AIS Update

C'mon guys, what is happening in the world of the adsensers?

I am frequently checking the blogs of the other adsensers, the 100 sites club, and am not getting many updates.

With regards to my efforts, I have 2 sites up and with not alot of success. To compare the 2, the Bonsai site has around 200+ pages, most now indexed, and, my attempt, the organicgardening site has about 20 pages, with only about 9 indexed. I only get a couple of hits a day and consequently no adsense income.

The bizarre thing is that the organic site gets more hits, from this blog, than the bonsai site gets even though it is listed in the search engines.

I cant expect any more as I have done nothing to promote/improve either site due to work commitments at present - my adsense time will come in the new year. Still, I could do with a bit of positive feedback from those of you who are investing more time in the project.

Keeping in touch with Burts Blog has given me alot of ideas to try when I do get the time.

Allways playing Catch-Up

So much to do, so little time, etc. Not enough hours in the day... Best laid plans....

Started today with a game plan. The warehouse setup is going along ok but with a few teething problems, one in particular being problems with the broadband - lose the connection every time I end a phone call! I was hoping to investigate it further today. I want to get an e-mail newsletter sent out to all my onine shop subcrsibers this weekend. I need to find a supplier for decent packaging material - fast. I would love to get a little work done on the AIS sites.

All these things have been on my "to do" list this week. Come Friday, I was thinking business would be slow, time to make some progress. What happened - flat out all day processing orders! Well, not all day. Spent the morning with an important rep, thinking the afternoon would be ok, then had a couple of big deliveries of new stock which meant we could clear a load of backorders. That wrote off the afternoon.

Still, cant complain. Orders have the priority. Got to get some money in the bank! Come January and I will have all the time in the world and a lot less orders. So what doesnt get done now will get done next year :)

Why have I got time to blog and not work? Well, its after midinight and quite frankly I am fried! I can blog now, work again tomorrow.

Ok, quickie tonight to air my thoughts on targetted vs non-targetted traffic.

Goes without saying, targetted traffic is the greatest. If you are a seller and you can get someone to your site who is genuinely interested in your products - provided you got what they want at the right price and you everything else in your power to convert the sale, it should result in an order. Champion.

Non-targetted traffic. Ok, so the conversion ratio may be almost non-existant. Someone stumbles across your site through an obscure link, an odd search engine result - you are highly unlikely to persuade them to buy regardless of your esteemed sales technique. So what? What has it cost?

I cant imagine that anyone goes out of their way to garner non-targetted traffic. There may be things that increase non-targetted traffic, ie, site wide, general SEO. But this does not cost money. If you are paying for clicks then that has got to be targetted - for adsense, googles conversion tracking will soon give you a very blunt and eye opening reality as to how much you are paying for a sale. Proper non-targetted traffic should not be costing you anything for incoming visitors. The only thing that I can think of that is going to cost is Bandwidth - now, seriously, how much is that costing you a month? About 6 adsense clicks will get me another 1GB of bandwidth/month. Thats alot of extra traffic.

So, what is the benefit of non-targetted traffic if it doesnt result in a sale? The big companies I guess would call it branding. They pay huge bucks on advertising, not allways for sales. If they want direct sales they will hit you with an offer. If they are just advertising in general then its branding they are after - remember their name, come back later, trust them, etc....

If it works for them, why not for us. The internet may be a big place, but, if someone sees your site by accident once then they are a targetted vistitor on the next occassion they are far more likely to buy, surely...

And, what has it cost you? Nothing, nadda, zilch.

Ok, the quick post has turned into a long post :) I think it all kind of ties into the AIS theme as well though, if you are online, its all about numbers, $1/day, multipied up by a 1000 means serious money, whether this is a result of adsense or non-targetted traffic. You cant ignore the statistics.

SpamFest

OK, that didnt take too long, the spam has started so I have had to enable the word verification.

Sorry to all potential commenters but I havent hardly got the time to post, let alone delete a load of sh*te every day.

Business very Up and Down

I keep thinking the xmas rush is upon us only to be let back down to earth with a thump.

Orders over the weekend were reasonable and enough to finally get me a little more optimistic, yesterday was pretty good again, today, back to a slump. There were a fair few during the day but all fairly low value and tonight just a few little uns. It has been the evening orders that have been a bit of a let down recently. I have no reason as to why, maybe there is more competition but more likely it is just due to the general slowdown of the retail industry.

Still, dont want to appear all doom and gloom. We are up on last year by a fair percentage and given that most of this year has been given over to setting up the warehouse and improving the real world operation, there is plenty of room for improvement over the next twelve months with the website itself.

Maybe the Christmas rush will start tomorrow....... :)

Not Enough (Computer) Hours in the Day...

How much time do you spend in front of the computer?

There are just not enough hours in the day at present to do all I want to do. Having started this blog, I was hoping to post regularly - now I am already behind.

I just noticed today that this blog is mentioned under the "blogs I am reading" section of a couple of other guys blogs that I checkout so I now feel under pressure to come up with some worthy reading material...

Problem is, time. Take today, up at 7, zip down to the shop by 8 to pick up a few things, got to get to the warehouse by 9 to open up. Spend the morning answering the phone/making calls while helping the two new members of staff work through the weekend orders. Pop back to the shop at lunch time to check on things and pick up a few more items for internet orders. Back to the warehouse, just manage to complete all the orders/enqiries for the day and then dash home to take the family down to the local firework display.

The fireworks were great - the weather was pants - got drenched!!! Still good fun.

Home just after 9, get the lad off to bed at about 9.45 and then - on with the computer, check the shop site, read up on a few other blogs, check a couple of forums, thats it.... The day is done. No work done on the shop site, no work done on the AIS sites and no blog entry - till now.

Bl**dy manic. Anyhow, I guess it has been a busy year setting up the warehouse and its a busy time for the gift industry. If I can get through xmas in one piece then it should be a lot easier next year.

Just talking about the shop site. I did finally get to add the Christmas Gifts section to the site. I think it may be a little late for the search engines this year but I did pick up a couple of small orders from it over the weekend and have taken a couple of hits on it through froogle. Its a bit of an experiment as the products are not generally what we would stock in the gift store - we can source them through my Dads hardware store - if it works, I am going to try a Spring and Summer section consisting mainly of gardening items. It may not fit in 100% but if it works it should help to make the site slightly less seasonal.

This weeks priority is to get my first ever newsletter written and sent. Havent managed before as we have not been in a postition to cope with extra orders up till now. Anyone got any hints on the best way to track the effectiveness of a newsletter?

Second adsenser painstakingly created!

Well, unlike the few minutes it is taking anyone to create a site with specific template software, I have just created my second adsenser after about a weeks work! Ok, so its evenings only, usually 10pm till midinght. Plus, I had a few other minor matters to sort out, like hosting and my first attempts at setting up domain names with a registry company. That is a whole nother issue.

Still, its been interesting, and getting to know and understand the adsense site has been pretty worthwhile. All I gotto do now is work out a way of setting things up speedily (without laying out any cash on expensive software!).

So, anyhow, the site? Well its http://www.organicgardeningadvice.com - Havent changed the layout from the bonsai site at all, just been busy working out how to find and implement the eBook, clickbank links, article sources, etc, etc, etc....

Big thanks to Burt for his input on these subjects.

I could do with knocking out another site to fill my current hosting space but after that will need to seriously look into the time taken to create a site if this project is to be worth continuing with. Unlike the other guys aiming for 100 sites before x-mas, at the current rate I should be up to 100 sites in around 3 years time! Most likely adsense will have changed beyond all recognition by then :)

Still cant tell if the effort will pay off as I am still awaiting the spider rush on the first site. MSN and Yahoo have picked up a couple of pages between them but the big G is not calling as yet.

Well, as I said before, if it leads to more knowledge of SEO, hosting, programming then its gotta pay dividends in the end - even if it doesnt pay out enought to cover my bad habits in the mean time!

Well, Time for Business

Ok, so its supposed to be a business update blog.

Business in the retail industry is not good at present. Simple as that. Just heard on the radio that the Allsports chain are closing 90 odd out of around 300 stores as of tonight and this seems to be pretty much the story across the board.

Hows it affecting small businesses? The same way. They are struggling. From what I hear, the big saviour is the internet. If, like ourselves, you have a website, you can make up your losses and in fact increase your turnover. This does bring with it its own problems and does involve some form of investment, even if relatively small. But it is helping.

What is causing the big slump in the high street? Its a combination thing. A combination of higher taxes, higher petrol prices, and indeed a big increase in online sales.

Last x-mas, 30% of all x-mas shopping was done online. This has got to equate to 30% less shopping on the high street, give or take.

Petrol prices - Take a look at what percentage of your income is now spent on petrol. I would be willing to bet its a lot higher (alot) than 10 years ago. Again, money put in the petrol tank cannot be spent in the high street.

Taxes - Income tax may not have gone throught the roof under the present government but the stealth taxes/council taxes are increasing all the time - Again, as a percentage of income it means far less funds left for spending on the high street.

One final factor that hasnt come into play yet is the interest rate - a quick hike here could really spell Trouble.

So is it all doom and gloom? Well, no but it certainly aint a bed of roses and, to be honest I think its going to be getting worse before it gets better........

Small Introduction

Ok, so my first post was a little abrupt and not very welcoming.

About me???? - Well, in the proverbial nutshell.....

Good at school, got into university, discovered beer, failed university, joined the merchant navy (more on that later!), brought home a souvenir from my travels, married the said souvenir, settled down and became a shopkeeper!

5 years as a gift shop owner, 3 years married, one 2 year old son and now an 18 month old online gift shop

The bricks and mortar store is keeping me busy, the online gift shop is keeping me super busy and the little fella is totally exhausting me. In between times, like 2 O clock in the morning, I will try to add a little online reading to this blog :)

Cheers for now,
Rich

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A New Venture

I have just taken the plunge into AIS.

Automated income streams. The idea being - money for nothing. Well, nearly nothing.

In this instance I have purchased a Bonsai Guide website, the aim of which is to generate an income from adsense, the sale of e-books (one with the site and others via clickbank) and the sale of advertising space on the site.

Obviously the success of the site relies totally on the amount of traffic generated.

Should be an interesting project.

The initial aim is to cover the cost of the site and to cover the web hosting and domain registration costs.

Will it work? We will see.