Chislyn

I visited Chicago this weekend to see my family.  My sister lives there and instead of all of us going to my parents house, we decided to go to a place more lively and get the benefits of my sister’s apartment.

I live in New York, and going to Chicago was relaxing, but I think I’d be bored living there.  Now, this may be in part to the fact I grew up in the Midwest and went to a BigTen school, but it is also the sheer difference in size of the city.  New York is much larger in terms of urban space, people, and culture.

What I like about Chicago:

• People are more fun
• Wrigley Field and Cubs fans are more fun than Yankee fans
• Trees, plants, and fresh water
• Hot dogs, deep dish pizza

What I missed about New York:

• The intensity of the city
• Abundance of experiences you get just walking down the street
• Deeper culture
• Diversity of people: attitudes, lifestyles, social classes, ethnicities, cultures (this difference is partly due where I stayed in Chicago, but in New York, even the most homogeneous neighborhoods are more diverse)

What do you think? Will this last the way is it? I know I’m spending a lot less with Google on some niches than I once was, and more with Yahoo and MSN on those areas. But is it for the greater good? Probably. It looks like some people suffered, and it looks like the right ones. Remember how big.com subdomains always came up in search ads? You’d always see things like fire.big.com where it was a picture with a border surrounded by 3 blocks of adsense. Thankfully, now they’re gone from the ads! It looks like they had to change their design a bit to adapt.

Of course everything comes with problems. What about the inside information you could use to better target you’re markets? I think this is a pretty significant flaw in Google’s QS. Before you being the insider (business owner, one who actually knew the industry, and anyone with deep inside knowledge of an industry or niche probably has better content) you could get cheap clicks from areas the mindless mass would never know about. Now it seems like it’s more about spending time logged into adwords, getting your clickthrough up, fixing your negatives, changing your ads, instead of focusing on building quality content.

The QS is a good idea, but is Google smart enough to let the experts keep their inside edge? We’ll see after their first round of changes!

Matt Mullenweg (the leading Matt in Google) released the new Akismet, version 2.0. For everyone using it now, it looks like it’s definitely worth upgrading. If you don’t, download and use it because it’s a life saver. Matt says his favorite new feature is the last one he lists in the Akismet blog, and I have to agree. Because comments on old posts are more likely to be spam, you can have it delete the flagged spam immediately, hence lessening the time it takes to double check the spam folder.

People that know me well know about my web business. They know I make enough to pay the bills, and enough to live comfortably in a place like Buffalo where home prices are as low as $30,000 for a decent house. It always astonishes people when they tell others what I do and the money that can be made. Most people just don’t think it’s possible. Some want to get involved and help me out. I would love the help and need the manpower, but beyond not wanting to work with friends (which generally I believe is a very bad idea), it is also difficult because of a knowledge gap.

I’ve been on both sides of this, but when one person knows a lot more than the other, the more knowledgeable person ends up doing more of the higher level work, or spends too much time teaching the other one the basics. Just like anything else, there’s things one should know before approaching others for partnerships or help. To be respected in any business one must “talk the talk” and be able to converse about the industry as a whole, or at least be willing to do so. Keeping up is very important with every business and good reading material is essential. I am by no means an expert, but thankfully I’ve found some great resources for learning and want to share them with you.

Books

Aaron Wall’s SEO Book

Aaron Wall is one of the premier names in the business. By reading his blog, which is another great resource by the way, one can see he’s been in the game for a while and see how smart the man is on this subject. The sites he has, including his blog, rank very well for very competitive topics. His book has all the basics you need starting out and provides foundation for learning and building traffic to your sites.

Industry Figures And Their Blogs

The most live, thorough, and in-tune updates and news on the industry comes from the blogosphere. I mentioned Aaron’s blog already which a great one. Here is a list of more below.

NOTE: Some of these guys are at odds with each other as their styles vary. I’m not at a level where I care much about the publicity power struggle or the industry politics. It’s actually pretty funny to read about. These people all have good ideas, all make a lot of money, and are all good for the industry. That’s good enough for me.

Shoemoney’s blog - Jeremy Schoemaker has a blog, radio show, and is basically a big figure in the industry. His approach is more white hat and he seems to focus on viral marketing. I read his blog to stay in touch with the industry as a whole, see his predictions, and for inspiration.

Aojon and the Wicked Fire forums - The Super Affiliate Marketer former super affiliate marketer taking to the next level by starting his own affiliate program. Quadzilla put in well on Shoemoney’s radio show when he said starting your own affiliate program has a lot of potential. Jon’s latest post talks about his resignation from the affiliate marketing gig to do just that. His blog and forums however has gobs of helpful and lucrative information about affiliate marketing, PPC arbitrage, and other related topics to making money online. Sign up for his forums and look through his blog archives. He is very candid about the business and doesn’t hold back.

SEO Black Hat Quadzilla - He’s one of the primary figures if not the primary figure for black hat SEO. His blog actually talks a lot about white hat topics recently, and he addresses that in a semi-recent post. He’s been “chasing the money” for a while now as he says in the Shoemoney radio show (notice the pattern here.. yes, the show is well worth listening to) like I have through different industries. Like him I think the mobility of this business alone is a reason to get into it. Being a black hat, Quadzilla discusses topics more related to the technical side of the business. I haven’t joined his private forums, but judging by his intelligence and old blog posts, I’m sure they are worth the $100 per month if you want to do black hat seo.

Frank Watson - He keeps up with the search engines very well and is a moderator on SearchEngine Watch (another great resource.) He also has a great viewpoint as he sees from the big spending advertiser side of the business. I read his blog on a regular basis.

There are a lot more, but here is a list to start from. Readers, feel free to leave comments with other good resources, and come back for part two.

My first job was selling telecommunications packages door-to-door in the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts. It was of course all year round so we’d work outdoors in both great and terrible conditions. It was commission driven and as you can imagine we dealt with a lot of rejection. This leads one to find out what their strengths fast, or quit. I almost quit, but three months into the job I found my rhythm. I went from miserable, cold, and poor to excited, (still cold because I clicked in December), and now had enough to pay the bills and then some.

What happened? It wasn’t magic. I changed my approach. Maybe I changed faster than I normally would have because of my circumstances, but I changed, and found something that worked. It wasn’t a book I read or a seminar I attended, but instead of doing the canned script we are told to use, I built and perfected my own script, and used some creativity with the fliers I dropped. The change was very simple, and it fit my personality, and finally things started to click.

Ok, so what does this have to do with Internet Marketing?

The point here is to find your strengths, and push them as far as you can. Everyone has experiences, knowledge, and skills that are unique. I’d bet that most people in life never use their strengths to the full potential, or even know what they are. Most peoples’ best sites are sites they know something about, or have knowledge about something that the rest of the population doesn’t. I’m not just talking about content, but design, and the overall system.

Here’s an example. I used to work in telecommunications. This industry, like many, is filled with lingo and words that few people outside the industry know, or at least be familiar enough with them to put them into the keywords they bid on. This isn’t a complicated example, but NPA NXX is the area code and the next three digits of a phone number. This keyword is more likely searched by telecom people, and depending on yours site, would give you better quality traffic. Also with the relevant knowledge and awareness this topic as a whole, you could also have better targeted ads. 212 is the NPA (area code) in New York:

Again this instance isn’t brain surgery, but I worked in telecommunications so I am aware of this particular niche. That circled ad for the New York area code is another source of potentially cheap traffic for something besides a phone book. Most area code ads are very poor, but if you know the area and demographics of the area code, you could have great targeted ads.

Another example:

I am a Michigan Wolverines fan. If I were selling Michigan merchandise (the best selling college brand in apparel) I know these words would be less expensive as the big sports clothing, memorabilia, or ticket advertisers probably wouldn’t know them:

• “big house” - the name of the football stadium. no michigan wolverines ads here.
• “bo schembachler” - the recently deceased famed head coach (RIP Bo). no bid bidders with highly targeted ads here.
• etc etc

The same thing applies for choosing ads to put on your site. You as a person close to the topic know more about what you would click on if you were on a related site.

So use your edges, leverage your strengths. Don’t worry as much about your fall backs, they will take care of themselves.

I graduated from college in 2001 with a computer science degree, which was about the worst time to graduate and get a job in this field. I had a decent GPA and graduate from a good school, but it didn’t matter. The internet bubble was over and companies were no longer hiring programmers by the dozen, or at all. Meanwhile I, on my senior year spring break, had already signed a lease for an apartment in the North End in Boston.

I grew up in the Midwest, and went to school in same State I grew up in. So after twenty-one years of the Midwest, Boston was a sizable change for me, not to mention going alone and trying to find my first job with an expensive lease to pay. It wasn’t easy. The only thing around were sales jobs, so that’s what I did.

I will discuss my crazy stories and nutty jobs in later posts for those interested, as this post is about what I am doing now. I worked for six different companies and nine different jobs within only five years (one was on the side). I also started three ventures of my own which were rewarding but short-lived as I never quit my day job. Although I still have a day job, now I am on to something different and much better, site building and internet marketing.

I put my first site up in June. It was a bit of a headache because I don’t know a lot about design, but I did my best. Shortly afterwards I starting having ideas for new sites. I saw Adsense all over the internet and started wondering how much it really pays. Could people really make good money just by putting up a site? Yes they could. They do.

I slowly began adding sites, signed up for Adsense, and signed up for Adwords. My first month I made about $50. Wow. That’s some decent going out money (maybe 50-75% of what it takes to go out in Manhattan, or 85-100% in Brooklyn where I live now). My second month I made $110. I now make over $2500 per month profit, and trying to grow as fast as possible.

The moral here is that you too can do this. You don’t need to quit your day job, take out a loan, or buy a moving van and solicit people for moving gigs on Craigslist (one of my former ventures.) You can do this with a little money, creativity, and a couple hours a day or less.

Get started. Good luck.

I’ve never used it, but Google Answers is terminated. Read on…
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/adieu-to-google-answers.html

Now that we are making more and more on adsense, we have to spend more and more time figuring out taxes.  This is my first year with adsense or any other form of online advertising; hence it will be my first time filing taxes for this income.  It’s been a good year so far, and hope it gets even better, but I do fret over preparing the taxes.  I found this article about it.  Here is the part I didn’t really know much about:

Another important fact is you need to realize which your google adsense earnings fit under: a hobby or a business. Most google adsense savvy users who earned a lot of cash on it decide to make it a business. This helps them use any expenses on advertising their website and domain or hosting costs as business deductions. Yet, most small time users decide to make it a hobby, which greatly reduces your taxes on it. The IRS has an article that can help you with this located at:

Business OR Hobby?

Please keep in mind that just because you think you make enough money to declare your google adsense earnings business earnings, doesn’t mean you can. As the IRS promptly tells us that to tax your a business you need to have a certain structure. Meaning you need to have employees which ends up being only you (official term sole proprietorship). Loans and costs and all of those official things that go with businesses, so you can’t just declare yourself a business overnight.

I’ll add my two sense by giving suggestions for write-offs:

• computer
• printer
• printer paper
• power strip
• desk
• home office percent of your rent
• travel expenses for webmaster or online advertising conferences
• domain names
• hosting fees
• books about marketing
• publications
• software you buy

You ever get adsense ads way off topic? A common scenario I have is when the page has a marketing friendly domain name that may have other connotations so the ads coming into the adsense blocks are way off base. An example of this is the business blog, The Justinian. The blog is all about business and trading the markets, but ads were showing up for ‘Justin Timberlake.’

Adsense now has a way to target the content on your page, but use wisely or you could get banned. This is from a techaddi.com article:

Google has added several features to their adsense program to enable publishers to better target ads.Section targeting is the latest and most effective addition to adsense.

Some things to note before implementing Google Section Targeting:

1. Don’t cheat Google by targetting wrong content (doing so will result in Google banning).
2. Always include user comments in the Tags.
3. If you do not see results quickly, give it few days for the adsense bot to crawl your blog.
4. If your Google earnings drop for the first few days, experiment for some time.
5. Always include the Title of post within the tags.

This is how it’s done.Just open your HTML page in your prefered editor such as notepad and place your cursor to the beginning of your article and insert the following line:
note:If you are using wordpress or any other blog publishing software that contains a built in editor,you can place the following lines without any external software such as notepad.

Then point your cursor where your post ends and insert the following HTML line

By adding the above code to your template you are basically suggesting to the google bot which content you want included.

I have yet to try it as I just saw this article today, but plan to do so shortly. I’ll post again if I get something shocking.

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