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Henry David Thoreau

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Your own business.

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Hey, my first gig on FIVERR.com … never used it before!

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#1:Goals@PCB

1. Phase II-Assess content-103pgs;links/images;T2/3. (Assessment almost finished)
2. Phase III-backlinks+ezinearticles+directories.
3. Aim: 200 vpd. 1/2 way in Sept?
4. 10592pg/98 uv in Sept.

#2:TCG = 35pgs+33 vpd.

To add real content pages on the keywords that bring traffic. Esp. basic facts. Increase to about 60 pages before deciding.

#3:Goals@SST = 65pgs+45 vpd (now 10/10)

To add 30 more pages to bring content upto about 100 pages. Then let settle for a while.

Phase II: clarify and reorganise major content; work on backlinks and directories (not permanent?)

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A screenshot from Google, showing the Moon Festival Image! Nice one, Google! And Happy Moon Festival!

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Site #1: PCB

Traffic is growing now, in some ways dramatically. In crude stats terms:

Pages: we have now 101 pages of content on the site vs. about 75 pages in May. So content has accelerated. We’re now taking a break from content, but for a good reason.

Traffic is now approaching about 9~10K pageviews a month. In fairness, Analytics reports numbers much lower than this, but they also show month-on-month growth. And Analytics is quite restrictive in how it counts visitors.

Also, I added Adsense in May and that generated a minimal amount. This month looks like it means that the website paid for its hosting this month, the first to do so.

The challenge very much is to increase backlinks: through more Ezine Articles, some of which are doing well; directory submissions, I’ve already had some help; and tidying up the content/structure/images. There’s quite a lot to do even though I’m not adding any content.

My frustrations revolve around the Dreamhost Server which has been acting up all month. I’m still not sure what caused the dramatic jumps in server activity, but I’ve split up some sites, blocked a lot of Chinese spiders on several sites, and am now looking at what went wrong.

It seems that with using my server as a kind of hotimage linking for some of my other sites, and an adserver that it may be too much for the server to handle along with thousands of requests from Sogou, Baidu, etc.

Site #2: SST and Site #3: TCG

Site #2 is now back on. I’ve started adding a page a week to this site, more later on what’s going on with it. Site #3 is also up, though at the moment, I’m just lightly repurposing and redirecting content from my blogs to this site. Still, it bodes well.

Both of the other sites are showing similar levels of traffic to PCB in the early days, though I’m not sure how big any of them will be. So I’m focusing on just adding one page a week until I have a better time arrangement in the new year!

It may be that in 2011, both InvestorBlogger and Obblogatory Blogs will cease new posts, I’m undecided about this at the moment, but I’m increasingly skeptical that blogging content is hanging around longer than a few weeks.

Anyway, more soon, I hope.

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So, if you click a link or post and end up there, don’t be worried! Just finish the story and come on back! Or stay there if you wish!

It’s not well designed yet, but we’re working to bring it upto speed, and get a semi-decent site functioning for 2011.

Kenneth

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Thought you’d like to see this. We rented some deckchairs and enjoyed the sun in the later part of the afternoon! It was quite sybaritic, just sitting there in the sun, enjoying an ice cream cone with family and friends!…more.

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In short, when people know you’re travelling … it’s an open invitation to trouble while you’re away. So we are trying to exercise a little caution about this by not publicising our trip any more.

Lack of ‘freshness’ or ‘it just happened’ Twitter like updates are a small price to pay for this … but I’d rather come back to a house that’s intact to one that’s been sold on Craigslist or Robbed by those using geolocation tools on Facebook (Facebook Places!).

So there!

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I’ve just announced some new goals: "Phase II- improve content/structure and Increase links – very slow! Phase III – build out the site to [b]100 pages and 200 visitors per day[/b]! The new goals! At 65 pages, I’m 2/3rds done. +1 more + 1 rewrite."

So where are we?

Well, after finishing the initial build-out of the site, traffic blossomed to 80 visitors a day or so. But with no revenue, there is still some way to go.

On entering Phase II, I revised and revamped much of the Tier 2 content, including the most frequently visited pages to include additional elements. I’m hoping that visitors will stay a little longer, search for more articles, read related stuff, and eventually click away with my Most Wanted Response.

There are still many pages to be revised (at least 30), and occasionally I found one or two pages that doesn’t have Analytics code, meaning that I’ve not been tracking my visitors properly! There are also 3 pages that need extensive re-writing, too.

So I’m choosing my priorities: finish the rewrites – 3 to go, redesign the top pages – I think I got most of them, find more inbound/outbound links – slow!, get included in a couple of decent directories, and get the content to 80 pages. I’m finding now that some of my Tier 2 pages may need to be redone, giving me extra material that I can move to Tier 3.

Also, with the extra rewriting, I may be able to start my EzineArticle marketing campaign which would bring extra traffic, PR, and visitors. Revenue efforts have started with several programs including Adsense, CommissionJunction and PopShops. But results are very mixed. Only Adsense is generating something. Early days so I’m not worried. I will only have two ad boxes for the time being…

With no subscribers to my newsletter, I’m placing this in a Phase III goal. Phase III isn’t clearly thoughout yet. But it could be a couple of months before I get there.

I also have a second site that is still on the drawing board. I tried to buy another site and repurpose the content as a kickstart, but the price was a little ‘expensive’ for what there was. I will just spider the site and rewrite the content myself in my own voice! So much to do. Not enough time.

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First, and foremost: think like a buyer.

If you are buying a site, what would you want to know? What would you need to know if the site you are looking at is for sale? Of course: content (what content do you have?), traffic (how much? what kind?), links (where? how many?), monetization included (if any? how much? what kind?), what else is INCLUDED in the sale. What is excluded, if anything.

Examples, make sure that the site you are selling has the rights to transfer photographs, esp. royalty free photos may not be transferable (it depends).

Also, if you are using specific accounts with the sale, such as a merchant’s account, advertising account (adwords), etc.

Second, is it a viable niche?

I do think sellers need to go a little further than just these basics, to make a successful sale you need to show that you have a viable niche. Why? Because you want to make the case that your site has a lot of interest in its niche, if you are to be able to sell the domain.

share with us, your potential buyers, exactly what value your site has to your audience, or an audience, at any rate. It’s easy for us to check out the niche values (remember your brainstormit tools, …) to determine whether a niche is winnable or not (AG day #2).

Third, answer your email/contacts.

So many threads feature the same problem: contacts that are never answered; emails that go missing. People frustrated because they want to contact you but can’t reach you.

Using email: set up a filter (in Google) to stop email going to the wrong place. Use a keyword from your original ad to help your filter work properly.

Using contact forms: check the forms database to make sure your replies are all received. I think that not all contacts made via SBI contact forms get through for whatever reason. So check your DB.

Fourth, site valuation

No, it’s not a science. Unfortunately. But nor is it a mystical art either. It may not be objectively possible to value what your site is worth. Be aware that, when you sell your site, buyers may have price points in mind, such as multiples of monthly earnings, traffic levels, amount of content, domain name valuation, etc..

You should really try to explain to your possible purchasers why you think your site is not just worth the asking price, but actually represents a good deal for them: suggestions – you could say you’ve developed a target mailing list, you’ve got a great domain name, you’ve got a unique E-Book, great list of keywords in the BrainstormIt Tool, … .whatever.
Also, there is no theoretical maximum to the price a site is worth. BUT there is an actual minimum price: the value of a site subscription * (x months)/12 where x = the number of full months to site renewal date. This minimum price is also affected by the pricing of the full subscriptions (typically $299 pa).

Don’t make your buyer work TOO hard!

Remember the harder you make your buyer work to buy the site, the less likely you will be able to sell the site because they may find it not worth it or too difficult to pursue. Worse, by the time you do get in touch with them to answer their question, they’ve already purchased another site.
Over the past few months, I’ve participated on the "Have you heard forums…" and regretted not purchasing TWO sites in particular during that time because I didn’t understand what I was looking at or was too late to see the posts… these sales can go F-A-S-T.

But more often I’ve noted sites that were being sold here that didn’t include basic information, or didn’t follow guidelines, or were blatantly copied, or were blank sites (on two occasions), or that didn’t include decent contact information, or were selling SBI accounts (and weren’t permitted to)… or didn’t answer questions quickly (or at all)…

On some occasions, I’ve tried to help by asking pertinent questions from the OP to explain what they thought they were selling, etc, this being a discussion forum and all that… Unfortunately, when I ask or point out these flaws one by one, I seem to get called out on asking them. Whatever. In at least one or two cases, where I’ve seen a wonderful site for sale, I’ve actually written to ask the person to reconsider selling what was a great money making and fulfilling site.

I hope this post helps people to sell their sites more effectively, that buyers will get better disclosure upfront, and that people won’t have to repeatedly ask for the basics.

Caveat emptor, Caveat venditor.

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The Basics

It took quite a while to digest the material from the SiteBuildIt program from the purchase date, and that’s not a surprise, really. I didn’t start building the site until I was comfortable with the initial steps of the program, and had completed my basic keyword research.

The Action Guide in SBI is crucial to the whole learning process, and you can read much of it yourself, though it may not always make much sense if you don’t have access to the tools mentioned! But it’s a thorough treatment of the basics of business building, and one that many new members skim through as they race to Chapter 6.

It’s in the first few chapters that I wrestled with the choice of my site concept:  blogging, coffee, or Taiwan. In reality, I could have chosen all three of them, and (if I have time) I may well pursue the others, the numbers all turned out to be really good.

So in the first three months, I decided that my concept had legs, and was in some demand using the numbers provided by the BrainstormIt Tool. Then I worked on the keywords choice, and came up with a basic siteplan that really helped propel me to answer the question: Can I make money with the concept?

Can I make money with the concept?

Actually, the question is really a lot different from the typical  yes or no questions you might expect. Even lower keyword demands may be profitable if you have the right skill set, and so it was actually not such an obvious to answer.

But I did identify several methods by which I might generate some revenue: Display Ads, Affiliate programs, and Display Links, of which I anticipated that I might make more money from Display Ads at first, but that Affiliate products may be better and more profitable long term.

False Starts

So I went ahead, all eager and registered my first domain; started work on the Look & Feel of the site, and wrote my first articles. Unfortunately, I discovered that I had registered a name with hyphens that had an active unhyphenated variant on the same subject.

It took a while to come to the painful decision to start over, but I’m 100% glad that I did. I did lose a little traffic, and some money but I felt that removing the sword of Damocles was the responsible thing to do.

In January, I refounded the site, diverted all traffic from the original domain, and redid the entire site. It also coincided with some technical problems at SBI that needed fixing, but within about four days, I redid the entire site, and it started building from there. I only had about 25 pages at that point, most of which was policies and boring stuff, totally not related to the subject I chose.

Where now?

It takes a while to build content that is worth reading, but the biggest and most important tactic is finding the keywords for articles that you need to write. You need to find keywords that have sufficient demand and limited supply for you to have any chance at having realistic traffic levels.

I actually spent quite a while trawling sites with traffic issues, and was confident enough with my choices to realize that it was perhaps the MOST important choice you could make.

Choosing a word with sufficient demand and limited supply really is matching a product in demand with a market! But it’s amazing how often website owners fall down on this basic step by selecting keywords that had outsize competition, and limited traffic. In other words, the owners are going to have an invisible placement because there’s just too much choice in the market place.

Commercial Intent?

The second issue is one that I also failed to grasp properly for my first few websites: commercial intent. In other words, my good buddy Steve who’s developing his business niche very nicely now wrote:

"Commercial Intent – Are people buying in that niche (check Big G’s keyword tool to see if people are spending on Adwords). Search your keywords and read the Adwords and see how others are monetising the niche." – personal email.

But having some tools to assess commercial intent really REALLY helps a lot! I found my education sites really weren’t what people were spending money on, at least with the keywords I chose. I guess checking people’s wallets to see what they really do vs. what they say they do is paramount!

Knowing that people are looking for things to BUY really made a lot of sense, instead of chasing customers with things to sell that they didn’t particularly need, had no interest in, or didn’t trust you enough to buy through you.

10% of $1 is not much: 1% of a million is a lot!

The third issue that I’m now facing is choice of market: I opted to choose a market with a lot more demand, but in doing so, I may have chosen a much smaller pie to get a share of than I could otherwise have chosen.

However, I have resolved to build out the site as much as I can, co-opt the more lucrative keywords and try to take a chunk out of the larger market. I’m not sure that I will be successful, but I have already set myself several long term goals with the site:

I would like to get 7500~10000 page views a month at the end of phase IV. I hope that I will have about 10c per unique visitor meaning that I should earn about US$350~500 potentially. At that point, I guess I may have a site with about 200 pages or so of detailed, relevant coffee related materials.

So where are we now? I mean, NOW!

Phase I: the goal was to create 51 pages including 35 pages of content, get to about 20 uniques per day, and have a good set of keywords with potential.

In fact, I reached that goal around March 22nd, though I have yet to tidy up a few articles properly. Traffic has been building well, so far.

Phase II: this phase is just an interim phase. But I figure it’s pretty important to the site’s overall success: I want to improve the content of my existing pages ( I don’t necessarily mean rewriting the content, though it’s possible). I want to:

• Improve the meta information, esp. the choice of secondary keywords, and change the meta description to something much more engaging. I’ve already changed four pages, and partly changed a fifth.
• Improve the on-page features to create a page where readers will linger a little longer to watch a video; look at pictures; read a related article or search for an additional article to read. The pages on the top of my sidebar already meet most of those criteria.
• Build out the backlinks to the site by carefully selecting directories, websites, blogs, article directories, and other relevant locations so that I can get some decent in-pointing links. I will also expand some outpointing links to other sites, but I’m very picky about those.
• Beginning Monetization: I’ve already selected three or four candidates for monetizing the site, including Adsense,  Infolinks, and Popshops which I will experiment with. The most crucial in the short term is demonstrating that it is POSSIBLE to make money with the niche I have chosen. To that end, I’ve added Adsense to about 10 pages that are the most visited T2/T3 pages or that are linked from the sidebar.

Even in Phase II, I’ll be adding some new content occasionally but it will be some time before I complete Phase II properly … I still have over 40 pages that need revised, and I only have a little time each day to do the entire project, so it’s going to take some time!

Phase III, IV, and further…

Once in Phase III, I’ll be expanding the content to over 100 pages, and I hope to have that completed by the anniversary of the site on December 21st, 2010. I’ll also be expanding C2 options, soliciting more aggressively for submissions, and so on. I’m hoping that by that point, I’ll be earning $50.00 per month for at least the second month, but I’m not confident about monetizing the site properly yet.

Phase III is much clearer than Phase IV at the moment, so I’m going to worry about Phase IV only when I’m nearing completion of Phase III! This site on SBI is the most ambitious project I have ever undertaken, but with good competition out there, I feel I could really achieve something superb, rewarding, and remunerative in the long run.

Wish me luck.

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The owners then assume that the product is faulty, and redesign or reorganize the whole business, striving to create the final edition. Guess what? When starting out, often good enough is good enough because in managing any business/website, just making a real start is enough to start the ball rolling.

So if you are stuck in your business plans, perhaps you need to take a concrete action to building a REAL business before you spend too much time tinkering on your products or services. Once you’re up and rolling, you’ll get far more feedback and input than you’ll ever be able to manage!

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Ok. This one of the hundred or so photographs I tried today. I didn’t use any editing on the image (yet) but I thought you would like to see what I’ve been doing.

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So I installed a couple of plugins there, including one called db cache and my site loads so much faster now. I matched it with a regular caching plugin, like SuperCache or HyperCache and the server just rockets along. Why?

The DB Cache plugin simply caches requests to the database, and the Caching programs just serve those cached files. Occasionally, the server experiences a slight hiccup, but even then I noted that server queries dropped from over 350 sometimes to a manageable 20~50 queries.

I thought you should try it out. It seems to be compatible with other caching programs like supercache, hypercache etc. and when both db cache and caching plugins are used together, the server really runs fast. And I haven’t found any incompatibilities with other plugins, yet.

I tried this solution matched with a different page caching plugin on different sites, and results are approximately similar: Obblogatory loads about 90% fewer queries, InvestorBlogger often loads just 10~20 queries each time. My school site occasionally loads in excess of 135 queries so there’s still some work to do there.

What I do notice even with sites loading so many queries is that the sites still load much faster than ever. I know though that queries can be cut down even more: by adding fixed urls in the header and footer, but that’s quite a bit of work to get rid of them. And subsequent page loads are significantly faster still, as much of the stuff needed is already cached in your browser cache!

But for the sites on Dreamhost, I also added a Database Virtual Server and Dreamhost upped my original Virtual Server Memory by 100%. So overall, any of my sites hosted on Dreamhost are loading much faster anyway. The database caching plugin keeps things chugging along!

For those bent on optimizing every last ounce out of their server, it might be worth doing! Getting a Dreamhost PS Server is worth it for me! It insulates me from flaky software running other people’s sites, it doesn’t cost the earth, and I have unlimited storage space and bandwidth… it’s an amazing deal, for about $31.00 per month all told. With a VPS system, I might actually get to use it, too!

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This is my first successful picture on my new light tent. I thought you’d like to see the ‘fruits’ (or is that beans?) of my success. I had to crop a lot of the original picture out but I think in taking these pictures I discovered that I have too much shadow in the foreground. Something I need to work on.

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Needing Photographs

In the effort of building my own product site (click to see the post about that), I realized that I needed very specific photographs for my site, far more so than I had anticipated.

I had originally thought that I would be able to get by using photos purchased from Istockphoto.com but I didn’t realize that the photos were merely depictions of generic items.

For many of my upcoming review and profile pages, I needed specific products that had been photographed: eg, Columbian Coffee Beans or Instant Coffee Powder or whatever.

It’s okay to use some of the generic pictures available, but if you want to be specific, you just can’t use generic photographs of products: there’s no way you can be sure what is being photographed.

I’m not sure of the legality of using pictures taken from places like Amazon either. Even though I’d be using the pictures to promote Amazon products, I wouldn’t be using them in EXACTLY the way they intended.

While I could use product manufacturer’s pictures without too much of a problem, I guess that part of the problem is that I can’t photograph or portray exactly what I wanted.

So enter the Light Tent

I know it’s not exactly impressive, but I thought I needed to take a first step rather than just sit twisting in the wind! So I did.

The exact instructions are here. I followed them as best I could. But I had to make up the part about the lamps I need. I ended up using 2 x 15W white light CF bulbs in each of the smaller lamps, and a 23W white CF bulb in the top light. There’s also a lot of ambient light from the room lights.

The other part where I had to improvise was the camera: I just used what I had, my Lumix LMC-DX30 which could do small and reasonably close up shots of products. I’m not exactly sure how I will be able to take photos of beans yet. That may require some artistry on my part, esp. if I can’t get a decent close-up.

First sample photographs

When you start taking photographs, it is merely testing the waters: take a look. Any feedback would be appreciated!

This picture isn’t well cropped, but that’s because I cropped it too closely. I know that. What do you think about the sharpness? The color? The background?

I’m making it up as I go along. I do believe the next few shots will be better but the background seems troublingly gray. I’m not sure why yet. The background is why, so perhaps there’s an overcast of shadow on the back.

Having fun!

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If you have any serious doubts about your first domain name choice, you should DEFINITELY move earlier. I’m moving about 20 pages and it’s a real hassle. But can you imagine moving 200 pages or more?

Ok here are the tips…

1. Allow plenty of time to reset the pages, since you have to do it all manually. It’s quicker than the original setup, but will still present the occasional problem.
2. Use as few blocks as possible will speed things up no end.
3. Always make sure you have backed up all your data, including a backup of your site (as last seen on the old URL), YOUR MKL, mail, etc. as the entire domain is wiped. COMPLETELY.
4. Using the backup of your first site will help you speedily recreate the entire site.
5. If you want to redirect your old domain, then you will need an extra NameParkIt purchased so that the old domain can be pointed there.
6. If you are within the first month of your original domain setup, traffic from Google will be negligible so disruption won’t really be a problem.
7. Don’t forget to tell Google Via Webmasters Tools that your domain is now changed.
8. Don’t forget to check the links when you’re done. Sometimes links may still be pointing to the old domain.
9. If possible, do page 301 redirects (I may explore that option).

Overall, the nameparkit ($10) and domain change cost ($50) are pretty reasonable considering what needs to be done. And you get a new domain for the primary ($10 saved) and 25 new keyword searches.

Of course, if you lost any unused keyword searches, that’s pretty sad.

In the end, I figured it was all worth it as I’ll be able to snag a hyphenated and unhyphenated domain and point them to my site.

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Today’s post looks at whether your site is mobile ready, and how to do it. The mobile web is beginning the growth phase and could be even bigger a phenomenon than the current web, as the number of mobile units out in the market, many of which are mobile internet ready, is huge!

The results are pretty good, too, if you take a look.

Of course, this is fortuitous because it means I can figure out if people are actually seeing the sign in our target area and visiting our site from the URL or not. But the risk is if you are on the street, and you want to check the details before you call, and your site isn’t mobile you’ll likely discourage the visitors because of what they might see.

What do they see when they get there? Well, before they would have seen a busy site in mini-view with lots of places to click, and not suited to the mobile experience at all. But I installed one plugin called WordPress Mobile which …

WordPress Mobile Edition

A mobile/phone/PDA friendly interface for your blog with progressive enhancement for advanced mobile browsers.

This is a combination theme and browser checker that delivers a mobile view if one of the user agents matches the list of mobile browsers. With so many mobiles out there, the list of browsers is quite diverse, but the user experience is great.

Once you install the WordPress Mobile Edition, and activate it, it’s pretty smooth. You can test your site at Ready.Mobi to see if it is compatible.

The stats are meaningless without taking a screenshot of the site in mobile view, but that’s a little tricky! Any suggestions how to get a pc to view a mobi.site? Are you a mobi developer? Do you have a mobile site? Do you have a regular site and are you getting it ready for the mobile world?

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Would you like to own this ‘thing of beauty’? Isn’t it amazing? Wonder what the gasoline bill is?

After all, how you get about town is as important as getting about town! Right?

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For many companies and individuals worldwide, 2009 was a difficult year. I am surprised that even now my online income has only decreased a little in 2009 vs. 2008. Most of the income came as the result of advertising to my small network of blogs, some from my broker, a little from personal interest.

The grand total for adding up my extra income (not salary) was in fact, $5,386.51. Like always, this is the gross figure, not including expenses, and taxes. My only disappointment is that at this time, I am just not in a position to earn enough on a monthly basis to justify setting up a company or paying myself a decent salary.

I’m slowly getting to my target of $1500 per month, but without additional income streams, it’s difficult to get the most out of my existing streams.

Plans for 2010.

So, in 2010, I’m building a couple of new sites with SBI, to enhance my income stream. It’s my first real experiment with affiliate marketing despite dipping my toes twice this year already with EeeBlogger and TESOLTeachers, neither of which did much business other than pay for their own domains.

I’ve done some rough figures and for my first SBI site, I think it should be able to pay for itself in about 12-18 months because I’m going into a more saturated market, even though my keywords have less competition. One of the reasons, I suspect, is that the payouts are a little less, so profits are likely to be less.

However, if I can even reach levels seen on this site or my other main site, that’d be a blessing! Why? I love creating content, but creating static quality content is a whole new field for me. I think, for the time being, I will ease up on the regular blogging to concentrate on creating real niche sites. 2010 should be really interesting!

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Nowadays, I use…

Google Docs – for straightforward document creation and sharing. I especially like the spreadsheets options, and the fact I can share stuff easily. I use the standard version AND the hosted version with a domain or two of mine.

USB Key or Flash Drives – I use a lot of apps for the USB key, courtesy of PortableApps. There is stuff for most needs there, including Productivity, Internet, Media, and more. Most of the stuff is open source, and even after so many years, there is no sign that Microsoft has created any portable applications at all. Why would they?

EverNote – I’ve experimented a great deal with EverNote, and I really like the features for note creation, and sharing. I also managed to install the software (from inside the main App) on a keyring and use it without any problems. I think the transfer portions even for the paid version are awfully scrooge like, esp. in these days of 10mb of images (and that’s small).

WordPress – I created a couple of private blogs to host the development of my new sites (the Coffee One and another one to come soon). I find it combined with LiveWriter a great way to write notes, posts, stubs, notes, store research, upload photos I want to use, etc.. If anything, I am finding it much more useful overall than EverNote as it makes everything easily accessible.

To create a private blog, simply install one of the Member plugins that restricts access, turn off the publicity, close the registrations, and voila! One secure, private area.

Flickr – Although I don’t post ALL my photos on Flickr, I find it really easy to share the stuff I want, and to post it to my blog or wherever. It’s not free for unlimited usage. But at $24.95pa, it’s a real steal.

Skydrive – I have 25GB of space from MS courtesy of the LiveSpaces Program. I’ve tried to use it but I find the whole idea of uploading a bunch of stuff from a browser pretty clunky, esp. since I’d like to use it for serious cloud storage (not backup!). But the system isn’t fully mature as copying and pasting files or folders doesn’t really work.

So, I am now using DropBox to help with this. It pretty much works as SkyDrive should. The free space is smaller, but you can upgrade to 100GB of space.

Having your own hosting is also part and parcel of this Cloud computing era, and I run a number of sites that reflect my differing interests. No need to brag here about them all, but it definitely helps with the FTP applications, hosting on your personal domains, and much more.;

Lastly, I spend a lot of time listening to Internet Radio in different formats, esp. I like the Radio?Sure software and XMplayer, both of which work as USB apps or can be installed regularly! (In fact, if you use these a lot, simply copy them to your desktop, run them – all faves saved – and delete them when done.

And, I’ll let you into a secret: I’m beginning to like NOT having to install apps and reboot XP (yes, it still happens) each time I want to use them. I can just copy the folder, and it works! It’s a little slower than running an installed app, but it’s a huge timesaver if you’re testing software.

Now, if I could only figure out how to make money in the cloud… then I could travel the world! Anyone?

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Frederick the Great (1712-1786).

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Why is it different? Well, it’s different because it’s my first site to focus on the SBI site building ideas, so it’s going to be a fully featured site with approx. 100 pages about Coffee Beans and making Great Coffee.

I haven’t set traffic or financial targets because it’s too early to really see what will happen.

The whole SBI process has been quite an opener in terms of the required keyword research and detailed article writing. I’ve also taken the unusual step of buying a lot of photographs and touching them up for the site. I’m hoping to mix my own photos in with the commercial ones.

There’s really not much else to say about the site, but I am working hard on refining the Look and feel of the site by adding lots more images to the site. I’ve still to revise two more articles, then I’ll be adding upto 35 more articles over the coming weeks to finalize stage one.

Traffic levels are still low, as I redesign and rewrite the site… but I’m hoping that traffic reaches 300 unique visitors within about three months. Do check it out and let me know what you think of the site!

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This is our new banner which we have hung up on the local wall near our school to attract attention. It’s quite colorful. I wish I could say that I designed it all, but I nearly did. With a little help from Microsoft, Istockphotos, and myself, we managed to come up with a design that was fairly attractive.

Of course, I hadn’t realized that Publisher wouldn’t create larger publications, so we had to go the vector graphics route to get the scale! But it turned out quite nicely. The most expensive part of the whole process turned out to be hiring the truck to help put it up as you’ll see in the next photo.

Don’t underestimate the benefits of offline advertising. While we spend similar amounts of money doing online advertising, we find that even where we are in one of the more wired countries on earth, traditional advertising methods do seem to get you noticed faster.

Kenneth

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Could this be the one I buy?

I’ve rated the means in two ways.

By Income over the year

• <$ = less than ten dollars
• $ = ten to fifty dollars
• $$ = fifty to two hundred dollars
• $$$ = two hundred ~ five hundred dollars
• $$$$ = five hundred dollars ~ one thousand.
• >$$$$ = more than a thousand dollars in 2009

and also by effectiveness. In other words,

1. was I paid promptly (one star);
2. is it regular income (one star);
3. easy to implement/maintain (one star);
4. prospects for future income (one star);
5. and no hassle factor (one star).

These are aggregate numbers and I make no apologies if I get them wrong! But I’ve done quite well in the past six months and in the first six months. I will likely post an income report for the 2H in a few weeks once the final figures are in.

There is no particular order to these sources of income, rather I posted them as I thought of them. It’s worth noting that things vary:

1. Izea and Payperpost Properties

Payperpost was initially a very good way to earn money online but in the past year just became a waste of space. Socialspark never had any potential for me at all. I barely made payout, then quit because it was so hard to find opps. For me, the death knell of Izea was the increased use of regional segmentation which ruled me out, not because of my audience (largely US) but because I was based in Asia. The final convulsion was their ‘experimental’ changes at the beginning of 2009. I was very thankful though because I met some great bloggers, discovered some good opportunities and learned how to blog. For that, plus earning nearly $2000 with PPP, I will always be thankful.

2. Entrecard, Adsense,

Entrecard, both as a means to attract traffic and earn money, wobbled seriously several times in 2009, such that many bloggers left the system, and removed the widget. I was sorry because it did bring me some good traffic, but it just became too troublesome with the rules changing every week, as well as the feature set.

Adsense also produced relatively little, as I removed the ad boxes from almost all of my sites. I was being smart-priced by the Adsense system, which I thought was unfair. In my opinion, it’s best to cut losers early, and go with the winners, so I started using my private ad sales to generate income.

3. Amazon vs. Clickbank

Amazon worked much better than Clickbank, though commissions were quite low. I never did break into the 6% range. But I’m increasingly interested in Amazon as a possible source of income, because of its leverage and familiarity to users. On the other hand, the niches I picked for Clickbank just did not work. I ended up being my only purchaser! Even Amazon did better than CB on the niche site I started.

4. The Big Winners

The big winners for me in 2009 have been Text-Link-Ads on several sites in my network, Intellilinks on several sites, PayU2blog on one site, and my own private ad sales on several sites. Each of these has chalked up quite a bit of cash, even though IntelliLinks came on the scene quite late.

And 2010, well, who knows? Literally, I expect the big winners will start off 2010 strongly, but I’m already planning for the next phase as I move away from blogging to running standalone sites. I’m using SBI (as some of you may already know), because of its keyword research tools.

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In Consumerism Commentary for December 24, 2009.

How will a pulp result?

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What’s the risk?

But interest rates are now beginning to creep up slowly in various parts of the world. Central banks are fighting a very difficult balancing act right now: between deflationary recession and inflationary demand, because the usual tools to fight inflation have been relaxed so much. The risk is: if the double-dip is avoided, that rates will rise dramatically from current levels back to historical averages at least to stem the inflationary commodity price spikes.

Get Ready for Higher Rates

For first time buyers, this will mean: increased payments in their mortgage payments. I am enjoying the benefits of the extra 10-20% reduction in my own payments, but am quite sanguine that early next year we’ll see some upward increments in the rates. First time buyers will need to prepare themselves for the return to higher mortgage rates at some point in the next 12 months. What can a first time buyer do?

Fixed Rate Mortgage

Consider locking in rates with a fixed-rate mortgage loan. Why? Simply because the fixed rate mortage will keep payments at the same level for the life of the mortgage. With both mortgage rates and inflation likely to rise in the longer term, the payments will become relatively cheaper over time.

The additional benefit is that, if you know you are going to live in the same house for a long time, you will probably see a rise in nominal house value and cheaper relative mortage payments (because inflation will mean higher pay rises and costs).

And rates right now, albeit higher than Adjustable Rate Mortgages, are quite attractive. One site is featuring rates from 4.75% for 30 years and 4.25% for 15 year fixed rate mortgages (of course, a number of assumptions are made including your credit scores, profession, locality, etc.) so you may find rates more expensive than these numbers.

Increase Your Down Payment

First, figure out how much of the downpayment they can afford to make for their house purchase. The more the better your initial rate will be, and the less you will have to pay in additional rates when rises do come. I wouldn’t recommend any 100% mortages EVER, because of the increased risk that you might face. Try to pay out an initial 10% or even 20% of your house price on purchase, and don’t be tempted to fold additional niceties into the loan amount.

If you have been saving for a few years during the heat of the boom years, you will by now have saved a reasonably large amount. If you haven’t, don’t worry. There is still plenty of time to save money as these lowered prices are going to be with us for some time, at least until the recovery is well underway (in 2011?). So get started saving.

Make Regular Additional Payments

Making regular additional payments against your principal will, depending on your type of agreement and the TOS, mean that your interest payments will go down longer term. It also means that the term to repayment will shorten, and should help save a bundle of cash over the longer term. It’s like being given a surprise payment as the returns on each lump sum payment are pretty attractive. And certainly much more attractive than sticking the money in the bank at 1% pa.

Buy Desirable Property

Overall, I’d be looking to be desirable property, if I were living in the US and househunting. Why? Because it’s all too easy in a down market to only look at the sticker price, but to protect your house value, you will need a keen eye to see the potential purchase in terms of its market position today, and tomorrow. So don’t go looking in the bargain basement section of the real estate market. Those items are usually priced like that FOR A REASON.

Avoid Home Equity Loans

Once you buy your property, avoid taking out additional home equity loans on the house, especially if your initial downpayment was low. It will add to your overall payments each month and rates are much higher than regular mortgages. If you must renovate some or all of your house, try to do it from sources of funds (savings) that don’t put your own equity in the house at risk.

Disclaimer: InvestorBlogger is a homeowner, but doesn’t claim any professional knowledge as such of property markets or lending. Do your own research before you make any decisions.This post is sponsored.

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I logged into one of my blogs today to see that WordPress 2.9 is already out! I’ve updated a couple of my sites already, and I’m noticing several improvements, including a slightly snappier speed on some actions.

But the biggest news is the addition of a trash bin so when you go to delete your posts, they’re archived in the trash should you wish to recover them at some point. This is a very handy feature as I’m sure most bloggers recall having to scour feeds, Google and a bunch of other places looking for posts that were accidentally deleted. (see image for details under Trash).

There are a number of other usability improvements, too. So check in your blog to get the new release. of course, it will break some things, so you may want to hold off updating until 2.9.1. I jumped in early with some of my blogs, and will phase it in across my network of blogs as this month progresses!

Brief Notes: On December 18th, 2009, WordPress Version 2.9, named for Carmen McRae, was released to the public. For more information on this enhancement and bug-fix release, read the Development Blog and see the Changelog for 2.9.

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I have worked hard and have done pretty well in my site I believe, traffic is building to around 150 visitors per day. … But I am currently deeply involved in a book writing project for (way off my wedding site subject). It will take most of my time and thoughts, and I honestly don’t have the motivation or focus for wedding writing at this point. If my site was earning me a good living, I may reconsider, though it would still need updating often.

I am not sure how far off I am from truly monetizing. Sometimes I think I need to just add a few things to potentially earn more. I’ve had some earnings with Adsense, but nothing high enough for my bank account to see. I’m not sure how much extra work is involved to truly see income come in, but right now all I’m doing is paying out — with the added time and effort of my other important project I’m doing.

Any advice out there? Any thoughts on who or how to sell my site to, if I do and how to figure in the price of it?

Thanks, D.

Ok. Now time for my reply.

Just one question: what happens when the book is done? Will you regret selling your site or not?

I took a quick look at your site (sorry no URL!), and I’m seriously impressed by the design, the organization and time you took to create the site. And with your traffic levels, it should be relatively easy to add a few products (think: Amazon, Clickbank books, Advertising links, …) to pay for your site, at least.

Since you have such traffic levels in your niche, it seems best to pause the content creation, look at increasing income (should be achievable!) and let the site run on auto-pilot for a while. I would make a lot of suggestions about creating money streams for your site:

• sell e-books (yours or others)
• sell advertising (not just Adsense – a lousy pittance, imho)
• sell affiliate products like shoes, dresses, etc. for the bride and groom… just a couple of affiliate companies will be a good place to start.

In fact, it’s perfect: it will take a couple of weeks or a month to know what sells and what doesn’t. So every month, just check the stats; tweak, add or drop the stuff you need to. And forget about it, till next month.

If after 3 months, you still haven’t sold any additional items, then reconsider (but I’m guessing you’ll find it enough to warrant simple tweaking).

It would, IMHO, be a real shame to come so far with your site, and fall at the final hurdle… just because something else comes up that needs your attention.

Many SBI-ers report the same problem: and run their site on auto-pilot for 3-6 months without any serious impact. In fact, it improved their search engine rankings just having the extra time.

So I would suggest: reconsider before someone else makes an offer, and you find yourself without all your hard work, and a few dollars in the bank only.

Kenneth

My additional thoughts: too often, we start something with a lot of gusto, but just as we are nearing the finishing line, we fall down in the middle of the track. And we get up, our pride injured and walk off the track (or are carried off to save our ego). But in building a website like this, there is no finishing line order. Picking yourself up, and completing this race will simply mean that you have achieved something considerable. So, go ahead … monetize the site. See what you can do on that front. Then let it rest.

What would you do in this situation?

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This tip is one I found out by accident myself. Try it the next time you want to book a hotel or discount holiday or similar…

This is what Wikipedia says: “Google Wave is designed as a new Internet communications platform. It is written in Java using OpenJDK and its web interface uses the Google Web Toolkit. Google Wave works like previous messaging systems such as email and Usenet, but instead of sending a message along with its entire thread of previous messages, or requiring all responses to be stored in each user’s inbox for context, message documents (referred to as waves) that contain complete threads of multimedia messages (blips) are perpetually stored on a central server. Waves are shared with collaborators who can be added to or removed from the wave at any point during a wave’s existence.” Wikipedia.

I’ve been trying it out for a couple of weeks, and and am still feeling my way around the system. However, if you are interested in trying it out, you need an invitation since the system is still in ‘private beta’.

Good news: I have about 15 to give away. All you have to do is just sign up for my feed via email. And I’ll speed the invite on its way to you.

Waving you a happy day!

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Our Carnivals in 2010 will be published whenever there are 20 submissions that have been approved.

All submissions must be in accordance with the guidelines for our policy. To submit you will need to complete the following page: All sections must be filled out properly.

 

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Over the years I’ve had my fair share of web site purchases. Some were good, and some were bad. Search any website forum or auction site and you are sure to find a handful of web sites that wet your appetite. Buying an established web site is a great way to expand your business outside of continually adding more ad campaigns, and can continue to generate revenue over a long period of time. Before you place that bid and jump into buying an established website, you should ask yourself a few questions. Just because it looks like a good deal, it might not be right for you.

While most of the rest of the discussion on the website is fairly mundane, I did think of a few comments that I would like to share with you about somethings that seem to be overlooked. So here goes:

If someone claims that "I cannot offer income statements, nor any guarantees of income", the only way that you can make sense of the value of the site is by assuming that the site makes no income, all.

Now, the siteowner may protest this, but then the siteowner would have to make clear what revenue the site actually generated, in doing so. A siteowner can’t simultaneously or reasonably claim a site has income but refuse to reveal how much. (Well, s/he can… but… it makes no difference).

The only way as a potential purchaser is to assume that, in the absence of any information to the contrary (assertions do not count), the site generates no revenue at all.

Then ask yourself: is the site actually worth the $3,900 it is being sold for.

Check the stats; check the google Index; check the traffic; check … and then assess for yourself, is the site worth what is being asked, in terms of what is being sold or included in the site.

Then ask yourself: do you have the knowledge or skill or relationships to build the site into a viable business that can generate reliable income?

Once you’ve done all that, then it’s time to set a price. Of course, … you may decide the site is only worth $390 or $39,000… but realize that what you are buying is the potential for you to build upon the current work.

BTW, don’t forget to check the site’s keywords in BrainstormIt, especially the primary ones on the main page. You’ll get a good idea about the actual viability of the niche. One thing I’ve noted in the sites on sale is that often the keyword selection is weak… so do your research! For those of you with SBI membership, you can login to the fuller discussion here.

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I’m working on this post over the next few hours, but I’m publishing it now so you can stop in and see how the article’s going.

It’s tough: Tough Questions

For the first time since I started running my websites, I’ve actually been much more focused on finding and examining keywords with the BrainstormIt Tools that SBI provides: this helps tremendously in selecting a niche that has potential for you, eliminating some of the failures that are inherent by pursuing niches that are overly popular or seriously underperforming.

The tools also provide help with selecting ways to narrow down, and expand your niche by building out the keywords properly. So for my niche, I’ve now got a potentially good niche with several hundred related keywords.

The toughest questions were the ones that took the longest to solve, and ones which were awfully similar to those posed by a writing course I took years ago, that asked me to examine my experience, talents and interests to determine where I could start. That was the hardest part, and despite my blogging interests I decided not to follow that niche at this time due to overwhelming demand.

The BluePrint

SBI makes a huge fuss about choosing your site concept keywords and then building out what they call a blueprint, based on choosing essential keywords and using the higher demand keywords with lower existing values to drive traffic. So it took me nearly three attempts to come up with a set of blueprints that are halfway reasonable. Of course, I still wonder if I’m biting off more than I can reasonably chew.

Why do I like SBI?

1. It’s slow, it’s methodical and thorough.. There is also an overabundance of materials that make initial problems by overwhelming those who (like me) tend not to put enough time into the program. But, once you gain familiarity  with the materials, you should just follow their simple Action Guide. Take a look at how SBI recommends putting the site together. The videos are pretty good, though many references are made to tools and results only available within the program.

2. It should make the daily grind of producing content less of a drain. In fact, that’s the one reason I hate blogging because of the pressure to write SOMETHING, ANYTHING, just words. There are a lot of other issues with blogging that I hadn’t realized until I read some of Ken Evoy’s words. He actually quotes Google: "Blogs usually have high Bounce Rates no matter what since normal visitor behavior is to read the newest post and then leave."

Why do I not like SBI?

Because you can’t just start writing, it takes time to work through the program, and so quick results are almost impossible. In fact, quick results are positively discouraged in favour of the tortoise approach.

Overall, I think Steve summed it up best in saying: "So structured and methodical (looks like a lot of tough content writing – I guess you are going for a big authority site with this though)." And that’s an approach that will need me to focus much more on developing both a writing style and meaningful content … that’s going to mean ‘research’.

So, it’s a hard slog; but as a result, I’m not able to post as much on InvestorBlogger (my apologies) though I will drop back on a weekly basis to update you on my challenge, including statistics… and whatever else I have time for. So if you want to stay uptodate with posts on InvestorBlogger, the best way is to subscribe to our site however you like, and you’ll get fresh content as and when it becomes available (even by email!)

Disclaimer: I’ve been using SBI for about three months on and off, am an active affiliate for their program, and highly recommend it if you are interested in developing a self-sustainable business.

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So today I complained to Google. If I don’t see an improvement in ads, I will just simply block all Adsense Ads when I’m browsing. I’ll be using a simple blocking program to do that on Firefox called AdBlock plus. I don’t support ad blocking in general, but when I find the ads distasteful and inappropriate… Google leaves me little other choice. I did try to reset the cookie preferences but it made almost no difference. I’m still seeing the ads.

Google, isn’t it time you set an ad optout form on each ad so users can click which ads they NEVER want to see again?

Some samples:

  and

and the worst offender, in my opinion….

This really annoys me … does it bother you? As someone who is over weight, it’s not helpful to get these kind of images reminding me of the fact! Nor is it helpful to have that candybar wrapper on my desk from last night… (thanks, Rittersport!).

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In his gloomiest prediction yet, Marc Faber sees big financial bust leading to war – Business Intelligence

Speaking at a conference in Singapore on Wednesday, Faber said:

"The crisis has not solved anything. On the contrary there is less transparency today than there was before. The government’s balance sheet is expanding, and the abuses that have led to the one cause of the crisis have continued".

"I think eventually there will be a big bust and then the whole credit expansion will come to an end," Faber added.

"Before that happens, governments will continue printing money which in time will lead to a very high inflation rate, and the economy will not respond to stimulus".

In one of his Gloomiest predictions, Faber, referred to as Dr Doom, said "the average family will be hurt by that, and then in order to distract the attention of the people, the governments will go to war".

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blogging is fun, you enjoy every minute of it. But there are some aspects you would really like to avoid, and yet they are a vital part of your strategy, like submitting to social bookmarking sites. Let’s face it without exposure there is no audience. how to get a post listed on 25 sites in just a few minutes . You could use a service like OnlyWire to help get it done quicker.

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It’s called Spacky and it provides search results and volumes for the top 3 search engines: one word, one site… three sets of results to compare. Add this one to your arsenal.

To use the site enter your keyword, and the captcha phrase. Then hit query, and you’re done. The answers are provided in a jiffy.

Free keyword research tool – Overture, Google, MSN keyword estimator

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How to Tap Into Your Customer’s Inner Desires for Fun and Big Profits

When Did This Become About You?
The evolutionary biologists and psychologists are right about one thing – humans have a tendency to put themselves first. That makes sense – for example, you can’t save someone else from drowning until you’ve saved yourself first. Those scientists would argue that this is simply a survival mechanism, a way to help propagate the species.However, what started out as a survival mechanism has spilled over into every part of our lives. Americans in particular are known to put their individual needs ahead of the group’s needs. Perhaps you’ve seen this selfish behavior taken to sickening levels – face it, we all have the friend who only talks about herself and never asks anyone what’s going on in their life….moreadwritingtips

Let me know how it turns out for you.

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I received a lot of criticism for the investment opportunity I put forward, but I still stand behind it. In fact, I think it was actually a very generous opportunity. But I’m fine with how things turned out, as now I can now reap all the rewards (if any) myself.

There is a lot of risk though – I’ve never developed a game before, so this is a completely new venture for me. Together with Movie-Vault, this will have been $20,000 that I’ve invested into my projects during the past 6-8 weeks, which is the most I’ve ever invested at once before.

I still have a mortgage to pay, so this really is quite a risk for me. But few people get anywhere by always playing it safe.

My response: So we really begin to see what is going on.

First, Tyler needed the cash. It’s likely he didn’t have all the cash up front to invest, so he decided to tap these loans. Unfortunately, taking out a loan to fund an investment isn’t usually a good idea if the investment has no assets, no income and no known market. Risk for the lender is high, so a conventional loan would have had a punitively high interest rate, if one had been available at all.

So to raise the capital, he then tried to create a deal where the risk was on the shoulders of the lender, rather than the recipient of the loan. Which he then framed as an ‘investment’. The problem with calling it an investment is that he has capped the upside and offers a deal where the lender can lose upto 100% of the initial investment.

In other words, if the site does well, he buys out the lender; if the site does poorly, the lender could lose his share of the cash (if the site is pulled totally) or could be paid back very slowly indeed (increasing risk because of technological development and game fatigue). But other variations are also possible: what if the site needs more money (many investments do become money pits); suppose he brings a co-owner to shoulder the costs and development, what happens to the upside; what happens if the site is never finished because he encounters intractable developers or serious development issues; what happens if the game becomes outdated so fast that no-one wants to play it;… and so on.

I’ve already gone over the rest of the details in the other post, why I think any ‘investor’ would have to work hard to get due diligence done. The real issue is that while he’s never developed a game before, he clearly also has never had a business partner before either. I wonder what he would say if I offered him a similar deal for one of my projects. But that’s what concerns me the most: he never admits that the deal is a problem for the other investor, never actually discusses the alternatives to this approach, only pushes forward his confidence in his deal and his abilities.

Yes, it’s a risk. Of course, it is. That he’s putting up the money himself will highlight the concerns of the other potential investors. The odd thing is that he revealed so much of the project, yet didn’t reveal the most important details at all, avoided the hard questions in the discussion, refused to refute many of the points raised, and then went about claiming "I think it was actually a very generous opportunity". Well, it was: it was very generous to himself, …

The facts that the people he talked to would also have shared these concerns and that he is now funding the site himself both highlight how ill-conceived the financing arrangements were in the beginning. I only hope the development for the site itself shows more sophistication than this. Don’t get me wrong, I wish him well in this project, and all of the others he has, though I cannot help but feel that this bravado will prove ill-founded.

Oh, and if Tyler didn’t want someone to critique his investment opportunities, then why on earth would he advertise so openly, leave the comment thread open, and then post again later? He may stand by his ‘deal’, but I stand by my criticisms, too.

The hardest thing he did, to which I give him credit, he is trying to create a new project, he is trying to find his value, he is trying to do something that he is challenging himself to do. That is the huge upside for him, come success or failure. He will walk away with experience that he will be able to use later.

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