Helping Hands are Priceless

So for the past couple weeks I’ve been planning and plotting the future of my “location based domain”, which I spoke about last week.  I hit numerous snags in the road - first with layout and design, then with how to manage the content within pages, posts and categories and most recently, with how to tweak the homepage display to my liking.

The concept for the homepage began as a simple, static page and as days went on it gradually morphed into a fresh, solid idea.

First I wanted to display random posts on the homepage to keep the content fresh.  Then I figured how great would it be if I could make it 1 random post from 4 or 5 specific categories?  But what if I could SET these categories and easily change them whenever I wanted?  What if I set them to display as an excerpt and had a graphical icon to the left of the excerpt link to the posts’ category?  Oh man this was going to be GREAT!

I poked around the WP Codex and other Wordpress Plugin Directories to find just the plugin I was looking for… it didn’t exist.  I found a few similar but nothing that would even come CLOSE to doing what I wanted.  I tried to use existing plugins and manipulate the code to my liking… but with my limited coding skill  without any coding skill I was unable to make even morsels of progress.

At some point in this hopeless search, I stumbled upon a plugin that displayed the Latest Post From Each Category in link form.  I got so frustrated I gave up and e-mailed the plugins creator saying, “I know this is a long shot but here is what I’m trying to accomplish, is it possible?”  He gave me some code snippet that displayed links to several random posts… but not exactly what I was looking for.

Tonight, I found myself talking to him on Instant Messenger, gave him FTP access and he manually changed the code to my specifications.  I would toss out an idea and within what seemed like seconds, the changes were made and they looked amazing!  I’m telling you, this mod is going to be KILLER not only for THIS website but many for more I do in the future.  I plan on giving him a nice little chunk of change, not all up front, but definitely over the course of time as I use this simple masterpiece on several other sites.

There are a lot of rude people in this world.  The type that cut you off while driving, interrupt you while you’re talking and take third helpings of dinner at the barbeque when plenty of people haven’t had their firsts.  Then there’s the type of people who stop to let you into their lane during rush hour, hold the door for you at a restaurant or shoot you a smile or hello that makes your day.  I have to say, lately I’m beginning to think the web world has more of the latter than any other profession.

I have to give props to Matt from Dagon Designs for helping me out with this code.  The guy is a puppateer and the pages are the puppets.  They do what he tells them to - thanks man I owe you big time!

I chat with a handful of people online who have definitely helped me out on a ton of stuff and I hope I’ve somehow helped them in the scheme of things.  I probably haven’t said thank you enough so thanks to Jerxs, Jan, Tyler and dr00t.  It isn’t stressed enough how networking is of great importance - and I hope to further build these relationships over the course of the year.  And they should want to build a relationship with me because I’m headed to the top, baby (hehe)!!!!

But in all seriousness, develop some mutually beneficial relationships.  Fill each other’s gaps.  Build friendships where you’re not afraid to knock on their door and ask for a favor.  I know I’ve certainly asked and accepted for my share of favors… so I’ve to start paying it forward myself.  But if you don’t ask, you can’t receive.

Alright, to get to the top I do have to do some work for myself.  I’ve got TONS of content writing to do over the next 3 days so let’s get started!  Here goes nothing….

Under The Weather

I’ve been sick the past several days and it’s made life all the more difficult.  I’ve fallen behind at “work” work and haven’t been able to get any of “this” work done, either.  Supposedly sleep is the best remedy so I slept all day, only to be awake all throughout the night with a killer headache and swirling stomach… great.

I’m still not feeling great but I’m back at work - with a messed up sense of time, mind you.  Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up my updates and bring you all some good information, but I’m not making any promises!

So sleep didn’t work for me…
What about a hot bath? Don’t have a tub.
Orange Juice?  No tengo.
Chicken Noodle Soup? Ate some Mediterranean Meatball with Pasta Soup… hmmm
Drink Ginger Ale or flat cola? Ginger Aled it up.

I wonder how many old wives tales are true?  And I wonder if the ones that are false were just from stupid wives who quickly became ex-wives because of their stupidity.  Actually, I propose we do a test of Old Wives Tales, placing all the false claims into a new category called Ex-Wives Tales.

Did any of this make sense?  I’m sick… cut me some slack.
Stay classy San Diego!

Slight Theme Update

I was getting tired of this blog’s “plain jane” look and made a few very small adjustments to give it some color and life.  The headings are now bold, links within the content are orangish, the nav bar to the right is colored light green with a dark green trim,  and text in the nav is black.  So if you were wondering, thats the slight difference.

I’ll probably be making a few other slight adjustments  over the next week and I welcome any suggestions.  One thing I haven’t done is used post categories - virtually every post is uncategorized.  It doesn’t really make a difference for the SEO because I’m not using category names anyways.  I’m using post-id/postname.  But, I may recategorize all my old posts and start using the category function purely for navigation purposes.  I was talking to Tyler Cruz a couple days ago and he just did the same.

Also want to add some plugins to increase the user experience, so , again, let me know what you think would make this blog more inviting, entertaining and informative.

Wordpress: Post Timestamp Feature

It seems like half of this blog is dedicated to my complaints concerning my own lack of organization and focus while I spread myself too thin.  With 4 forums and 8 blogs I’ve now restricted myself to “focusing” on, it seems I’ve still bitten off more than I can chew.  Why?  Well because when I start working or writing for a site I start to get into a “groove” and as soon as I do, I force myself to move onto the next site on the “list”, making sure I spread my energy out equally.

While this distributes my work evenly over all of my sites, it drastically lowers my productivity.  It takes time to shift mindsets and bring up all the tools and ideas necessary to start working on a new project.  I also leave behind some unfinished work and ideas that get left in the dust.  Wow, this is annoying.

Enter the Wordpress Timestamp.  I’ve known about this for quite some time now but have never tried to implement it’s use.  Why?  Because I’m stubborn I suppose.  But nonetheless I’ve come around and this little feature is going to increase my productivity exponentially.

The idea is, you can write as many posts and set them to automatically publish at a date and time of your choice by selecting the date and time of the timestamp.  I had been, and will continue to, attempt at making a minimum of one post on each blog per day.  The main reasons I want to do this are:

  1. To give the search engines new information to index on a daily basis, letting them know that my site is active.
  2. To give search engines new content which provides additional keywords and doorways for organic traffic.
  3. To keep my site updated and fresh, giving people who do visit the site a reason to come back frequently - they can bank on the fact that there will likely be new content to check out every day.

Now, whenever I get in a groove I’ll simply keep on writing.  I’ll write as much content and as many articles as my little heart desires.  I’ve made a list in a physical notebook, each blog getting it’s own day.  I’ll list how far in advance my posts go, so for example, today (Sunday, March 25th) I’ve written enough articles to get through Sunday, March 31st with one post per day.  I timestamped accordingly and my notebook shows that I don’t need another post for that category until April 1st.

Now when I go through my list of priorities it will be much different.  I will look at which blogs don’t have any posts coming up, focus on that blog for several hours, and I won’t have to pick that project back up for about another week when the timestamp posts run out.  It will allow me to delve into a single project and focus on it for as long as I need to or want to.

That being said, some posts are time sensitive and you can’t predict that they’ll come up nor do you want to set a timestamp for it to post next week.  It will be old news.  I’m not suggesting timestamping will replace these posts, only that it will lay a solid groundworking to have each blog updated daily while increasing productivity and decreasing the perceived work load.

If you’re not yet using the timestamp feature I urge you to begin.  I already know this will mean great things for my “business” and if you are in fact trying to build a business, you need to take advantage of all the tools you can.  Don’t do what I did, which is put off learning something new to stick with the status quo.  Take some advice, do yourself a favor and start using timestamps.

That means now!

Location Based Websites

This weekend I will be filling in the content of a location based website that I’ve basically finished the Wordpress “skeleton” for.  It is essentially a “city” guide with a business directory and articles about things to do, places to see, places to stay and all that great stuff.

It’ll be a ton of “secretarial” work because much of the task is filling in the meat of the Business Directory which can already be found on other, similar sites.  While other sites do exist, I believe I’ve got an edge with the domain name, look of the site and functionality.  I’m using wordpress.

A few reasons this weekend should be so productive are:

Once the site is ready to be launched, I plan on e-mailing nearly every business featured in the business directory letting them know they have been included on the site.  I will have a standard template e-mail that let’s them know they can increase their exposure on the site through several methods.

They can:

I haven’t decided what the prices will be but, hopefully it will bring in some income for work I’ve already done.  Just copy and paste the stuff they want and I make some extra bucks.  I’ll probably make an “in-depth profile” a one time purchase that will last for a lifetime.  Featured listings will be purchased quarterly or annually.  Site-wide banner advertising will be… well… who the heck knows.

I’m probably getting ahead of myself as these advertisers may want to see traffic statistics.  Traffic numbers at the moment are minimal but I expect that to change drastically when I launch the site, make my sitemap, ping it out and get some backlinks.  I’ll also be advertising via adwords which I will let them know.  The domain name itself… for all 3 location based domains… should perk up some ears and get me in the door to begin with.  I’m quite fond of the names.

One problem I can anticipate is - what if there IS tremendous feedback for this website?  Even if there is mediocre feedback - will I be stuck monitoring each advertisers campaign while staying on top of the dates/times they are supposed to expire?  That’s one reason I’m making the in-depth profile a one-time investment.  I do a minimal amount of work and get paid for adding quality content to the site that will be good for both the user experience and search engine results.  Do it once and I’m done with it.  And, I’ll have made a contact that I can get in touch with for future advertising opportunities.

I’m currently having some trouble finalizing the structure of categories… it would be logical to have sub categories of restaurants… for example… Italian, Chinese, Fast Food, Bar & Grille, Seafood.. whatever.  Not only does this make my job more difficult but it complicates the navigation and how I can keep the website clean while still displaying the pertinent information in a logical layout.

No matter how you look at it I’m extremely excited.  I’m hoping this works out well so I can move onto the next couple of location based sites and perhaps seek out additional location domains for future  use.  More importantly, I’m hoping this will generate some much needed “Quick Cash” with in-depth profiles.

What would you suggest for “pricing” these advertising packages?  I think a $100 fee for a lifetime entry isn’t too shabby.  If I’m able to somehow get 100 businesses to do this, I will make myself $10,000.  And, I could manually enter these in 1 or 2 days.  Piece of cake.  Or maybe I should go the sales trickery route of charging a limited time offer of $99.99.  AND, if you buy it within the next 10 MINUTES you will receive this FREE SET OF KNIVES valued at over $50!  But wait… there’s more!  If you call right now… Haha just kidding okay I’m clearly tired and need to sleep.

Goodnight people.  I can’t wait until it is officially the weekend.  About 16 hours and counting…

Auction Ads Test is a Dud

This week was pretty evident of how Auction Ads performed for me:

I replaced the AuctionAds panel, which was on ChefClub.net, with the current Blockbuster deal that pays out $40 via MaxBounty.  Now, you would think that cooking related items such as pots and pans would fare well on a Cooking Forum… right?  So did I, but that’s why testing is so important.

First of all I don’t think the physical ads were all that appealing.  The pictures were often too small and therefore gave the look of a “cheap” product… not what you want when you’re purchasing cookware.  And, as far as recipes and things of that nature go… that’s why they are on my forum - they want to share this information in a free community.

After checking my Auction Ads stats I went to get a Diet Coke (I’m obsessed).  No ice in the ice box (no automatic maker) so I had to empty and refill the ice trays.  If you didn’t know, it’s a scientific fact that WARM water actually freezes quicker than COLD water.  I don’t know the scientific details but it is a proven fact… never would have thought this… right?  Just like Auction Ads.

Sometimes the things you think will perform the best simply don’t perform at all.  Sometimes you can’t put your finger on the dynamic that is responsible for the lack of results.

So why the Blockbuster offer on a Cooking Forum?  Renting movies is pretty much universal.  The banner is bright and offers a nice contrast to the site that balances the colors and kind puts the eye at ease a bit.  If one person on my forum, who you can assume are mostly adults, happens to see the ad and say hmm, I should test it out… that’s $40 in my pocket.  Right now that same ad space is earning me 0 dollars so I have nothing to lose.  Sure, I could plop in adsense and earn a few bucks but why not test something that will perform even better?

My next step is to place the image ad horizontally across the top of the site and place an adsense link unit or ad unit where the Blockbuster banner ad currently is.

In any case, if you test and things don’t work out - don’t fret.  That’s why it’s a test, you weren’t sure how the results would be.  The best money could be in the least likely place.  It might even be in an empty ice chest.

Never Wake Up Tired Again

I hate waking up in the morning. Usually my alarm clock goes off, I’m absolutely exhausted, I slam it off and try to sleep for 5 more minutes. But, I sleep for 45 more minutes and I’m late to wherever I need to be (usually work). Yet on some days I’ll wake up earlier than normal and feel completely fresh, awake and ready to roll. What gives?

As you probably know, your body goes through sleeping cycles called Rapid Eye Movement (REM). Alright, stop singing “What’s The Frequency Kenneth”… I’m trying to be serious here and you’re going to thank me later! A chart of someone’s sleeping cycles might look like this:

So I was reading Entrepreneur Magazine and came across a gentlemen who invented a product JUST for my problem. It’s a watch you wear to bed called the SleepTracker and it logs a history of your body’s vital signs and sleeping patterns. Based on this information, it knows when your body is in it’s deepest sleep and when you are sleeping lightest.

It’s not hard to figure out the rest. You set your alarm clock for a window of time you need to be awake. Say 7 to 7:30am. Then, based on your previous sleeping patterns, your sleeping history for that night and your body’s current stage of sleep - the SleepTracker will wake you up between 7 and 7:30 when you are estimated to be in your lightest sleeping.

Voila! You’re practically awake and when the watch alarm goes off you feel refreshed and ready to start the day. Now if you don’t think that’s an amazing invention I suggest you give up something comparable… like electricity, cell phones or toilets!

It costs $150 and it’s not exactly going to attract the hunnies, but you know what they say - never underestimate a good night’s sleep. I think I’m going to make the plunge and buy this bad boy in the next couple months.

Until then I’ll continue employing the poor man’s fool proof alarm clock:

  1. Set alarm
  2. Place small cup of water within arms reach of bed
  3. Go to sleep
  4. Alarm goes off
  5. Dump water on head

Sweet Dreams!

Things Shaping Up

While I haven’t experienced a surge in revenue, I believe things are starting to shape up.  I’ve finally got a basket of sites that I’m dedicated to working on and nurturing through development.  They consist of 4 forums, 8 blogs and a handful of other mini-sites that I will be working with on a more intermittent basis.

I’ve also agreed to help a couple of my friends who are DJs.  They were actually featured on a the “local scene” portion of a major news outlet in Washington D.C.  I figured, instead of helping them, let’s make this thing bigger and put together a huge networking site and community for Deejays around the world.  Enter: Turntable Talk.

I’m hoping for big things out of this forum but will need the recipricol help from my deejay friends to make it a full success.  I’ve done a little DJing but I’m no expert… plus most of you probably remember that I’m the jokester who made the spoof Rap about Making Money Online.

The other two forums are a bit further from being “officially released” and I’ll likely let you know what they are when I’m ready to do an all out lauch.  So… stay tuned.
While I have well over 50 domains, it’s comforting to have regained my focus, if at least temporarily.  Now I can show each of these sites the attention they need to grow.  The past 6 months have seen slow growth and several setbacks, but I truly do chalk it up as experience and think I’m headed on the right path now more than ever.

I’ve also come to utilize Wordpress quite well.  I’ve found a theme that I really find tremendous for imitating a live website and I’ve applied it to several of my blogs.  I’m also perfecting the steps to initially launching a Wordpress blog to optimize it for SEO and other features.  My next post will probably be a quick guide on the simple steps I follow.  Stay tuned… and stay motivated!

Auction Ads Review - Ebay Affiliate Program

Internet marketer and affiliate guru, Shoemoney, has released his own affiliate program which allows website owners to display targeted ebay auctions to their visitors.  The program is called Auction Ads and it seems to present an additional and viable revenue stream fellow industry members.

Ad implementation is virtually a Google Adsense clone: log in, name your campaign (or channel), select the size and colors of your ad, copy and paste code and slap the javascript into your website code.  Ad serving and tracking begins immediately.  Whereas adsense automatically displays relevant ads based on the content of the current page, Auction Ads allows you to insert relevant keywords yourself.  The script looks up ebay auctions that pertain to those keywords and neatly displays them  in the banner space you’ve designated.  When visitors click through to the product and make a purchase, the publisher receives a percentage of the sale.  You can see the ads in action at my site: ChefClub.net.  I’ll follow up with an account of how the ads perform.  It’s important to point out that Adsense and Auction Ads are running on the same page and this is well within the terms of service for both companies.
Auction Ads could prove to be a tremendous opportunity for several reasons.  I’ve got two huge ones.  First of all, programs such as Commission Junction offer nearly every product under the sun for publishers to promote.  However, changing between products is a tedious task and visitors to your site will often be exposed to the same product over and over, making each additional impression pointless.  Auction Ads delivers a variety of products based on the keywords you choose, constantly updating the offer with every impression.  Copy and paste some code and you’ve essentially got a rotating e-commerce feature built into your website.  Smack a headline like “Featured Product” above the ad and it may even be viewed as a value added benefit for your visitor.

Second of all, the ability to identify keywords will allow website owners the flexibility of promoting an array of related products where Google Adsense is less effective.  For example,  say you’ve got a music related site and adsense is spitting out 5 cent clicks for ringtones.  Tough to overcome.  But with Auction Ads you could specify a targeted keyword that may yield much better revenue.  Perhaps “rock concert tickets” or “ipod”  would perform well.  Of course, if you’ve got a specific page about a Counting Crows concert then your CTR may be much better with Google Adsense.  But testing different keywords in Auction Ads could provide much better ROI.  Instead of helping someone else make a sale, you’re making a sale for yourself.

Of course, every scenario is different and the only way to tell if Auction Ads will work well on your site is to try it out.  Play with ad placement, ad size, colors and of course… keywords!  I’m very excited to begin testing this program out and I’ll let you know how the results are for me.  But like I said, the concept is stellar and Auction Ads allows webmasters of all skill levels to easily implement the program.

This should be fun!  Here goes nothing…

Digg Down - OverDugg, Redesign or Conspiracy?

From about 12 noon on March 2nd through 5pm, the popular social bookmarking site Digg.com was “out of service”.  The following page appeared in it’s place (hyperlinks at bottom of page):

 

digg down screen capture

 

Digg recieves an inexorbitant amount of traffic each day and sites making it Digg’s front page can experience hundreds of hits each second!  While they claim to be making some “changes”, could there be alterior motives?

Whether or not there are alterior motives or even a conspiracy is subjective, but one thing is for sure: the 19 blogs listed during this significant amount of Digg Downtime are sure to experience an immense amount of traffic! The way these blogs are listed would make one believe that each Digg Staff Member was able to recommend one website which recieves a link.

A conspiracy theorist would look for a pattern in the blogs linked to:

Alright, so there doesn’t seem to be a pattern.  How then, were every single one of these sites able to handle the huge influx of traffic that would send the normal medium sized business down?  Did they have advanced notice? Perhaps just got lucky? Or maybe Digg sold this opportunity to them for monetary gain.

Alright, so there probably isn’t any conspiracy… but it wouldn’t have been a bad idea. Digg probably could have capitalized on this opportunity by generating thousands of dollars of revenue.  If this down time had been “planned” and each of these text links were sold to clients, how much do you think people would pay?  Does your site have a large and steady flow of traffic?  Maybe every once in awhile you want to schedule 6 hours of “down time” to place a line of text saying, “We’re performing maintenence and the site will be back shortly”.  Throw down some adsense, affiliate links or sell private text links.  Or take the “recommended sites” approach, as Digg did, and link to some of your lesser known sites to filter traffic and attention their way (subtly).

I can’t speculate on the actual reasons why Digg was down.  It was likely, as they mentioned, simple maintenence, updating and security issues.  Still, it’s interesting to think of the possibilities and how Digg could have turned this small negative into a really big positive (monetarily speaking).  Challenges are opportunities in disguise.

What do YOU think?

This is the list of hyperlinks from the Digg Screen Capture above:

(Like they need any more traffic!)

NOTE: After reviewing and refreshing the page, it appears that the page was accessible via http://www.digg.com while http://digg.com yielded the “out of service” error.  Still interesting to think about.

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