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 March 12th, 2007 — in Search Engines
There is a “Free Report” being sold and given away like crazy about how to drive lots of traffic to your site. Like most fads I haven’t even had the time to read it properly. Im still a little old school when it comes to my SEO but if anyone thinks this is worth it, let me know. I will add the pictures which are so obviously missing for the people with no imagination later.
For all I know this “report” is link bait 
It was a lovely evening and I was browsing the Internet as usual doing several searches on Google. As you are aware Google is the biggest and the most well respected search engine out there and its the only search engine people rely on when it comes to good, quality organic traffic. On this occasion I started to search for specific things or niches to overcome my boredom. Anyway, I was browsing the search engine when I decided to type in various keywords such as :-
make new friends
how to get a tattoo
learn to play soccer
be successful
make money
become invisible
fly to the moon
be rich
have a baby
Fall in love
set up my own business
write a book
get in shape
Make Money on Ebay
…when I was shocked to discover that these keywords and phrases or anything that you could think of were appearing under a website called 43 Things
I tried several other phrases lots of times to see whether my mind was playing tricks on me but to me astonishment all these various phrases were actually appearing on Google on the 1ST PAGE OUT OF MILLIONS AND MILLIONS OF RESULTS!
This told me several things that were going on. Firstly this new social networking website 43things.com was well optimised on Google and secondly the traffic was ‘FREE’ and these pages had good PR, which means this would not only be a great way to create backlinks but would also help you make sales for affiliate products.
I was immediately impressed with 43 things so I decided to check what other people were doing and how they were pulling in lots of traffic to their website using this website.
Before I take you to the website itself have a look at all the screenshots below or try typing in common words or phrases on Google that would get lots of searches on Overture. The examples below help to illustrate the above points.
Go to Google now and type in something like “Learning PHP” or “Learn PHP” (type it without quotes).
As you can see above the keyword “Learn PHP” or “Learning PHP” is on the first page of Google out of 123,0000 results!!!
The 43things.com website is well optimised for this keyword. Notice on the right hand side how many people are actually paying for this keyword, using Google Adwords.
Lets try another keyword phrase on Google.
This time type in “Learning to sing” or “Become a singer”
(See Below)
Go ahead and type in other keywords that you are passionate about and be amazed. 80% of the time the 43things.com website will appear on the first page on Google – now that is amazing!
Again the phrase is on the first page on Google – with the 43things.com website showing the results.
Notice the number of people paying for this traffic using Google Adwords. Also do not forget this is out of a million results. Not only are you getting FREE organic traffic but you can take advantage of this ‘traffic’ – here’s how.
How to use the traffic from 43things.com
So you are probably thinking so what? Here’s how it REALLY gets interesting.
Log on to http://www.43things.com and heres what you should see (See below)
This is the homepage for 43things.com
When you go on the homepage notice the phrases people are actually using and searching for to find out more information about. For example, if you type in the phrase “Live in LA” on Google the 43things.com heading will appear and it is that link that will generate tons of traffic to your website or blog.
The phrases highlighted in bold are getting the most responses and traffic so try experimenting with different ones.
Step 1
The first thing you should be doing is to create an account and register http://www.43things.com/xs?mid=1 by clicking create new account.
Fill in your details fully and enter your password etc.
Step 2
Once you have registered on 43things.com you will be able to log in with your user id and password. So go ahead and log in with your user id and password.
After you have done that you should see something like this.
The box highlighted indicates what you can type in and ’share’ with others. For example, if you are passionate about “repairing computers” then go ahead and type that phrase in.
If other people have already typed the same phrase you might want to see their responses or you might want to phrase it in a different way so when Google starts to index your paragraph you can have a better chance of getting traffic to your site.
So what? How do I get traffic?
Ok ok ok, I will get into this now.
Step 3
Remember when I told you that people are typing in different phrases and different goals and objectives that they want to do?
For example, type in ‘learn to play the guitar’ as one of your 43 things.
Not only do you find that lots and lots of people want to ‘learn’ to play the guitar (over 6000 people alone want to learn to play the guitar) but you have uncovered a ‘hungry” niche that you can fill. So for example, if you if had a free report on learning to play the guitar you can use an opt-in form, and build your list and direct people to your website!
Isn’t this spam?
No this is not spam for several reasons.
Firstly you are giving them an opportunity to find out more information and in a way ‘helping’ them.
Also notice some people who have used this as a good way to talk about their blog or band or e-book on guitars. If you’re clever , you’ll post your paragraphs on high traffic pages (preferably with page rank) and you’ll link to your own web pages within those paragraphs.
For example, if you had an affiliate link you could embed it within your paragraph so when people click on the word “More information” <--This would be a link that can take them to your affiliate page where they can find out more information.
Let me give you a good example of how this is being used.
Go to google and go ahead and type in “Write a book”.
You should notice several things here. Firstly the phrase is on the first page out of millions and millions of results, which shows the power of 43 things in terms of optimisation.
Secondly people are constantly clicking on the link and reading and replying. See below to see what I mean.
Notice the time frame between the last reply – people are replying after hours or days so people are actually reading this page.
Also notice I have crossed out the 2 links due to the fact that these links are nothing to do with me, but are just an example. However, if you do want to see the full page just click here.
http://www.43things.com/things/view/220
Imagine if you had a product or a free report on writing a novel? These people have cleverly used this method to their advantage and cleverly put a paragraph, giving a quality response to the title. Also notice that they have titled their paragraph so that it does not look like its “spam”, its a quality response.
In order to leave a paragraph you just click “I want to do this” (below)
Step 4
Now you have a chance of leaving a good quality paragraph and focus on your niche. You might want to leave your link within your text so when people click on your sentence it will look more like a professional quality link. For example,
this is an example of what I am talking about
If you hover your mouse above the link then you will see that it looks like its embedded in your text. This is a clever way of disguising your affiliate link.
Now going back to the “write a book” example.
You will notice that over 12,000 people on 43 things want to write a book, and also it is on a PR6 page (hover your mouse over it, if you have a google toolbar page rank installed on your browser)
That’s how simple and powerful this method really is.
I have included some tips on how to use this method to your advantage.
FOCUS on people who need help. For example, over 3000 insomniacs are looking for ways to get more sleep on a PR5 page.
FOCUS on markets related to your own sites - 12,000 people want to fall in love on a PR6 page. Can you help these people with a product or link to a service? Is there a way you can use to direct them to something you created?
You’ll find them (plus all the others who visit this page but who don’t write or register, at 43things.com/things/view/33 )
If you see the value of this then you will not only start making commissions but also get good backlinks which means more endless traffic to your website or blog.
I hope this has not only given you lots of ideas but it will open the way for your future plans to get more traffic for your products in the future
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Posted by Jason on January 12th, 2007 — in Online Business, Search Engines
I got a great email from a Photographer that I really respect. I had sang his praises on this blog some weeks back and he wrote a short email to thank me for that and ask for a bit of SEO advice. Now he threw around words like “expert” which I am always uncomfortable with as Business is my area of expertise, not SEO. (Guys like Rand Fishkin are experts in my opinion and I couldn’t be in that company on my best day with years of study). Regardless, SEO has always been a hobby of mine and I was asked just for the basics based on their site and industry so I had at it.
I have removed a few of the details (That is what the ***** indicates) so I don’t start ranking for his keywords but I thought the advice below might help someone in a similar situation to him. Basically he is a kick ass artist and like anyone who has a primary expertise but not a lot of time to be learning PHP or SEO, he needed some things to try that didn’t eclipse his actual work.
Here is my advice:
****Personal Pleasantries****
Firstly, you already know the importance of links in Search Engine Optimisation by your email. Industry links such as on art related sites and directories also give you “extra credit” so you are in the right frame of mind. Another aspect is to keep generating links. Google and the lesser search engines look at it as a popularity contest and a site that is always generating links is on they see as important and therefore rank higher.
The first thing you need to do is to figure out what keywords you want to target. If you are unsure if it is worth targeting, you can use a tool like a Keyword Suggestion Tool which will tell you how many people search for it. After all, it does you no good to rank for obscure terms if no one ever searches for them. On the flip side, although a term like “art” has 20,000 people searching a day, it is such a broad term and difficult (read expensive) to rank for, it isn’t efficient.
You are better off choosing keywords such as ”**Country** Art”, “Artists **Country**” etc as the person who searches for that keyword (a mere 125 a day in that case) is much more likely to already be interested in your product. You will notice with that tool that it also suggests other related phrases so its great to get the creative juices flowing.
The reason knowing what you are targeting is important is because what is called “anchor text” is a crucial thing to search engines. Anchor Text is the few words that are displayed in the link. Most people make the mistake when asking someone to link to them to use their name or website name (ie **His Name** or **SiteExample.com**). As you will notice you already rank #1 for these terms because they are very few **His Name** in the world with sites. Instead they should link to you (or when entering the info for a directory) with your keywords. Just be sure to rotate between your chosen phrases as Google and the other SEs like that variety.
I can put together a list of common ways to gain related links for you this week and email it off to you. Plus if you have any questions, ask away. ****This is true for yfs1 readers, feel free to comment with questions and will post specifics at a later date****
As far as doing anything on site, your site isn’t too bad. I’m not sure why it redirects from www.example.com to http://www.example.com/-/example/ when you go to it but sometimes if its not broke, you don’t try to fix it. You have a lot of related and natural text on your homepage which is good (Artists and photographers tend to have only pictures and super clean designs which may be visually good but really hurts when it comes to Search Engine Rankings and Accessibility for the Disabled)
Right now Search Engines seem to eat up fresh content. They love sites that are constantly updated and your type of site currently doesn’t lend itself to that. After all, you are an artist not a webpage coder so constantly updating the HTML or PHP code can be a job in itself. What I would suggest is to add a blog to your site. Your web designer should be able to add a Wordpress blog in less then 5 minutes and a simple custom skin to match your site can be had for probably less then €50. What a blog allows is for you to just type in text and hit and button to publish it. Their is no coding required and it is very easy.
The reason I suggest a blog is because you are very technical minded and probably would be well suited to contributing to it. Perhaps a post per week but the nice thing is you aren’t committed to any time frame. Great things to write about would be the technical aspects of developing or industry trends or basically anything photography related that interests you.
What you will find with that type of content is you will bring in a lot of unique visitors under different keywords which occur naturally. Your blog then works as a bit of a funnel as you will have links in your sidebar (the strip along the right hand side) or the header to different parts of your site. People read your thoughts and observations then look at the art that is produced as a result. Personally, I love writing for my own blog even though it doesn’t funnel to my retail sites. An added benefit of blogs is if someone reads something they really like, they tend to share it with others by linking to it. I have never traded a single link for yfs1.com yet I have thousands of people linking to me. I have those links because of my informative posts such as my advice on starting a web based business and a guide to getting unbanned with Google AdSense (a common problem Webmasters face and therefore quite popular)
The other content generator (have I said the Search Engines love content enough times yet), is a forum. These are quite popular and have the added bonus of getting others to add content. They are easy to install and set up but the real downside is they are very time consuming. I don’t suggest one in your case as the last thing you want to do is deal with tons of spammers. With a blog, you can control the comments made with the flick of a switch (They have great tools that wipe out 99% of Spam without any work on your part)
Hopefully this gets you started and like I said, I can give my opinions on more specifics or other ways to promote and help your site rank with very little effort.
All the best and don’t be a stranger!
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