Posted by Jason on March 20th, 2007 — in Zany / Off Topic, Interviews, Forums, Society, Online Business, Question Time, Reviews, Search Engines
I have just completed a guide to not only starting an online business but also keeping one running and profitable. This is currently a 40+ page step by step guide on a variety of topics.
What makes this guide different is that not only was it hand written by myself based on my own experience and success (no ghost writers here), it is a pure content eBook. If like me you have bought a few eBooks in the past that boasted 50+pages of content, you will know that they usually have more like 5 pages of real content once you strip away the advertising and self promoting. My guide is pure advice.
In addition to the already useful and complete guide, anyone purchasing a copy will also get the latest chapters emailed to them as soon as they are complete. These chapters will be written in the same helpful and easy to understand writing style and will focus on specific techniques which are extraordinarily useful for promotion of your new business and adding profitability.
This product is launching on March 27th but Off the Top of My Head readers can get an advance copy at a reduced price. When it launches, it will be offered at $37. In the run up to launch, you can secure a copy (Plus the bonus chapters as they are released, as well as bonus material emailed on the 27th) for the low price of $25.
To get your guide right away (it is emailed to you within 24 hours of payment, although within an hour in most cases), just use the payment link below:
Yes, I Want a Discounted Copy of The Online Business Guide
No Longer Available - See Launch Above
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Posted by Jason on February 28th, 2007 — in Forums, Online Business
Anyone who goes to Google to search for information these days probably ends up at a forum at some point. I have covered many times the power of forums when it comes to promoting a business and the funnel effect you can achieve for conversions.
On a related topic, I am currently auctioning off a spot in my signature at a major forum called Digital Point. For those not well versed in what a signature is, it is the small bit of sales copy and links that appear under every post made. What I suppose is signifigant in this case is that my signature appears on nearly 14,000 posts.
This translates into two things in my experience. The first is publicity or promotion. If you offer a service that would appeal to the target market, you can convert at a decent rate. I know for instance many people who submit sites to directories or sell articles that do quite well advertising in signatures. The other aspect is that sites listed in signatures with that many posts will always get fast indexing and benefit from deep crawls. I have routinely gotten new sites indexed within hours by throwing them into my signature and had “problem sites” with only a few pages indexed jump to thousands after placing them.
The last area a signture link may help is with SEO. This is to a much lesser extent however. It seems to boost PR especially with new sites however it doesn’t do a whole lot to help rankings. I can usually get a PR5 in the first update using my signature but again, this has never been a sure thing.
So, if you are interested in bidding, the auction is on until Friday and the money is going to a charitable project so bid away. All of the details are in this thread:
Check Out the Signature Auction
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Posted by Jason on December 5th, 2006 — in Forums
Probably one of the hardest parts of starting or running a forum is to not only get it started but to keep it going. Coming in a close second however is fending off spammers. There are tons of people that preach how forum spamming doesn’t work when it comes to ranking for loads of reasons. They range from Google knowing it is spam and not counting it to the fact your messages will get erased so why bother. I have my own opinions on what works however just the fact that people will go through so many hoops en masse seems to make you believe it does have some effect. It is the lengths they go through that have put me over the edge.
In the early days before one of my forums ranked, all was good. Sure I got a couple of spammers using automated tools but they were pretty easy to control in those days. As I started ranking better though, the automated bots started hitting. Most never posted but instead put some crap in their profile. Those were easy to deal with as all I did is change the settings so that if you have less then 1 post, you aren’t displayed in the user list. That way they can spam all they want since neither I nor the SE’s would ever see it.
As time went by though, just because of sheer volume the posts started flooding in. Because they use different IPs and email addresses, individual bans were useless. Instead I did what I hate about forums. I enabled the Captcha. It’s a horribly annoying thing for real users and I absolutely hate it but the bots forced my hand. Of course with a forum growing in standing every day in regards to the Search Engines (and of course that is what these automated programs seek out), I soon had spammers who thought it worthy to add a human touch. I suppose when the possible benefit reaches a certain level, they must feel that it is worth it to hand enter the Captcha. I imagine a program just lines them up for them and they pay some kid or person in a more cost efficient country like $2 an hour. These are the guys that have driven me insane lately.
Now, with all this stupid fuss, I made a rash decision. The forums revenue comes exclusively from lurkers who read like crazy and click ads but never register or want to post. So I decided to require Admin verification for new members. I was figuring there only had to be a few joins a day and I could approve them one by one and watch them. To me surprise I got like 100 verification emails on the first day alone. That was a number that amazed me and I know for a fact that out of that 700 a week only 1 might actually be legit.
So I have decided to just not approve any new members. Its a ridiculous move but I am sick of all the spammers. The forum still operates in a major profit with existing members and lurkers so I just decided maybe I don’t want it to grow. It has allowed me to concentrate on more efficient money makers with a fraction of the stress while not actually “shutting down” the forum and losing existing revenue.
There is an upside I didn’t count on too. I got a few links from some blogs where they were asking why its difficult to get an account at my forum. Two of those links were on PR6 pages without a nofollow. Maybe I should close all my sites 
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