Experiment underway

With the search engine world changing a lot in 2007 I think it is time to try new things. No, I do not mean the old Black Hat SEO stuff or so. No, I am talking more about outsourcing specific things in regards to webmaster work. How much is your time worth or how much spare time do you have at hand to do all the little things that come with working online? My time has become pretty limited for me lately and so I need to consider other options. I also might want to outsource stuff I am less proficient in. In 2005 and 2006 it was soooo easy to build a new website and to rank it properly within a short time (all white hat methods). This has changed and most of my newer sites suffer the 100 visitor per syndrome. They are stuck at around 100 visitors per day. That is nothing to impress with or to show off with. The income of those website is marginal. It is still nice, but nothing to really get rich with. Lol

So, I got enough cash sitting around in my PayPal account to launch some major things. This can be either website acquisitions or the outsourcing of work. I still have not found the exact website I feel comfortable buying and so I decided to spend some money on outsourcing work. The results will take a while to come in, but that is OK. It gives me time to prepare and to monitor the entire process. As the experiment progresses I will post updates here.

So, what is the experiment about? I am trying to position one of my websites better in a niche market that has some high paying affiliate programs going. Payouts are between $50.00 and $100.00, but can go up to mid-hundreds under certain circumstances. I have been concentrating the website on one part of this market for the last 24 months and now it is time to shift it around a little bit and to become more profitable. So, the experiment will concentrate on this turnaround in strategy and hopefully bring in a much higher revenue stream for me. My risk level is in the mid hundreds ($$$) which is almost nothing compared to what an increase in affiliate commissions can mean for me. If things turn out right the website value should also increase dramatically. We will see.

And another update on the removal of the Google Toolbar from my systems. I am still looking for the search box and the Google button I used to have, but I am slowly getting better in remembering the IE 7 search box in the upper right. By the way – there is a hack somewhere that lets you program Google through that search box without having personalized search. Does anyone know where I can find it again?

I also want to throw out that events like the crazy Google Page Rank update and anything that comes with it can either bring you down or it can motivate you. I have been building websites for Page Rank anyway, but rather for Adsense income or other sorts of income. But I admit – Google Page Rank updates always drew my attention and distracted my work style for a few days. I usually went and did some PR related SEO work and then went back to my normal stuff in one way or the other. This is going to change. I am on the roll. I am highly motivated. Pretty much all my websites lost PR and so did my competitors. This is not about value, selling links, or stuff like that. This can be discouraging as PR was always a visible factor of how good or bad my work has been. If my PR did not go up I did not work hard enough. Bullshit. How would I rate this last PR update then? Google should really stop publishing PR all together so that we all have to go back and measure traffic as the real thing of success. I am at this point (finally … duh). Thanks, Google. No, you did not depress me like so many others – I am highly motivated and ready for action. The last 2 nights already I have been extremely productive and that is good.

PS: This posting fits into 2 categories of my blog. I am picking “personal” for now. Got a better idea? Please leave comments.

Day 1 without the Google Toolbar and the Page Rank Display (lol)

24 hours after removing the Google Toolbar I feel great. No shaky hands to see the PR of a website I am visiting. Going green does not mean needing that little green bar in my browser. I looked around and I am trying the live.com toolbar at the moment. The Live.com toolbar is actually much more sophisticated then the Google Toolbar and a lot of custom plugins are available. Definitely something where Google dropped the ball in my opinion. I found the form auto-fill plugin and it works great. There is also a Google Services plugin, but it throws errors, so I had to deactivate that one. Going to the Live.com toolbar also gave me some ‘real estate’ back to my browser window which is actually pretty nice. The whole toolbar thing is actually not a big deal since I barely used it to check Google Page Rank anyway. The long delayed PR update turned out to be pretty good. I hope they really remove the PR display so that we webmasters can go back and concentrate on the real thing.

I updated some of the website layout and added a big fat RSS feed button to the template. Please subscribe.

Sunday Wrap

Hello Everyone. It’s Sunday and I hope you all enjoy a good time off from work (if you are employed at least – we self-employed people of course work anyways). I did not really expect to ‘activate’ this blog and this domain so early, but it seems like my “application” or lottery ticket for a trip to PubCon over at Shoemoney.com has kicked traffic into high gear. I know it will drop off fast, but at least I want to start writing a little more and maybe gain a few readers here. The main content of this domain will change shortly as it is from a project I stopped before it actually went live due to time constraints. Managing a bunch of content writers requires a little more time and time is something I barely have.

Seems like Digitalpoint.com (at least the forums) went down Saturday and visitors were greeted with a vBulletin database error message. Can you imagine the grief this must cause among the thousands of webmasters who are desperate to rant about the ongoing Google Page Rank update (now that it is happening really). How frustrating must this be especially for newbies who nothing other than Page Rank to value a website. And now they are not able to ask questions because the biggest webmaster forum on the Internet is down. Oh, it just came back up. Look at the screenshot and how many members are online. I don’t think that happens often that you see the visitor numbers over there so low. I refreshed the screen about 5 minutes later and the number had already more than doubled.

What else is going on? Is Sunday the day your week starts or is it the day the week ends for you? Does it make a difference for you at all? For me it is actually Saturday when the week ends and I consider Sunday the first day of my week. That is the day I am most exhausted from the lack of sleep and hard work. I take naps with my son (2.5 years old) on weekends and the Saturday afternoon nap is really helpful. Sunday evenings I am usually really relaxed and full of energy to start working again.

Page Rank Update or How Google loses credibility

Seems like Google finally released the long expect and long waited for Page Rank Update. It is now time to uninstall the Google Tool Bar in my opinion. From what I am seeing how they have pushed down PR on many large websites (outside of the punishment of the past week) it is becoming a joke to even bother about PR. My network shows a 100% decrease in PR. Pretty much take any of my sites and subtract existing PR by 1. Some new websites have minor PR in the toolbar. One website / Domain I bought in May still does not have any which is a clear indicator that this specific domain carries a penalty for whatever reason. I had notified Google of change in ownership and change in website, but I guess whatever the previous owner had done to the site is still sticking to it. I might consider rolling the content to a new site and then let it sit there to see if the ban follows the content or stays with the domain. The main trend I am seeing is that Page Rank went down by “1” across the board. Large websites that had a PR6 are now a 5. PR 5 websites are now a PR 4.

But overall I have to say that this is a clear message from Google to anyone hunting for PR. Don’t manipulate PR or we will take the big stick and punish your website. However, it is also a clear move against any honest webmaster that your hard work does not matter at the Googleplex and that Google only follows their own agenda. Other than traffic you have no way to see how well your work is paying off. The public display of Page Rank is now obsolete as it does not reflect the real work and value a SEO or Webmaster has done. Time for a mind change.

I highly recommend either uninstalling the Google Toolbar or to turn off that specific feature. It does deliver data to Google they use “against you” so to speak. Don’t help them if they don’t help you. Now that public PR is not worth a dime anymore there is no benefit for any webmaster to have this feature turned on. Leaving PR public is a bad move by Google. By decreasing Page Rank by one across the board is just a joke and cheap excuse to still display the PR. Enough said – the Google Toolbar is now going to be uninstalled from all my computers. Anyone who can recommend a more “neutral” toolbar – please let me know. The main thing I am looking for is the auto-fill feature.

YPN vs. Adsense

About 14 days ago I switched two websites from YPN to Google Adsense. YPN has been shown declining performance over the last 3-4 months already for me, but September and October (first half at least) have just been brutal. September marked the first month ever for me to miss the $100 payout limit from Yahoo Publisher Network. The it took me more than 12 days in October to continue where September left of and make it to $100.00 total. I removed the YPN ads at $100.87 from my 2 websites in question and placed the Google Adsense code on them. Now approx. 14 days later I have reviewed my earnings for these 2 sites. Google Adsense used to pay much less per click for those specific niches (and it still does), but they are able to deliver targeted ads – instantly. Now the 2 websites combined already made ~$80.00 in those 14 days. It took them ~12 days before on YPN to make $14.00 to push my YPN account over $100.00 in standings. I think that clearly shows how bad YPN has become. YPN was great in the past. Those 2 sites were easily making $100 – $150 EACH per month on YPN less than a year ago.

I guess one thing as a reminder to take away – making money on the Internet is no “set it and forget it” process. Change is always there and if you do not adapt, you will lose out. The bad thing now – I lost one stream of income and Adsense is taking a bigger share again. I hate that. I wanted to reduce my dependency on Google Adsense, but I guess I have to wait a little longer. Lately I am making a bigger push in the affiliate marketing area, but still have long ways to go ……!

Roll With The Rockstars contest – Party like a Rock Star at PubCon

Shoemoney asked to write about why you (or I) should win the contest that gets you a) PubCon in Las Vegas and b) into the parties that come with it. It seems like that started a Blog Party Bonanza and every online dude is showing off that he is great at partying. But is this contest really about the parties and how much drinks you can consume before you are brave to do something stupid in front of a camera? Everyone can drink alcohol and act like an idiot. It does not take much to do that, right.

So, what is different when webmasters and SEOs take the stage? Maybe they are just looking for a Guinea pig to make fun of afterwards. Instead of ordering a stripper or so they order a rookie for entertainment. Who knows? That ‘motivated’ rookie will try to impress as much as possible – that can make for some really good stunts.

Or maybe the difference is that the real value of PubCon is not at the conference, but at the parties afterwards. Think “Networking” and I think you hit the nail on the head. Whatever information is made public at PubCon – everyone knows it already. It’s what is not discussed in public that can make the difference between good or great. That is the content and knowledge to kill for. And as it is illegal to kill each other, the best way to keep that knowledge a secret is to drain it in a good old fashion way – party like a rock star. I am up for the challenge. Just need to win those darn tickets now.

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