income, sooner or later the IRS will be unto you and you will get into big trouble.
Setting up your own simplified bookkeeping system is not really very complicated. If you like to keep your records in your computer, you might want to buy accounting software or just simply use whatever programs that will allow you to make a spreadsheet in your computer to record your daily transactions. However, you have some money to spare for an accounting program, it would be better to have one.
There is a number of easy to use accounting software being sold in the market today. The good thing about these accounting programs is that you do not need to worry about balancing your books of accounts. You simply input all your data in one page and the program will run on its own. Most accounting programs will automatically perform the different accounting process and will immediately update your statements of accounts.
Retrieving data from an accounting program is also easy. All you need to do is to go to it archives and select which ones you want to see. For instance, if you want to know how much your net income is for the month, you simply pull-out the income statement page and you will see your income instantly. Another advantage of using a computer accounting program is that you get rid of all the papers and ledgers in your workplace.
Now, in case you are not comfortable using your computer to balance your books, then you just have to you things the old-fashioned way. What if you do not know anything about accounting processes? Never mind if you are not good in accounting and balancing statements of accounts, just keep a simplified records of your transactions. A three column worksheet will do nicely. You can easily find this type of worksheet in the bookstore. When dividing your worksheet, you can have one column for all the money you received in connection with the business, another column for all the money that you spend for your business and the third column will be for your running balance.
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September 30, 2007 – 4:40 pm
When you talk with people who have had experience with home base businesses you will typically get two types of answers. Some will say working from home is the best thing that every happened to them while others will say that they would rather go out to work every day. Having a home base business is really up to each individuals own preference. There are some that work better at a traditional job while others work better with the freedom of a home base business.
If you have young kids you may prefer to work from home since you can then spend a lot of time around your kids and have a part in their upbringing. Other people may prefer to go to work at a traditional job to have some free time away from the kids and family. These individuals may be overwhelmed if they are at home all day with kids running around the house, which can also cause distractions while trying to work at home.
Another benefit of working from home is the fact that you don’t have to report to a boss, you can be your own boss. This allows you to set up a schedule that works for you and your family. You don’t have to commute long hours every morning to get to work which not only saves time, but also money. You don’t have to deal with the weather and you have more free time to spend doing the activities you want to do. You will find you have more hours in the day and aren’t spending your time rushing to get things done before the end of the day.
However, there are some disadvantages you should consider with home base businesses before deciding if it is something you want to start. If you find you are easily distracted while working then a home base business may not be right for you since there are many distractions such as kids and household events. It is best to either have a home base job that only requires work at night or one that doesn’t require your full attention.
If you aren’t easily motivated then a home base business can also be difficult to do. With no deadlines and boss to report to it can be very easy to put off working until it is too late. You can’t expect to make a profit from your home based business by slacking off, so you need to make sure you have the right mindset to focus on your work and complete it.
If you are going to have a home based business it is best to make sure you have an individual office set aside where you can work in quiet and that family understands not to disturb you while you work. Although if you prefer human interactions while you work then it can be difficult to get used to doing a home base business at first since you will often be working on your own with no one else around the entire day.
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September 15, 2007 – 5:06 pm
Anyone who starts a home based business has high hopes for success. Many feel that with just a few simple ads the business will boom and take off into a major business. However, many find that customers are actually few and far between when it comes to a home based business. With the following tips you can help to market your home based business and turn it into a success.
While family and friends can be helpful when it comes to a home based business you should also look to expand your network. To do this consider the places where you can find good customer. Some ideas include local civic associations, regional trade shows, professional conferences and chamber of commerce meetings. If you have an online business then you may want to consider checking message boards to help build your online mailing list.
Whenever you find someone and the situation calls for it, talk to them. Everyone has the potential of being a customer if you just talk to them. The possibilities are endless and it gives you something to do instead of just waiting around for a bus or airplane. Just striking up a conversation can bring you in a lot of additional business.
Even if you don’t have an online business, one of the best advertising methods is online. Whether you are selling a local product or not, online is a way to get in contact with millions of potential customers from the comfort and convenience of your home computer.
When discussing you business it may be a good idea to leave out the fact that you have a home based business. Although a great many companies are starting up home based aspects of their companies many people still view these businesses as unprofessional. Rather focus on the product or service you are selling since this is what is important and this is what the customer wants.
Depending on the service you are offering consider doing a few local demonstrations. This can help increase the publicity for your business. Or you can offer to do a local service featuring your talents for free such as decorating a local restaurant. This way you can increase your popularity and possibly gain further sales later.
For the top marketing techniques consider attending meetings that focus on your business industry and talking with people about their successes and problems. This can help you learn what to do and what to avoid for your business. Another option is to read any trade publications for your business industry. Getting into the industry allows you to find someone that you can go to with a specific question or problem that you may encounter with your business. Just always remember to follow up with the individual and thank them for their help so they know you appreciate it.
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August 30, 2007 – 4:36 pm
Even though I am only up to posting day 20 the actual 30 day challenge wraps up today as it is the end of the month, I have other projects online so haven’t been able to keep up as well as I hoped. Unfortunately I don’t think I will be in the hall of fame for making my $10 in 30 days using the techniques taught by Ed however I have learned a great deal and do have faith that this stuff works.
There have been a lot of people who have made their $10 in the 30 days and congratulations to them. I know it sounds pretty obvious but finding the right niche is absolutely crucial.
Reasons for me failing are mainly lack of time and the fact I have picked a niche which has no affiliate products. I am going to build a community type site and have my own info product created.
Last Friday Ed declared that if anyone made their $10 by the end of the weekend they would go into a competition to be flown to Australia to meet Ed and the team. On hearing this I thought I would go back to the beginning and start again and see what I could come up with.
About the same time Ed also declared that someone in the 30DC made $7,000 and in fact will have made closer to $20,000. It turned out they were an affiliate for a real estate company or some sort of luxury good. I did a bit of research and found a new niche to promote and put up some pages on one of the recommended content platforms did some social bookmarking however didn’t, and still haven’t, been indexed.
So today I tried a different platform with some new content and some more bookmarking so will see how that one goes.
Going back to the guy who has made close to $20,000 I do have a slight gripe to make with Ed and some people will think I am just being envious which I can assure you I am not. I am extremely happy for the person who has obviously worked hard and deserves the success they are receiving.
My gripe is the fact that Ed is claiming that this person has achieved this result solely from using the techniques taught in the 30DC. Well this is actually incorrect and the person even confirmed this in a post in the 30DC forum. I just want to point out that this is my understanding from what I have heard and read and may not be entirely accurate.
Firstly this person was promoting his own site which at one stage was on the first page of Google I believe about 2 years ago. So as the site is an aged site and already ranked before the 30DC then surely that alone rules it out.
Secondly the phrases he was targeting were far more competitive than what is recommended, I think he said 1 million competing pages which using the 30DC techniques alone with a new site would be virtually impossible to compete with.
Thirdly as he had his own site and domain he had already spent money and the whole idea is not to spend any money at all.
So I have to say I was a little surprised that Ed and Dan counted this as being part of the 30DC. After all the 30DC is aimed at newbies showing them a way to make money without having to spend any and starting from scratch. Using this guy as an example of what can be achieved by following the 30DC in my opinion is a little off. I can understand Ed being excited at teaching this guy a few techniques which were obviously what was needed to give his site the boost that it needed and I also think this is great however there were clearly other factors which influenced his success.
So my point is I think it is unfair to use this case as evidence to tell newbies that by following the 30DC you have the potential to make $7,000+ and I really hope Ed doesn’t keep referring back to this particular case as it just doesn’t sit right with me. I don’t know if anyone else feels this way and it would be great to hear your comments.
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August 28, 2007 – 9:39 am
Robert from the 30DC team created a nice little video about how to use Google alerts www.google.com/alerts. Once again this is quite a well known technique for keeping up to date with new content indexed in Google related to whichever niche you are interested in. By setting up rules/filters in your email system you can also keep all of this data organized.
Robert does however add an interesting little tip about using a unique phrase in any new content you produce that no one else is using and then entering that phrase into Google alerts so that you can monitor when your content is showing up in Googles search results.
Robert also released a sort of link building in a nutshell video which outlined the basics of getting back links to improve search engine rankings. Link building is a rather simple process, the more links you have pointing to your site, the more Google believes you are an authority on a particular subject therefore the higher you will rank.
However there are a few key things you need to know in order to be able to build back links effectively
- Some links hold more value than others
- One way links are better than reciprocal links
- Links from sites with related content are better than non related
- The higher the PR or authority of a site linking to you the better
- Links from .edu and .gov sites are more valuable than standard domains such as .com and .net
- Linking should be natural, in other words if you get too many links too quickly Google will sandbox your site. The sandbox is where a site is placed if it is suspected of using strategies to manipulate Google’s search results.
- Do not exchange links with sites which are not indexed by Google or have PR0 and only exchange links with sites which are related in some way to your own.
There are hundreds of different ways of getting back links to your site, however the best way is simply to create quality content. This will encourage other sites to link to yours without you having to do any further work yourself. Links will be one way and most likely from related sites.
Submitting articles is another excellent long term strategy, you can submit your site to search engines, directories, RSS directories, comment on other blogs or web 2.0 type sites such as Squidoo and HubPages the list goes on.
It’s definitely no secret that back links are the most important thing for getting your sites ranked well in the search engines and unfortunately can be the most time consuming task. Master the art of link building and you will have great success making money online.
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August 28, 2007 – 7:55 am
Throughout the whole thirty day challenge Ed has been mentioning his “special sauce” which was going to virtually guarantee top placements in Google if we had chosen our niche phrases as instructed. Unfortunately the special sauce should now be called the secret sauce as Ed has decided not to reveal it in the 30 day challenge.
I must admit I was pretty disappointed at this news as I know social bookmarking alone isn’t usually enough to maintain top spots in Google and I was looking forward to learning a new way to get back links (I assume the special sauce had something to do with getting good quality, one way back links).
However, I totally understand Ed’s reasoning for the sudden withdrawal of the technique due to the potential abuse from spammers who were also partly responsible for the Tumblr episode. I believe the only way to learn this technique is to join Ed’s membership sites called Immediate Edge.
I know it sounds like a big scam just to get people to sign up for Ed’s membership site to make him more money but if you have been following along with the 30 day challenge you will have made up your own mind about Ed and whether or not you think he is genuine or not.
Personally I think Ed is an exceptionally genuine guy and deserves any extra revenue that comes his way as a result of the 30DC, the amount of time and effort he has put into it and the quantity and quality of information he has provided for no charge whatsoever is absolutely brilliant.
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August 23, 2007 – 12:26 pm
I seem to have finally shaken the bizarre flu/bug thing that I have had for the last week and over the last couple of days I have been re evaluating my thirty day challenge project, lets just say I am taking a bit of a short cut. The whole idea of the 30 Day challenge is not to spend a cent testing whether or not a niche has high earning potential by using free blogging and CMS platforms and selling affiliate products.
One of my niches in particular has no affiliate products which normally would be a concern as you would suspect there is no earning potential. I am going to take a bit of a gamble and get an ebook created on the topic anyway as I am confident there will be plenty of interest. I really like this particular niche because it is quite a good umbrella phrase, in other words there are plenty of phrases within it that have high traffic and low competition.
I am also already outsourcing my content creation as I find writing articles is far to time consuming. I found a ghostwriter on www.elance.com who I am going to try out for a while and see how that works out. It’s hard to find good quality writers which don’t charge too much and remember quality is essential, you are far better off paying extra for better quality content.
I have also purchased a domain from www.namecheap.com which I am going to start adding my articles too using a free content management system called Joomla! I built a few sites a while back using Joomla! and wasn’t really all that impressed, compared to Wordpress it has far more features but it seemed very rigid. What I mean by that is it didn’t seem all that easy to customize which is why I love Wordpress.
However, the reason I did choose to go for Joomla! rather than Wordpress is because it is getting a lot of praise at the moment and was even touted as being loved by Google. It is also great for creating community sites which is my main aim. I want to build a loyal base of regular visitors who are passionate about the niche and contribute their own content. This over time will hopefully create a self providing environment with little input from myself. Using Web 2.0 technology this shouldn’t be too difficult to achieve.
So even though I am now officially out of the thirty day challenge as I have spent money on various things I will still document my progress here and perhaps even beyond the 30DC. At the beginning of the challenge I was determined to win however the far more important thing for me is to create my own info product and generate residual passive income.
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August 20, 2007 – 9:15 am
Nothing particularly surprising today from Ed and he basically went over what I thought he would as mentioned in my day 15 post. I have decided I am going to use a combination of EzineArticles and Squidoo to test my niche phrases from now on, so here is how I came to my decision.
EzineArticles are the premiere article directory on the internet and Google absolutely loves them. You probably noticed in the niche research phase that articles from EzineArticles quite often rank in the top ten and all content submitted is human reviewed to ensure good quality. This means that not only will any articles we submit have a good chance of ranking well but any back links we place beneath our article (called the resource box) will be very valuable in terms of helping other pages we own rank well.
The other thing I like about EzineArticles is the fact that all we need to do is write an article, submit it, social bookmark it and then forget it. If we decide to create our own info product for that particular niche and we end up with our own domain and web site, we can do back and edit the article adding a link to the resource box which will give our brand new site a big boost in Google’s eyes.
There was a bit of a Squidoo craze there for a while as people were building lenses (simply their name for a page) which were ranking extremely well even in considerably competitive markets up until recently that is. Not all that long ago Google penalized Squidoo due to a group of spammers who were using Squidoo in an unethical manner to rank well in Google and as the content was rubbish and Google is all about quality (or at least try to be) Google had to step in and take action.
The effect this had on Squidoo is debatable, some people reported a substantial loss in traffic, some reported no loss in traffic but at the end of the day Squidoo lenses still do rank well, perhaps not as well as they used to but in my opinion well enough. It is important to note that Squidoo have made a lot of effort since then to prevent spammers from doing this again so they could possibly regain their former status, who knows.
Squidoo vs HubPages - I have used both platforms and in my personal experience have had far better results with Squidoo. However in saying that others have reported they have ranked very well using HubPages. In my niche research I can’t say I have ever come across a HubPage in the top search results which doesn’t give me a lot of faith, Squidoo lenses on the other hand frequently appear on the first page of search results.
HubPages have been rather flexible in the content they allow however I think lately they are making a move to reduce spam also so could result in the whole Tumblr scenario all over again. On the other hand Squidoo does actually encourage affiliate marketing as long as it is done properly. In other words if you supply some decent, unique content and enough of it then sure you can provide links to affiliate products and/or services. If you provide duplicate, worthless, spammy content then your account will get deleted before you know it.
So thats my reasoning for my choice, I think a combination between EzineArticles and Squidoo is going to be an extremely powerful combination. In regards to the comments made in this post I am not proclaiming to be an expert in any way, shape or form I am simply going on my own personal experience. I am sure some people will use HubPages instead of Squidoo for the 30 day challenge and have great success, some may even use both.
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August 19, 2007 – 6:24 pm
I know a lot of people are wondering is it over now that Tumblr is out of the game, and why Tumblr, why can’t I use Blogger, Squidoo, HubPages or Wordpress? Well first of all no, it is definitely not all over and secondly yes you can use any of the many web 2.0 blogging or content management systems that are available.
Some of you may also be wondering why we can’t host our own web sites as that way you don’t have to worry about someone deleting your account. There is one very crucial factor as to why everyones sites ranked so well so quickly and why in my opinion using these web 2.0 sites rather than hosting your own sites is far more beneficial in the short term and that is due to trust factor. Web 2.0 sites such as Tumblr tick all the boxes when it comes to what search engines like, especially Google, and the fact they have been around for a long time makes them extremely useful, so Google trusts whatever content is produced on these sites.
Compare that to buying your own domain and your own hosting and it simply comes down to the fact that Google knows nothing at all about your domain. Most importantly as Ed pointed out in one of his videos, new sites are far more likely to contain software generated content (spam) as opposed to content on well established sites. For this reason, as well as a few others, are why web 2.0 sites rank extremely well, not just Tumblr, but most web 2.0 type sites. I hope that explains the reasoning behind Tumblr, it was merely a preferred web 2.0 site, mainly because of it’s simplicity due to the number of newbies in the 30 day challenge.
Interestingly enough it is now very easy to find out how much competition you have for your niche phrases from other 30 day challengers by seeing how many other Tumblr blogs are appearing in the Google results for your phrases. One of the niche phrases I was considering I discovered today was also the phrase of choice for at least ten other 30DC’ers. So if you are up against a lot of other competition you may want to consider going after another phrase, especially if you are a newbie.
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