Richandzhaoyans Business Update

A few more Amazon affilitate sites

2008-10-29T21:54:00.004Z

Ok, not a lot to report. I have been working on the amazon affiliate script and have now managed to rework it into a state that I can quickly and easily create a new amazon affiliate site. I have kind of reverse engineered it from a nice css layout to a rather clunky table layout, which would probably have the original creator screaming but which I can work with easier. Its the osCommerce background I am afraid.... ;) I have added a news feed to the site, based on keywords and adsense to the product pages.

The new sites are www.cookwareandsaucepans.com, www.burnersandstoves.com and www.moremotorcycleparts.com. A little info on the three sites:-

Cookware and Saucepans - We sell a pretty good amount of cookware on our uk oscommerce site. The nice thing about it is that if you can sell a cookware set it is a reasonably high value sale which should lead to a reasonable bit of commission and it is a fairly good all year round seller - although sales do drop off a bit in the summer.

Burners and Stoves - A bit of a pot shot this one. We have only just added a large range of fireside accessories to our osC site so I cant really comment on how they might sell online. We have sold a fair few companion sets and the odd fire grate before from wholesaler listings but I reckon we should do ok now we have a major supplier listed on the our site. Its obviously a seasonal sale but again it is reasonable value goods so would lead to good commission if any sales are made.

Motorcycle Parts - Easy one this... I just like motorcycles! So why not try out selling motorcycle parts through amazon.

Thats it for now. No earnings of any consequence to report as yet but then its only been a few weeks and still waiting for the search engines to give me any chance. Whether or not this will happen in the future only time will tell ;)

I think I may try and start a couple of uk amazon affiliate sites now. Could link between the uk and us sites then which may help the search engines. Might have to go with a few stores on subdomains as well for the time being - cheaper option till I can see any sign of returns. ;)

Fancy Dress Costumes!

2008-10-17T23:03:00.002Z

So... nearly another month gone buy.... Guess I am never going to be a regular blogger - lol

Believe it or not, I have been slaving away nearly every night on the reincarnation of my affiliate dream Not a great deal to show for it on the surface. In fact just the one site, uploaded tonight.

Unfortunately its going to be too late for halloween this year but the site is another amazon associate site and its the place to buy fancy dress costumes online.

Given that I launched the pests and insects site last month, why has it taken me this long to launch another, almost similar shopping site???

Well the technical answer is that I couldnt be doing with the css layout of the template store, so I have modded it to a more tabulated layout.... maybe not very purist, but it will make it easier for me to add to/modify in the future. I also added a php rss feed - not a huge task you would have thought.... I certainly didnt think so, but on a limited time/day scale it kind of escalated. :;

There are plenty of javascript news feed options available and sites that will provide you with a piece of script that will link through to there news feed, with there link attached of course..... I wanted a simple news parser that would let me submit keywords and then show as html on my site. The answer was magpie and yahoo..... It seems to work well on the site but how the search engines will view it remains to be seen. Anyhow, it was easy enough to setup bar the usual unforseen problems.... In this case, if a news description conatainesd a long url it screwed up my tables, leading me to suddenly need to learn about how to wrap text within a table.... another few hours wasted.

To be honest, I think my downfall in the whole affiliate marketing method of earning money is down going to be down the fact that I prefer to be tinkering with the code rather than churning out the sites.... For sure, one site a month means that if we work on the old adage of $1/day/site means that I will need 100 sites to give any decent income, at the current rate, its gonna take me at least 100 months (8 years?) to get to that level.... lol

Ahh well, it is just a hobby after all....

I got a few things to sort out now on the current sites and I will post about earnings, but not till they reach a slightly more respecatble/break even level... :;

In the mean time, for all your halloween costumes please give buyfancycostumes.com a look - thanks

Pest and Insect Control

2008-09-26T21:06:00.005Z

Well the time is ticking by and only one more website uploaded....

This time another form of amazon affiliate site. I found a rather out of date but pretty handy script that makes it very easy to set up an amazon store front. As it comes, all that is needed is to throw up an image logo, set the store name and then choose which amazon browse nodes are needed for your site.

The first attempt I have chosen is pest control..... not sure why? Insect repellants and mouse/rap traps are something we sell fairly well from our online shop in the uk so I figured I would see if I could get any sales through the US with amazon.

Of course I will also put some adsense ads on the site at some stage although I figure I may as well wait till any traffic arrives first.

The first 2 sites are now listed in google but no traffic as yet. I dont hold out much hope for shopping2buyonline.com as there must be a fair few totally identical sites up and running but I am interested in how it works. The main problem I see with the deal is that it is not configurable enough to give it any uniquness.

With regards to the pest control website, it is still very much rough and ready. There is a glitch with the layout when viewed in Firefox probably due to the age of the code and there are very few frills. Obvious things to add would be any kind of pest related articles or rss news feeds. Still, as with the other sites, I wanted a basic working version up and running as quick as possible to start the search bots crawling.

If I ever get any spare time, I think a few additions to this php affiliate script would really make it useful. It needs changing to make it quicker to create a new store and also the seo needs improving. Time and intellligence permitting I will see what I can do. Anyhow at present, I have left the link in at the bottom of site through to the "accessories me" page where the script can be downloaded.

All for now....

Back to the World of Marketing

2008-09-15T19:54:00.003Z

So, after what has evidently been a 2 year break from the world of internet marketing, I have decided to try my hand at it once again. Why, after the rather poor half hearted attempt of 2 years ago? Good question. No real answer other than the fact that I have decided to try and take a slightly different approach.

The last try was really an attempt at generating a whole bundle of small but very niche sites in the hope of making a few bucks a day out of adsense. Although I did make a few dollars with adsense, I never managed to generate the volume of sites required to increase the income to any worthwhile level.

So what with the different approach this time? Well, I figured that the way I work my 2 osCommerce sites, which actually provide me with my day job and a decent income is that I work with large product bases. Both sites have in the region of 8-10,000 products listed. This leads to enough sales to keep the business busy.

So, I am going to try affiliate marketing and rather than knocking out a whole bunch of niche sites to sell off, I am going to try and setup a handful of much larger sites.

As ever, fitting in any work on these sites will be tricky, the business and family have got to come first, so it will be the odd hour here and there late at night..... still, the first 2 projects are up and running.

shopping2buyonline.com is the first. This is an amazon site - basically listing amazons full product range. I cheated with this site as it is simply a sign up and pay monthly job. This obviously meant it was up and running quickly but unless I put a lot of work into changing the template, etc I would be very surprised if it ever gets to list in the search engines well. I am hoping to learn a bit from the site though in the hope that I can create my own, more unique version at a later stage.

The second site, uploaded tonight is marketing ebooks online. This is to be the start of an attempt to sell something with clickbank. Again, rather than pick out 1 or 2 CB products I figured it may be worth my while going through a whole portion of the CB feed and generating user friendly product names and descriptions for all the ebooks, software and services listed there. I know that this has been done before on many websites and I know that there are ready made CB sites available to buy online but the advantage of doing it yourself is that you should have slightly more unique content.

Of course both these sites will need marketing to really work and that is something I struggle with. I will probably try a few things but will mainly rely on the fact that they are large sites so hopefully a page or two will feature in some search engine.

The next and on going job will be to continue to populate the marketingebooksonline.com database with as many marketing resources as possible. This could take some time...... ;)

Has It Been That Long?

2008-09-06T11:37:00.002Z

Ok, so this blog kind of died! Time for a resurrection I think.

Cant believe how long its been. Why no posting? Well, nothing out of the ordinary, lack of time, too much real life commitments, etc, etc.

Any thoughts of making money online were lost long ago. The few adsense sites I set up have all now passed on, with the domains expiring.

But I have been doing a little bit of reading recently and am thinking I may take a look into affiliate marketing. Several reasons why I would like to try, which I will go into a little later.

Just for now, a blatant plug for a new shopping portal. www.shopping2buyonline.com

The Disneyland Paris Holiday

2006-06-06T00:18:00.000Z

Yes, this blog is just like waiting for a bus.. you hang around waiting for a post and all of a sudden, three turn up at once. Tonight, I am on a hat-trick and although I have drunk a certain amount of wine, I am not going to start a Peter Crouch robotic celebration - I will wait till England bring home the World Cup! (Apologies to any overseas readers or non-football watchers - tune into the the world cup and you may understand what I am referring to!)

I have promised a report on my holidays and despite it being rather late at night/early in the morning, here it is.

So, a week in France - 5 nights at Disneyland Paris and a couple of nights up towards the north coast.

There is no doubt that despite Garys comments before I left, I was a little concerned about my trip to France. The last time I visited Paris was on a school exchange when I was about 10 years old and unfortuately I hated it then - mainly as we were forced to stay on our own with french families we had never met. Pretty tough at that age.

Well, I am happy to report, my worries were totally unjust - we had a great time.

The holiday involved five nights in the Disney hotel (Hotel Cheyenne - the cowboy theme), with three days spent in the Disney parks and two days spent in Paris. Then two nights, one full day, spent up near the north coast. It wasnt the most relaxing of holidays as we were up before 7 every morning for breakfast and didnt get to sleep until midnight - but we certainly packed a lot into a week.

So, Disney - how bl**dy good is it? Well, if you havent been then just get on with it. It is the best! Having been to Florida twice in the past, I was a little worried that the French version wouldnt quite be as good. To be honest, it was just as good and in some ways, even better. What do I love about Disney - its fantasy land - while you are there, nothing else matters. It is not reliving your childhood, its reliving the childhood that you wish you had.

Taking the son was just great - he is 2 1/2 years old - for the month before we went, all he could talk about was "I cant wait to see Mickey Mouse". When we got there and he got to see Micky Mouse - well, it brought a tear to my eye!!! Now we are home its just "I cant wait to see Mickey Mouse again"!

From a previously more cynacle point of view, the wife - who is Chinese - didnt know a lot about the magic of Disney and Mickey Mouse before we went and was just looking forward to going to Paris, thinking Disney was just for kids. After the first day in the park and seeing the son with Mickey and watching the Disney parade, she was converted - it was on her insistence that we had to give up a day in Paris to go back and watch the parade again and we had to swap a day in Paris so that we could spend the Sunday in the park because it was open until 10pm..... We left at about 9.55pm! A couple of things that hooked her were the "happy music".... Wherever you go in Disney there is music and its can only be described as happy music - all around the grounds, in the restaurants, during the parade, on the rides, queueing for the rides, in the toilets even - you cannot escape the happy music! The other factor was the total attention to detail - the design and cleanliness of the park is just out of this world.

Ok, so I am going on a little about Disney - Last comment - if you have never been, just go. If you are of the opinion its just for kids - its not, just go. If you think its going to be cheesy and commercialised - (well, it is commercialised) but still, just go. If you havent got any kids to take, borrow some - if you need to, you can borrow ours - I know he would be happy to go again and again and again.

Enough! How about the rest of the French holiday. Well, in 2 days in Paris we did everything - the Eifell Tower, the Arc De Triomphe, the LOuvre - including the Mona Lisa and Venus D Milo (excuse the spelling), the Champs Elysee, the Sacre Couer, the Seinne, the Notre Damme, the Pompidou Centre and a quick walk up through the red light district...... Had to see the outside of the Moulin Rouge!

After this, we needed the couple of nights in a quieter village and we spent the one rainy day of the holiday driving around the First World War cemetries/monuments - total contrast to Disney, but aside from the thoughts of the horrors that occured in the region, the country side was beautiful and it was still pretty astonishing to see how rural the north of France was compared to the UK - we really are overpopulated in the UK and thepace of life in the French countryside was just so relaxed - I am now understanding why the English are moving over there in droves.

So, a fantastic week really - and all topped of by importing some fantastically cheap contraband - cigarettes at £3 a pack and the wine...... Well, I filled the boot of the car up with 5 Ltr cases of wine that worked out at around 70p/litre. Compare this with the cheapest available at Tescos around £3/litre!!! Oh, and one more thing - talking of Tescos - have you been to a Carrefour - makes Tescos look like a corner shop :)

Alright, its getting pretty late and now I am back at work and trying to pay for the holiday (and tonights intake of soper cheap Vino Calapso is starting to catch up with me - excuse the typos). The final thing I want to mention was the French people - There is no doubt about it, before going I had my reservations about the French, in particular about conversing as my level of bad o-level french was really rusty - and I had heard alot of stories about the French pretending not to speak English just to be awkward - well this simply was not the case - There was not one person we met who coould have been more helpful - As Gary said before I went - great people, great country - I highly recommend a visit.

Cheers,
Rich

An e-directory update...

2006-06-05T23:52:00.000Z

About a month ago, I got my main shopping website listed with e-directory. I know there were a couple of comments at the time asking for updates as to how it was going.

Well, its all in place and bar a few teething problems, there are orders coming in.

The teething problems are mainly concerning keeping their product list up to date with mine - this is going to be sorted in the next couple of days, as soon as I get around to producing a daily feed that they can access to keep their product list in line with mine. Not being up to date has caused a few problems with customers expecting goods overnight when we have either had to get the items sent direct from suppliers or wait on new stock coming in.

We are getting regular orders, which have added up to about 4% of our sales this last month. Not exactly earth shattering and considering the agro involved - really not worth the effort. Still, its very early and given the fact its the quietest time of the year for us, I really want to withold judgment. Will there be any profit involved over a 12 month period? Well, yes definately for them! For me..... I think so but the factor that needs weighing up is how much extra work will be involved. If I can iron out the problems and get it running smoothly then I have the staff in place to do the packing and other than paying their wages and paying the commission to e-directory, there could be a little left over at the end of the year.

One thing I could do with is some new software for processing the orders. As it stands, we are using their order interface but this is pretty slow and time consuming. They do have a direct link to download all new orders in txt or html format, ready to be integrated into order processing software but at present I am not using any!! I find that with the contributions I have in place, osCommerce is more than capable of handling large order quantities taken through our website so I dont use any other software. However, although I could probably import the e-directory orders into the osC database, I would prefer to keep them seperate. Any suggestions as to a very basic order processing software package?

The Google Update

2006-06-05T23:14:00.000Z

Ok, I know, I know...... Too long between posts. What can I say, business and family life just gets right in the way and the first thing that gets put on the back burner is the blog.

Anyhow, firstly my google worries. I did email google about my huge decrease in indexed pages for my main shopping website and I received a reply back a few days ago:-

Thank you for your reply. Please be assured that your site is notcurrently
banned or penalized by Google. We understand your concern;however, these changes
are consistent with the normal fluctuationsoutlined in our previous email. As we
add new pages and incorporateupdates to existing pages, you may see changes in
the ranking andinclusion of sites in our index. Because our index changes
regularly, it'spossible your site will regain its ranking. In the meantime, we
hope thatyou will review the helpful tips posted on our site.We're sorry we
can't be of further assistance in this matter.

Well, I am not sure whether to be re-assured or not..... As things stand, I now only have just over 300 pages indexed compared with a previous all time high of about 100,000. As someone mentioned on a forum I frequent, 100,000 was a little excessive for a 5000 product website - however, 300 is also a little on the low side and having checked a couple of competitors, they are still showing about 50,000 pages indexed. Although, I am guessing that one of them has about 10,000+ products online.

I think the best plan of action is still to sit things out but I have made one major change - aside from a couple of changes suggested in the previous thread (thanks all). The major change was actually a remarkably simple one to install. It was of course an osC contribution. It creates a "have you also tried searching for" line of code on each product page with links to the search results for all keywords in the product name. ie, on the thomas the tank engine - engine shed page, you will have links to search results for thomas, and, the, tank, engine, shed. This could of course create a huge number of dynamic results. Spiderable. The osC contribution can be found here and its a work of genius really, so simple to install - even I could do it in seconds.

Of course, whether or not this will make any difference in my google pages indexed - who knows..... The way google is dumping me at present, it may take a look at the large increase in pages and just dump me a little further. What I am hoping is that all the newly generated search result pages will create more links to the product info pages and therefore make them appear more important than the new pages - maybe pushing them up the ladder back into the google index.

I guess only time will tell....

The one positive to come out of google actions is that they do seem to be pushing me well up the rankings for the pages that are still indexed - so I guess, what I should be doing is really optimizing the category pages. Visitors and sales certainly havent dropped at present as I am featuring well for the higher traffic keywords. ie, taking the Thomas the tank engine example, for the phrase Thomas the tank engine I am featuring better than before and as this is well searched for, am getting more visitors. The thomas the tank engine - engine shed listing however would have vanished.

Its kind of swings and roundabouts, six of one, half a dozen of the other - Of course, what I really want is the best of both worlds - despite what I have read elsewhere, the search engines are not dead - and, bar a few quid spent on adwords bring in just about all my sales!!!

Finally on this post, as a complete aside, google has also pretty much dumped my blog. A mere 19 pages indexed - of course, this could well be due to the lack of updates, but again, its kind of annoying when it previously had over 50 pages listed - it really seems to me that despite google loving blogs, it doesnt go a bundle on blogger blogs - seems to prefer wordpress afaics!!??! I guess when I get chance, a move like Garys may be in order - but again, work and the family will probably prevent this from happening in the near future.

Has Bigdaddy dumped me out of Google?

2006-05-26T09:17:00.000Z

Well, I had a great week away in France and hope to write a little more about this later - however, I have arrived back to a little problem. (Well, its a pretty big problem really!)

My main online shopping site has just been dumped by google. I have gone from having over 100,000 pages indexed to only 300 pages in the course of a couple of months. This happened pretty much in 2 stages, the first drop happening at around the time I changed servers, from a US based to UK based server so I was of the impression that this may have caused the first drop and have been waiting for the site to bounce back in the listings. Unfortunately, having now check after returning from the holiday, it has slumped to an alltime low of 300 pages indexed.

What has happened? Well, I am putting it down to the Bigdaddy updates at google. It appears that most of my product info pages have been dropped. The pages that are indexed, the top category pages are doing better than ever with regards to search result positions so I all is not disastrous. However, I need to get these product info pages back into google somehow, before the secondhalf of the year and definately before xmas.

Reading Matt Cutts article about the Bigdaddy Updates - (theres a lot of reading there!) I am pretty sure its this update that has bombed me out of the listings. Out of the reasons he gives for peoples site having pages dropped, it seems that google now no longer considers my site as being important enough to have the (maybe fourth level) product pages stored in its index. After having read his lengthy article and a fair few of the comments, the only conclusion I can come to is that my site does not have enough backlinks.

I have never really chased back links in the past - the site is listed in the ODP and a few other directories but other than that - I am just not a fan of chasing links for the sake of it. Looks like I might have to change my view now though.

Anyhow, I know that a fair few of you are pretty well up on SEO, so if you get chance to drop by www.heritage-gifts.co.uk then please do and let me know your thoughts.

Also, any suggestions on how to start increasing the number of back links? I know articles are hot at the moment but I dont think they will particularly work with this site (ie, alot of totally different products). I can see how they can work for Peter and his Coffee shop as he is trying to target a far more specific range of keywords. Free directories dont seem to hold a lot of weight any longer by all accounts. An affiliate scheme is not something that I can really offer (due to operating at low margins). Forum posts are supposed to be pretty worthless now, recipricol linking is out.......... Hmm, doesnt seem to leave a lot of avenues open to a humble online storekeeper. I can see how ranking an information site by inbound links may work but I cant see how more inbound links can prove that a shop is worth visiting. If it has the item you need at the right price....... Well, then its worth visiting.

Ahh well, I am off to try and find out more info and dream up a link strategy.

Cheers,
Rich

So busy in the quiet period...

2006-05-11T00:43:00.000Z

Ok, so I was looking forward to this time of year. I had big plans for the AIS. What went wrong? Why no posts on the blog? Well, I decided to setup a new online store and needless to say, with trying to run the current one and setup a new one, there has not been alot of spare minutes in the day. (I wont even mention the time spent with the family - which, as anyone with a 2 year old will know, is not only essential but also unmissable!)

So, where do things stand? Well, I was hoping to have had the new website up and running by now but its moved to the right (as all good projects should!), its about 90% ready but as we know, that last 10% can well take up a huge amount of time and effort. I am going on holiday for a week next wednesday so this will delay things further - still, disneyland for the lad and Paris for the wife should be a very enjoyable week.

The current site is still growing well - sales this year are still doubling last year so thats good - just alot more work though, making it difficult to work on the new site.

Externally, the edirectory listing has just gone through so it will be interesting to see if this was a worthwhile layout - I will let you know.

My online presence has been (very) minimal this last month and I apologise to the forums/blogs that I usually frequent. If its any consellation, I allways find the time to read even if I havent got the time to post.

As such, a quick round up of my favorite blogs follows:-

Gary Burton - Well, he has finally taken the plunge and moved to Wordpress - I gotts tell you, from what I can see this should be a great move with regards to search engine saturation - It might seem strange but AFAICS, google doesnt seem to like blogger blogs as much as wordpress when it comes to search engine results. Anyhow, we will soon see from Garys setup - personally, I intend to go the same route as soon as time permits!!!!! So, Garys new link is http://www.osworld.biz/

Jason Chance - JC has started a very informative series of posts on setting up and running an online ecommerce store. The thing I like about JC's posts (and contributions to the osC project/forum) are that they are very much business based thoughts, as opposed to the sometimes very programming based views found with other osCommerce designers. Anyhow, for anyone either starting out online or looking to improve their online presence, jcCommerce.com is well worth a read. Also, Jason has recently setup a personal site at Disappointed Idealist for anyone that is interested in finding out a little more about the man behind jcCommerce.

Sarah G - Going down the same route of splitting blogs into personal and technical is Sarah. From her original blog Sarah Freelance, we now have an AIS specific http://ais.sarahfreelance.co.uk/ and a personal http://sarah.sarahfreelance.co.uk/. Sarah, I believe has been/is on holiday at present. Should be back soon. Still, her blog is really very informative with regards to programming and is a great insight into running your own web design business - again, if you are thinking of getting started in this business, a wuick read of Sarahs blog will give you a good insight into the pros and cons - well worth considering before you plough on in.

Barefoot Boo - After a brief time away form blogging, Boo is back in town and, contrary to the two above bloggers, Boo has decided to consolidate and keep all her posts back in the one blog. I gotta say it makes it easier to keep track of from a readers pov. Plus, although I can understand the idea of keeping a blog specific for a certain amount of SEO benefit, there is also the fact that the search engines like a good sized site. Internal links are something that shouldnt be ignored so a blog with a daily post may be worth more than three seperate blogs with posts only once every three days - guess its a matter of personal opinion.

JavaRoasters - Although, not too frequently updated (much like this blog), I love reading up about Petes work. Primarily about his Coffee site, I believe he is going exactly the right way about promoting his osC store and I am looking forward to reading up about his success after having kept track of his workings. For anyone looking into promoting an online store, I would highly recommend tracking back through a few of Petes posts and following his procedure. I am convinced he will soon be ranking on the first page in google for any Coffee related search!!

$1 a Day & Dans AIS Challenge - Both blogs essential reading for anyone looking to get started in the adsense income world. Both these guys have started out at the same time, with slightly different methods and both seem to be raking in a very reasonable extra income from primarily adsense sites, with a fair bit of affiliate income thrown in. I reckon that both of these blogs show that you can create a worthwhile adsense income with a little hardwork and both blogs will give you a good idea of how to go about it. Again, neither blog is posted to frequently but there us plenty of worthwhile info when a post is made.

Escape Route 44 - Mattian - Not only does Matt enjoy blogging - he also loves to host others blogs! I like Matts blog as to me it is what blogging should be about - not only do you get the updates to how his Mattian site is going but also a good mix of personal and newsworthy posts - He posts about what he wants to write, maybe more than what he thinks others want to read - that is what a blog should contain - at least thats what I think.

pesos per diem & oliciv - Both good reads for anyone thinking of starting down the AIS/adsense routes. At pesos per diem, you will find a good indication of results and some good ideas of how to get started. Oli is obviously a guy who has decided to put a fair bit of effort into AIS and has the ambition to try out other avenues apart form adsense that I hope will come good for him - Again, at both blogs you will find plenty of useful information that goes beyond the standard adsense site setups.

Chemo - Left Bobby till last - dont really know what to say about Bobbys blog other than the fact that I was pretty devasted to read about his health problems. I obviously dont know the guy personally - same as any of the other people mentioned in this post - still, its pretty depressing to read about the deteriorating health of someone you know of and respect even if it is in a "cyber" world!! For a guy that had so much online prescence, primarily throught the osC forums/community, to suddenly announce a terminal illness... Well, its a bit of a shocker. All that remains to be said really is that my thoughts are very much with him.

Ok,. I thinks that covers the blog roll up till now - just a couple of new entries to go:-

Plans to Prosper - Chris H - Another great blog for anyone interested in reading up about getting started in am adsense/affiliate income, with the the blessing of the lord to boot - Seriously, you will find a lot of great info on Chris's blog and whether or not you are of a religious belief, you could do a lot worse than keeping track of his posts. Personally I am not religious but I do like his blog - its not only informative but also personal and interesting.

Brighton Vibes - Dave over at Brighton Vibes has not been blogging for too long but has certianly been busy since setting up - His bog has a lot of detail on his network of income creating sites and his Money Making Forum is very well attended and has information that is growing daily. One to bookmark for sure and if your short of ideas - you wont be after a quick visit here.

Right, thats it - I am sure there are many other blogs I should be reading and many that I will start to read shortly - this however is the current must read list. After a long interlude of not posting, I felt it was right to comment on others sites as, despite not having the time to post myself, I do find the time to keep track of others blogs and fully appreciate the effort that goes into keeping well updated and informative blogs. Keep up the good work all of you and with any luck, once I get the new site finished and next weeks holiday out the way - I may be able to post a little more here before the xmas rush comes round - (who mentioned xmas!!)

Cheers,
Rich

Salesman, affiliate schemes, decisions...

2006-04-14T00:42:00.000Z

Well, today a rare thing happened - I listened to a salesman...... Ok, so I get to listen to a lot of salesman, most days in fact but today I was drawn in. If truth be told, he was not even a particularly good salesman - his pitch was not only repetetive and stalling, but lacking a fair amount of knowledge on his chosen subject.

It relates to my main online gift shop. The guy was "selling" the opportunity to get my product catalogue listed on his companies website. Along the lines of Amazons marketplace.

Up until now, I have allways resisted the temptation of going down any affiliate type route. I know that on the plus side there could be a lot of extra sales generated but, working on a pretty tight margin means that to pay the kind of percentage that Amazon are asking would mean that, although I would be doing all the work, they would be recieving more rewards than myself - not really worth the extra work in my eyes.

Still, there is allways that nagging feeling of how many sales you could generate from such a scheme. Of course, as is the way with the internet, actual sales figures or even an indication are incredibly difficult to come by. What I could tell from this shopping portal is the Alexa rankings. They show that the site is pretty busy - alot busier than my site. Of course, this traffic has to be split between the 700 odd suppliers that have their products listed on the site. These suppliers range fom the minnows right up to a few of the more recognisable internet success stories - certainly a few well known names listed there, so I have no doubt that working out an average/best guess of traffic compared to suppliers sales would just not be proportional - I am sure that a few of the 700 suppliers are getting a lot of traffic and orders and an aweful lot of others would not be getting much of a look in. Which section I would fall into remains to be seen.

I wont reveal the name of the site as yet - as I dont really want to be a laughing stock if I get no orders out of it. The deal? Well, it not only involves me paying a percentage of every sale but there was also a pretty hefty setup/annual fee. This is the problem. This site is going to have to generate a fair few sales over the next 12 months just for me to break even.

So - have I been a muppet? Am I throwing money down the drain? Have I been duped? Only time will tell. Assuming I do get a couple of orders - I will reveal the name of the site and you can let me know what you would have done in my situation. Of course, if I dont recieve any orders, this will be the last you hear on the matter and I will erase it from my memory, along with all the other blurred bad descisions I may or may not have made in the past ;)

Cheers,
Rich

Where Were We?

2006-03-30T20:15:00.000Z

Well I have been tagged by Gary, via his latest post "Where Were You?" - So, here goes:-

1 Year Ago - Just got back from a month visiting the in-laws in China - Great time there - Cant speak the lingo but love the fact that you can buy beer (in a restaurant) for less than 20p a litre and that their chinese wine is about 55% proof! Anyhow, survived the trip to get back to the UK just in time to take ownership of the new warehouse which I then spent the next few months kitting out. Had been married for 2 years then, with the one son (18 months old then and an absolute handful!)

5 Years Ago - Travelling the world in the merchant navy, a wealthy, single man! Blissfully unaware of terms like osCommerce, Blogs, php, css, etc, etc... The only thing I used the computer for then was watching dvds, listening to music and playing the odd 2 week game of civilisation. I was working for a company called the RFA - thats the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (Forget the jokes about dyslexic wannabe airforce pilots ending up at sea instead of flying). Employed by the mod to travel the world supplying the Royal Navy ships. It meant getting the perks of travelling with the RN but still being civilian so not having to put up with too much bs. I was an Engineer, which meant I spent alot of time up to my elbows in oil in the engine room but when not working, most time was spent either sunbathing or in the bar - it was a pretty good way of life for a single bloke.

10 Years Ago - Well, I had pretty much just qualified as an engineer and was probably on my first stationing out in Dubai. This was where I eventually met my wife (so, my life at sea started out in the gulf and finished there!).

My life up till now really has evolved with apparently very little input from myself - I was pushed from school to University as I had reasonable results at school - I flunked University within 2 years due to spending most of my lectures in the pub! I joined the navy as I had little else to do then. (I remember the job interview by the RFA - it went along the lines of:- "So, Mr Hurn, have you heard of the RFA? - No, Do you have any family members who have worked at sea? - No, Do you know anyone who works in the Navy? - No, Are you sure this is reallly the job you are after? Not Really! - They consequently offered me a job... must have been pretty desperate and I thoroughly took to it.) Prior to finishing in the navy, I invested all the money I had in buying a gift shop, partnership with my Dad, seemed like a good idea at the time - I didnt need a house as I was working away all the time. Then I got hitched so had to take on a 95% mortgage for a house! 2 Years ago, I set up heritage-gifts.co.uk and a flurry of orders followed, leading to having to setup the warehouse.

One thing really has just led into another - makes you wonder what I will be writing in 10 years time - assuming my bad habits havent got the better of me of course!

Anyhow, I had better get back to work - Heritage-at-Home.co.uk ( heritage-housewares, heritage-hardware, heritageinthehome.....!!??!?) Whatever...... the next online shop needs working on.

Thanks for the distraction Gary. Now, I reckon I had better pass this across the atlantic to Pete, JC and Dan

Cheers,
Rich

Simplifying the osCommerce Checkout System

2006-03-23T00:41:00.000Z

I am back to building an osCommerce site and am taking the opportunity to work from the ground up. One of the things I have never changed alot from my current osC store is the cheockout system.

Now, I know from doing a lot of reading that many osC owners/developers but a lot of effort into reducing the number of stages in the checkout procedure. Not just osCommerce users but also, it is very eveident that any online retailers do the same. Currently, I am not convinced of the benefits. I know this goes against the grain and I am standing by for the backlash. My resoning - well, think about your own online purchasing. How much time do you usually put into making a purchase online? Including deciding on what it is you want to buy, checking any other similar options, comparing prices, evaluating the credentials of a seller - In my case it is quite often hours, if not days. Assuming that I find the right item at the right price, from a seller I am willing to trade with, I am just not likely to be put off by an extra page or two in the checkout process. In fact, if there is a problem with the online checkout, I am likely to go to the effort of finding a contact telephone number and actually trying to get in touch with the seller.

Of course, like anything else in the online retail world, you have got to play the percentages - assuming you have your prices right and you are in the right search results, to have one page less than your competitors in the checkout, all other things being equal, you may get the sale.

I still think this obsession with reducing the process is over-rated but, in view of the fact that I am starting from a vanilla osC setup, I have nothing to lose in trying to slicken things up. So, how to modify it? I have read Wizardandwars thoughts on the matter and to be honest, I reckon his original solution is the best way. Having read alot on the osC forum and looked at other contributions, I think many of the solutions are going to far. One in particular that I have taken a good look at tonight is the Fast Easy Checkout. Two things worry me - firstly, too many changes to the stock osC code, possibly causing problems with integrating payment modules and the like further down the line, but more importantly, this idea of buying without an account.

I can well understand the theory behind the "buying without creating an account" way of thinking but disagree with it entirely. Surely, in order to send someone their goods, you need their address. If their is a problem with their order you need to be able to contact them, so having their email/contact telephone number is essential, whether they create an account or not. Now, what is the difference? There is none. So long as you can word the account login system in such a way that the customer doesnt realise they are creating an account - the details are the same - the big difference to me being that if they do create an account there is a chance they will sign up for the newsletter.

So, for anyone who shops online, what do you look for in a checkout system? Is it of any importance?

Right now I am thinking of following Wizardandwars guide to the letter and going for the combined login/create account page and keeping the number of details asked for to a bare minimum. Just one last thing I cannot decide on - automated passwords or user created ones.

Any thoughts from either osC owners or developers or, maybe more importantly, online shoppers would be very welcome.

Cheers.

Stress of a Server Move

2006-03-22T23:54:00.000Z

One of the reasons for the lack of posts this month is down to moving my main site - Heritage Gifts, onto a new server. In the run up to xmas, the site slowed dramatically due to the shear volume of seasonal traffic it was generating. I am sure this must have had a fair impact on sales but given that we were flat out with order processing at the time, there wasnt alot I could do about it. In fact, it was probably no bad thing that we didnt recieve any extra orders.

Since xmas, things have calmed down alot, but there was still enough traffic to slow the site. This was down to three main factors, traffic, a large mysql database (both with cutomer info and products) and shoddy code - well, maybe not shoddy but certainly my cart has been modified extensively, over a period of time and with plenty of contributions added over the top of each other.

The upshot, I had to move the site onto better hosting and now is the time of year to do it. As I posted before, I am more than happy with my current web hosts and after speaking with them, they offered me a tailor made package on a "shared dedicated server". Great.

The problems I had with the move came in two stages. The first attempt ended up with the site being moved to a new server but there were big problems with the server in question. There were large load spikes being caused by one of the sites on the server. Consequently, my site was pretty much down for a period of about 48 hours. Costly. Lost a good few orders and a lot of sleep!

The hosting company moved my site back to its original server, and after consultation, agreed to set me up on a better server, with a couple of days to test the site before actually moving it. I duly set up an exact copy of my site, tested it thoroughly on the new, better server and was already to go ahead with the move. As the hosts had offered to move the site for me, when it came time for the actual move, I figured it would make sense for them to copy the site across afresh, just in case I had missed something. Man, disaster struck again - For some reason, the mysql database became corrupted. No idea why, it still remains a complete mystery. However, because of this, another day of trading was lost.

The other thing that was lost was my rag! I got pretty shirty with the support team. I was under alot of pressure - to lose three days of sales in a month is not good. The main thing though was their apparent lack of concern in with their replies in the support ticket. I have since learnt of how hard they were working to try and resolve the problem but due to their comments in the ticket, it just wasnt apparent to me at the time.

The issue was finally resolved very late on in the evening, nearly 24 hours after the move and it was resolved by reinstating a backup from the original server to the new one. Why this should work when transferring all the same files and database didnt? Well, only him upstairs knows the answer to that one!

The reason for posting about this however is not to convey my excuses for not blogging but to mention how I feel about the hosting company now. After having 2 trouble free years with them before the move (including accomodating the site before xmas when it was using more than its fair share of server load), they have gone out of their way to set me up a personal hosting solution, the server my site is now hosted on is lightening fast (despite the mixed up code and large database!) and after explaining my problems with the way that the support ticket was handled, they have already implemented changes to how they deal with server moves and support tickets.

You cant really argue with that can you? Sure I lost three days takings but if you stand back and take this over two years of hosting...... Well, I reckon I will recover the takings over the next few months due to the speed of the site on its new home.

After having recently read a couple of other bloggers posts about a couple of the large UK hosting companies, I reckon my site is in pretty safe hands.

AIS well and truly on the backburner

2006-03-22T23:43:00.000Z

Ok, for the time being I have got to admit defeat. Well, maybe not defeat - depends on how you define it. I have thoroughly enjoyed setting up a couple of sites and believe that I now have a system in place whereby I could quickly and easily expand the "empire"!

Unfortunately, as it stands, I only have a couple of properly finished adsensers and havent put enough time in into promoting them to give them a proper chance of bringing in any kind of worthwhile income.

What I have gained is a greater knowledge of hosting, site design, seo, etc, etc.... and its been alot of fun.

Why has it got to come to an end (at least for now?). Well, the simple fact of the matter is that any work I put into my main business, the online store will pay back far greater rewards than the Adsensers. I hope to find time for both in the future but right now, I am struggling to find the time to run the business and balance it with the family, let alone spend time on adsense.

Having said that, I do hope to finish a few rssg sites later in the year (content based rather than out and out scrapers), so "watch this space"!

March Already.... Slight change of focus

2006-03-03T01:31:00.000Z

Ok, I know alot of you are posting your adsense/affiliate earnings at the end of each month and I am very appreciative of it. It makes for great reading and is an inspiration - for this reason, I am not going to publish my adsense earnings as they are still less than 10 bucks (by a fair margin!)

I know I have posted a lot this month about AIS but the truth is, I only have the one site properly indexed by the search engines at present.

However, I have been busy this month and have setup the sites that are part of my NPM subscription. I have set one up on its own domain, and the rest on a subdomain with a wordpress site on the main domain. I have worked so that I can now add the new sites, with their own templates into the same environement each month with very little hassle. In this case though I am not changing the content so how effective they will be, only time will tell.

Other AIS news, well, the original content site is still "under construction" and could be for some time. But, I have been going flat out on an rssg site. This is going to be my Supersize me site and will only use rssg to provide "padding", the site will use Wordpress as the front end. I have just taken out some reseller hosting to put the site on so it will become a reality over the next few days (hopefully).

Unfortunately for my AIS plans, I have got to spend the next month or two creating a new, genuine, osC site. My business partner ("Dad" - nigh on 60, one heart attack, no knowledge of computers, but loving the way the internet business is going!) has decided we should move into gardening and housewares. This is what he sells in his shop but, due to the success of the gift shop, we are now going to try it online, selling through my warehouse.

I wouldnt be surprised if it doesnt overtake the Gift Shop by this time next year. We have one major wholesaler who stocks about 18000 lines and can deliver twice a week so I am hoping to just create/design a suitable osC store, upload the suppliers catalogue and get selling! Timescale? - A month or two? Sound realistic - sure if I start to work on this instead of the AIS until 2 am every night.

Wish me luck and hopefully, the couple of AISers I have managed to churn out will start to bring me in a little "pocket money" sometime in the near future - Who knows, maybe I will be able to publish my adsense earnings next month, provided they break the $10 barrier ;)

Cheers,
Rich

Supersize Me

2006-02-28T01:03:00.000Z

Right, as you know, this month my free time has been dominated by the adsense dream. I will post an pucker business update, relating to the online gift shop sometime during the next couple of days but, right here, right now its adsense.

Niches - Why? I admit that I am very green to the whole adsense income scene and all I read about it is related to niches.

Why should they go hand in hand?

The method I employ with my gift shop is quite simple - more products = more site pages = more search engine saturation = more visitors = more sales......... (Actually that is missing one very important factor - price - online or off, this is the be all and end all of sales - forget things like customer satisfaction and website design - customers will put up with alot if the price is right, at least that is what I am finding)

I am wavering, forget the shop, we are not looking for sales, just adsense clicks. Surely the more pages you have, the greater the search engine saturation, the more visitors, the more adsense cliks.

My current theory is this:- Forget looking for niches - just create supersites and the niches will follow. You dont get much more niche than Jesus Christ on a piece of sheet metal !! The other big advantage of a Super Site is that it contains a whole load of internal links - with the key search terms in the links if the site is planned properly.

Of course, my theory is unproven and one downside that I believe exists is the fact that the search engines like a site to grow over time, so it may be a case of putting your super site together over a period of time, rather than the much loved create, ftp, submit and forget type AIS sites that seem to be abundant in the niche fraternity.

Well, I am going to give it a try - watch this space, but dont expect too many immediate results unless there is a sudden rush on people wanting to find out about JC's sheet metalworking skills.

Cheers,
Rich

Jesus Christ on a piece of sheet metal

2006-02-28T00:49:00.000Z

LMAO!

Well, you gotta aint ya? My NPM sites have been up and running on their subdomains now for just about a week and although google is only just starting to sniff, it appears some other search engine has picked up a couple of pages.

The subdomain in question is Powerselling on Ebay and thus far I have received hits from the following three search engine keyphrases:-

picture of holy hardware on ebay
jesus christ on a piece of sheet metal
jesus sheet metal ebay

The reason being the newsfeed that features on the NPM sites. You know what made me laugh my socks off? Well, it wasnt the return - none of the clicks resulted in any adsnese revenue - its just the thought of what these people/person were searching for. Man I just love the diversity of the internet and all who use it.

OK, I gotta go - I am off to rush out a few AISers about the Good Lord and his Metalworking skills!!

Cheers,
Rich

An adsense conscience?

2006-02-27T00:35:00.000Z

I have been having a little conflict of conscience over the weekend with how to progress with my adsense empire (Currently stands at three sites at present! - Daily income - single figures - usually just the one single figure 0!)

Anyhow, I am not perturbed by the lack of income, in fact I am very optimistic about how much could be made. No, the quandry is more about which direction to go in with the site building.

I have spent a fair bit of time looking into the rssg/rssgm program the last couple of days. Its a marvelous piece of work. Very clever. Way over the top of my head as to how it actually functions but I have just been looking into/thinking about how I would like it to work and how to modify the templates to create something I am happy with.

Then though, the conscience struck and I started to think do I really want to just churn out site after scraped site. I have no doubt that you could easily churn out hundreds, probably thousands of pages with the scraping technique, every day. Of course, whether the search engines would reward you for this is highly doubtful.

(Just out of interest, anyone had their adsense account put on hold for such methods? I seem to remember a post about this happening somewhere.)

Anyhow, work kind of stopped over the weekend due to my wranglings (and other commitments). Then, tonight I did a little research into how much people are bidding on certain terms with the overture tool at pixelfast. (You can find this handy tool amongst 151 SEO tools) - A few results blew me away - One inparticular being the search phrase "charity" - This is a hugely popular keyword and there are registered charities bidding very high amounts to feature in the top spot. Now, it strikes me that there is something majorly wrong when charities can spend more than your average business on promoting themselves.

I did toy with the idea of trying an adsense site for the keyphrase charity - for all of about 1 second - unfortunately my conscience defiantly would not let me go down this route!! Even if I dont agree with the way/amount of money some of these charities are blowing on self promotion.

What followed from this train of thought was that, although I have a bit of an issue with creating total scrapers, there are certain sectors that will be paying big bucks for advertising, that I dont particularly like - in fact, there are certain types of industries/advertisers that I really, really dont like. Off the top of my head, and to give you some idea, I am thinking gas companies that announce 22% price rises just as they announce record profits, petrol companies that announce record profits despite continuing to rip us off at the pumps, governments that insist on bleeding us dry with taxes (do they use adsense?). Anyhow, I am sure you get the drift and I am sure I will be able to think of many more. My first target you will have to try and guess - I will announce it when I get a site up and running.

I appreciate that this is almost definitely not the best way about making money from adsense but it is one that I am very comfortable with. I am still shying away from total scrapers, purely due to the fact that I have my doubts about their effectiveness and longevity, but I may try a few in the future (just for research you understand).

Wish me luck on my campaign,

Cheers,
Rich

How to Promote Your Adsense Sites

2006-02-25T01:48:00.000Z

Ok, this is a blatent call for help.

Having posted that adsense/niche sites are not as prevalent as may be thought, I still have a problem that is bothering me and would like thoughts of any active adsensers - particularly the regular blogger on the adsense challenge.

So, I know it will work - I have the ability to crank out plenty of sites, be they total scrapers (quicker and easier to produce) or rehashed articles (may have a little more staying power, depending on the amount of arcticles out there and the changes made to the articles).

Why arent I churning out several sites a night? Well, just aint too sure of the best way of promoting them. In fact, I have been spending my evenings trying to establish a way of interling them.

What, would you say is the best way of gaining that all important search engine ranking?

Methods I know of are:-

The straight forward site map - Sure it gets google googling but does it get you listed?
Article sites - The impression I get, is like search engines, there are plenty you would like to be listed with and would feed you plenty of traffic but are not that easy to get into. And then there are plenty of sites crying out for your articles, but have little or no status in the SEO game. Plus, lets face it, writing unique articles is a pain in the bum - If I wanted to do that, I would create a unique content site!
Your own network of sites - This is what I have been working at. But, again, it is proving to be alot of work and if you have no web presence to start with, its going to be a long and slow process to build/establish any kind of decent network.
Your blog - this seems pretty straight forward - you have a blog - its got PR - you throw up a couple of links. But, you adsensers out there dont seem to be using this method. Why? Is it due to this "bad neighbour" link thing I have been reading about - on the google website, no less. Surely if this really works, all I have to do for my online store is create a high number of adsense site, on the keyword I want my legit website to rank, then add links to all my competitors and they will be penlised - abit harsh on them!
Free directory listings - Are they still worth anything? I listed my one established adsensor with maybe 20-30 free directories, back before xmas and it lead to about one registering back link at present - Not a great return - (It wasnt Dmoz - that might have been more worthwhile!!)

So, alot of questions, but I feel important ones that are getting in the way of my progress.

If, of course, you just throw them up, submit the sitemap to google and forget - Please just let me know and I will try the same.

Cheers,
Rich

Niche Products Are Niche

2006-02-25T01:07:00.000Z

Having made the leap and actually joined up to a niche product monthly service, NPM, one of the most interesting things about the service is the forums.

Basically, having signed up, you get a pretty good impression of how many people are subscribed to the service and therefore downloading the offered products plus, and more importantly in my eyes, you get to see the type of people who are subscribing to the service.

The point of this post is to state that if you are looking into trying a little adsense marketing but, after reading a few blogs, checking a few forums, etc, get the impression that the market is flooded, think again.

Try an overture keyword report for "niche marketing" you get a pretty mediocre result of about 1694 searches in January. (Compare that with "gift idea" - 1584791 - My particular "Niche" - ;) - or maybe "Britney Spears" - 1932189 - or even "rainy day" - 7569 - ["craft rainy day" scores higher at a whopping 9969!] )

I know these are daft comparisons, but the point is, you start reading all you can about a particular subject, listening to all the people involved in that subject and you can get overwhelmed. I reckon the number of people making money out of "adsensers/niche marketing" is small. Very small. There is still alot of opportunity out there.

Going back to the NPM monthly subscription, there are a surprising number of people who have signed up who dont know the very basics about getting a website online. Never heard of php. Hell, even ftp is a new concept to alot of them. I certainly dont mean to deride these members in any way, it was only 2 years ago when I knew nothing - (some may say I still dont!) - But, just think statistics and think about what is involved in running an adsense setup. Assuming you are working on the $1/site/day theory, you gotta get 100 sites up and running, you gotta get them indexed, promoted, etc, etc.... + you gotta be patient. This is the main virtue most are missing, afaics, on the NPM forum. So, I would hazard a guess that at least 90% of the subscribers aint going to make a profit.

If any more proof is needed, think about the people you know. Friends, family. Off the top of my head, I can probably think of about 50-100 people who use the internet regularly. Out of all these, they all use search engine, they all spend a fair bit of time browsing the web, NONE of them have a blog, let alone a website. I dont personally (offline) know anyone who has set up a single website, let alone anyone who has setup 100 to start an adsense empire!

Hope this give you some hope if you are thinking of trying adsense,

Cheers,
Rich

Bu**er Me, I got page rank

2006-02-22T01:09:00.000Z

Who would believe it?

Just noticed my site has a PR4 in the google tool bar........ Astonishing.

Since setting up the blog there has been no PR registered and with very few posts during November and December, it wasnt a great surprise.

What is a big surprise is to leap straight in at PR4.

Dont worry, I know full well the importance, or lack of, of the toolbar PR rankings. My Online gift shop appears to be stuck at a permanent PR5 slot, along with every other gift shop listed in DMOZ. In fact, I have found very, very few online shops that have any other PR ranking, above or below the magic 5.

Similarly with blogs - 4 seems to be pretty much the standard number. How it effects your rankings - well, I got a few thoughts regarding blogger and google rankings I want to express in a future post - maybe tomorrow night.

For the time being, I am going to head to bed revelling in the glory of my PR position, and many thanks to all of you visitors who have visited and linked in to richandzhaoyans business update. - I am off now to check the "how much is your blog worth" site - Any offers? I would pretty much settle for a bottle of whisky - but, considering the PR, it would have to be a malt now....

Cheers,
Rich

Come on Mr.B

2006-02-22T00:46:00.000Z

Whats going on Gary?

You know we are all missing your regular blogs - I am in serious danger of getting alot more work done during my 9-5 job with no Burts osCommerce & More Blog posts.

I need the distraction and inspiration :)

Seriously, GET WELL SOON. I dont know whats up but if its any consolation, there is alot of illness going around at present, the wife and son are totally laid out with the flu. The son has gone through a right bad month, he had a cold/flu going back, middle of January, just got over that and went down with "hand, foot and mouth" disease - I thought that was just some kind of mad cow thing, but sure enough, blisters on his "hands, feet and mouth"!!! Anyhow, it wasnt as bad as it sounds, but no sooner had he got over that and the poor "little fella" is knocked down with another kickass cold. How the wife and him have suffered and yet I am still in the clear, God only knows - I am usually the biggest malingerer.

Anyhow, come on Gary - get your sick bed dragged over to the keyboard and let us know what is going down..... How much sick pay have you made, is the Make Content Unique site keeping you in the pennies?

Cheers,
Rich

Too many blogs to read....

2006-02-21T01:52:00.000Z

How do you guys keep up with all the blogs and forums that take your interest?

Since first reading a blog regularly, that would be Gary's, through the one blog, I have found many more of interest, including tonight, finding Mattians via Sarahs. Much as I love reading up on others exploits and have no doubt that they further my online education, it doesnt half eat into the day. I guess its not so much that it has to take up my time, more that its available if I want to spend some time doing something instead of doing the something that I should be doing.... If you get my drift. - Kind of along the lines of when you are supposed to be revising for that all important exam, or pushing hard to meet a deadline at work - suddenly, the spring cleaning/vacuuming/cd rearranging/phoning distant relatives/etc, all appear more important than usual.

I am currently just using googles personal homepage to keep track of the regular blogs I read up on. Is there a better way? Using google personal homepage also adds to time wasting and does the one thing I dont want google to do, it turns it back into a portal rather than a search engine. Also, it doesnt give me any indication of when a blog post has been replied to.

Is there any better/less time consuming way of keeping track of all this stuff, without me giving up half my working day? If you have any recommendations, then please bare in mind, I am a shopkeeper, so the one main stipulation is the price, ie. FREE is good. Also, if it is software, it just needs to do what it says on the can - I dont need frills, just something that will run on win98 with the minimum setup and the least amount of fuss.

And then there are forums....... Nuff said - so many, I cant read the posts never mind reply to them. I am sadly neglecting the osC forum at present, which should be all important to an osC store owner (and its generally a good read for a little controversy!)... dotdragnet.com, unitedforums.co.uk, warriorforum.com - The list is endless, especially as I am reading/writing when I should be working.

Whats the answer?

Cheers,
Rich

MASSIVE Increase in Traffic

2006-02-17T01:19:00.000Z

Ok, I have waffled on a fair bit in a reply to a previous post already this evening but have one post I want to make today.

Its been a long time since I had a good look at the stats for my main Heritage site. I know traffic is up on last year by a considerable amount but when I checked my hosting stats, I noticed that the bandwidth used wasnt up by a great deal - certainly not enough to write home about.

What could be causing this? Well, it kind of implies that the number of visitors was up by a lot but that they werent hanging around for long, ie, not using alot of bandwidth.

A quick look at the stats and the culprit was soon found - "google images" !! If I had the time I could quote the stats - believe me, they are pretty astonishing. The number one referrer to my site this month is, by far and away, google image search. I think out of the top 20 referrers this month, google images, google images uk, google images south america, google images europe, google images timbuctoo, etc, etc, etc were pretty much the only referrers present.

Why didnt I notice this before you may ask? Well, I kind of did. The situation has been growing. I could see it coming last November but what with the xmas rush and that, it had escapde my notice up until now.

Is it good or bad? Hmmm... Pass, ask me another! On the one hand, I have always maintained that bandwidth is cheap. Very cheap compared with the other costs of running an online shop. So if bandwidth is cheap and it means people see the Heritage site, no matter for how short a period, and they have come from a totally free link, well.... , if I get one sale out of 10000 visitors, then that is one I wouldnt have had without the great google images.

On the other hand, when you see just how slow your site is running at particular times of the day and you know that half of your visitors probably cant even speak English, dont know where the UK is, have absolutely no intention of buying a gift and are simply looking for a photo of a schitszu puppy the same colour as their own, you have to start questioning how far you are prepared to go for untargetted traffic.

I know I could ban the google image bot from the site - should I? I get the feeling, if I was to post this on either my webhosts forum or the osCommerce forum, the overwhelming response would be ban it. Personally, I am still thinking, but at present, the only down side I see is the speed of the site and this should change when I upgrade the hosting to a semi-dedicated solution - something I will have to do before next xmas either way. The plus side - Well, how much is it worth to have something like 3-4000 people seeing your sites name in a day? May not be worth much if they are from South America, but for the fairly high percentage from the UK, it may just trigger something in them around the festive season when they are looking for gifts and stumble on the site for a second time through a more targetted link.

As ever, let me know what you think. Just please dont tell me to put adsense on the site - I am already far too tempted :) - Talking of which, I believe I recently read a post on someones blog that indicated they were trying to use google images as a source of adsense traffic - might be worth a little more thought for the adsensers amongst us!

Cheers,
Rich