I have been doing a lot of reading about how to lift my website up the rankings in the search engines. The problem seems to be that a lot of the information is out of date. Almost everything I read talks about Meta Tags, <h1> headings and <alt image> tags. However a simple trick suggested by spinsubmit is to run a search on your keywords, and then pick the top 2 or 3. Look at their source code (View, Source) and you can see what they have done in terms of coding. None of the sites that I have done this for are using the top tips from all the articles I am reading.

 

The following article is also from spinsubmit, and makes sense to me. Even if it doesn't boost your rankings it ought to boost the amount of traffic coming to your site.

 

Those of you who have been following the notes in my blog know that I have been using a number of tactics to boost traffic including setting up this blog, and a forum both of which link back to the website. I also use a couple of forums (www.forumosa.com and www.youngentrepreneur.com) and take as many opportunities as possible to promote the site. This approach seems to be working and I am getting about 40-50 hits a day at present with a few more at the weekends.

 

I guess the next steps for me are to get involved in article submissions, again with the proviso that if the article is used it links back to my site and to try and persuade some of the top business related sites to carry a link to my site.... www.ideas2earn.com (just incase you had forgotten).

I noticed last week that the number of hits on the page leaped on Saturday and yesterday the same thing. I am not doing anything differently in terms of marketing the site at the weekend so assume that this is because people don't have time to read the emails in the week, but when they read them (or some of them) at the weekend they then click on the website.

 

Other things that I have noticed is the number of people who have told me that I should only send out the emails weekly or monthly as one a day is too many. I have an equal number of people who tell me that the system of listing todays topic in the email heading allows them to pick and chooe which ones to read. I guess you will never keep everyone happy, the idea behind the site is to have a new idea every day and sending out an email with 7 ideas on it once a week would create a massive email once a week, which I am sure would also illicit complaints. Of course there is always the archive at http://www.ideas2earn.com/archive.html which allows you to go back and review any ideas which you inadvertently delete.

 

I am reading a lot on marketing and specifically online marketing at present. There have been almost 600 hits on the site in the last 2 weeks (I expect it will reach 600 by today) but only 12 people have signed up for the email, which is not a great conversion rate. We are working on a redesign of the site which will include some search engine optimisation to try and drive more traffic, but clearly I need to convert the traffic once it arrives. As usual I will post progress here as we move forwards.

I have finally managed to get the archive up and running, go to www.ideas2earn.com/archive.html if you want to see all the ideas covered to date.

 

Also on the marketing front I am finding that traffic building campaigns, and particularly adword are very slow and not very effective for my site.

 

My latest efforts have revolved around this blog, which is drawing a little traffic and other community sites such as www.youngentrepreneur.com and www.forumosa.com these sites generate a lot of traffic in themselves and are attracting groups of people that I can traget through business related threads. I will keep looking for similar sites to post on.

 

My Tell a Friend button has only been used once, and then only when I told someone to do so. I am considering asking my subscriber base to make use of it, but for now I have added a short text message to try and encourage site users.

I spent the last 4 days in Phuket in Thailand. I stayed at a major brand hotel and indeed they claimed to support wireless connectivity in their lobby if not in the rooms which were spread across a large area. Unfortunately when I got there I found out that the wireless connectivity didn't work, nor were we able (for some reason) to download my FTP program from the internet in the business centre.

My office emails are encrypted and only readable from the one machine, which meant automatically that I was out of touch with my work emails for 4 days. Given that this was supposed to be vacation time I figured I could live with this, but what about my website updates and daily emails?

Fortunately some advanced planning meant that I had all my files on a memory stick just incase. A short walk brought me to an internet cafe where I was readily able to download smart ftp and I had my set up details stored in my main email account which is webbased. I think it took me about 40 minutes from start to finish to update the website and send out the email. This was mainly because the pages had been pre-built prior to me leaving and just required a quick rename to become active.

I'd like to claim a major victory for planning around technology failures, but I still made some dumb mistakes and potentially upset a couple of subscribers who decided to unsubscribe whilst I was away. I have of course written and apologised and they seem to be ok.

I guess the morale is that we tend to take technology for granted but when it fails or simply isn't there some good planning can get around most issues. Even the problems I had could have been resolved with a little more thought before departure.

So far we have not included an archive on the site, but several people have requested it.

 

For those that are interested the business ideas we have covered so far are: -

Travel Information

Wallets

Personal Security

Bankrupt Fittings

Chess Sets

Decorating Supplies

Gallery

Ironing

BBQ Accessories

Religious Artefacts

Car Accessories

Artificial Flowers

Home Help Aids

Music Stands

Shoe Shines

Tailors

Yoga Mats

Buttons

 

I will update this from time to time and let you all know once the archive is up and running. I have worked out how to maintain it, but have yet to catch up with all the missed items. Best estimate is that it should be up and running next week.

 

Brad

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OK so my website is 2 weeks old and I am trying to find ways to maximise its exposure. Windows Live spaces is one strategy that may drive a few extra clicks and hence me being here.

 

For those who have not checked out the site, it is designed to work primarily on an opt-in email subscription. I currently have about 200 members and emails go out daily. The email topic is always a new idea for a business and some ideas around how to get started, where to find stock, how to find buyers, maximise your distribution channels etc. All the ideas are designed to be started with a small budget.

 

Enough about the site, or you will all go away before I get to the meat of this post. If you want to check it out go to www.ideas2earn.com

 

Email database

I started out by emailing everyone in any of my address books, and in my brother's address book. This gave a total of about 280 people.

The weakness here was that many of these people did not want to be on the list, and many of the email addresses were either out of date or innacurate

The nice part was getting responses from lots of people that I hadn't spoken to in a while

 

Buying Traffic from Bravenet

I bout a 2500 hit campaign from Bravenet in the first week of operations

My Hit Counter (from Mycomputer.com) never worked properly so I have no idea if this produced any hits or not

 

Google Ads

My google ads campaign has so far cost me about US$13 and has produced about 9 hits

I budgeted $100 a month but have come to realise that google tries to spread this across the month

So far they have only used one of my key words or phrases and have advertised me just under 250 times

I figure this is good exposure so will stick with it, but it is not going to make a big difference

 

Forum

I set up a forum that linked from the site and have been pleasantly surprised by howmany people have viewed it.

2 weeks in the forum had had about 250 hits

This was my first way to get listed on Google. I guess the forum site does it for you

 

Submitting site to Google

This is very simple to do, but I have not yet optimised the site for searching, as initially I expected the site to spread purely through word of mouth. I will of course get around to doing this (titles, metatags etc) and then submit to lots of engines

If you go to google and search the site name you get 2 hits, one for the forum and one for the site itself

 

Tell a friend

This is a little ad on that I got from Bravenet that allows users to list their friends emails and invite them to look at the site

Later on I may use this with some kind of offer to generate more hits

 

I got 28 hits yesterday according to my newhitcounter (also from Bravenet) that has been installed all of 24 hours. I will keep you posted as to how I get on as I develop new strategies.

 

Brad