by El Plumber (admin) on January 23, 2010
I’ve been talking about search engine traffic lately, since that is what I am targeting with my niche sites these days. Grab a good search results position Google for some half-decent keywords and it’s free traffic that keeps coming and coming without having to pay for advertising.
But at the same time, do not forget to use social networks to drive traffic. Sure, you can go try to attract tons of Twitter followers (who will likely just ignore you) and try to make lots of Facebook friends (who will likely Hide you from their feeds) and so on, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.
Google and other search engines trust social networking sites more than they will likely trust your site! It’s far easier to get your post on Digg or Propeller or Mixx to rank highly in search results than it is to get a new site to rank that high.
Don’t believe me? Take a look at this report for the last six months of referral clicks for Electron Plumber:
| Referrer |
Views |
| facebook.com/home.php? |
860 |
| google.com/support/forum/p/Web%20Sear… |
685 |
| google.com/support/forum/p/Web Search… |
623 |
| facebook.com/home.php |
578 |
| facebook.com/home.php?ref=home |
531 |
| digg.com/educational/10_Ways_to_Spot_… |
518 |
| digg.com/business_finance/Google_Mone… |
397 |
| mixx.com/stories/4709637/josh_made_ca… |
365 |
| google.com/support/forum/p/AdSense/th… |
330 |
| digg.com/business_finance/The_Miami_G… |
318 |
| prosperly.com/2009/make-money-posting… |
254 |
| google.com/support/forum/p/AppSecurit… |
230 |
| google.com |
213 |
| mixx.com/stories/7047354/google_adwor… |
192 |
| entrecard.com/category/browser?catego… |
192 |
| digg.com/business_finance/Mary_s_Mone… |
183 |
| digg.com/world_news/The_Los_Angeles_T… |
162 |
| digg.com/business_finance/Debt_Free_K… |
159 |
| facebook.com |
154 |
| anarchology.org/index.php?topic=2178.… |
135 |
| scam.com/showthread.php?t=118436 |
124 |
| digg.com/business_finance/Yoursearchp… |
120 |
| blogstorm.co.uk/easy-google-profit-sc… |
120 |
| forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.ph… |
108 |
| mixx.com/stories/5345691/the_los_ange… |
105 |
| facebook.com/home.php?ref=logo |
98 |
| digg.com/d1ok2C |
96 |
| mixx.com/stories/5345724/kevins_road_… |
90 |
While it’s important to note that direct referring sites account for less than 15% of the traffic we receive (the rest is direct from search engines), it’s still quite a number of visits and views.
What you should specifically look at though is the Digg and Mixx referrals in there. Why those two? Because those are really the only social networks we’ve submitted to. Well, Propeller (free links) and Reddit a little bit too, but mostly Digg and Mixx. And not every post either, probably less than half of our posts.
And those are Digg superstar posts either, most have at 2 or 3 Diggs on them tops, it’s just that for certain search queries, Google ranks those links higher than our actual content, sometimes on the first page when the original story isn’t even in the top two pages.
So post those stories! Don’t be shy. Plus it’s crazy simple, takes only a couple of minutes to post a story. Even less if you use an automatic bookmarking tool like Bookmarking Demon to auto post to all the top social bookmarking sites at the same time.
Do it, do it now.
by El Plumber (admin) on January 17, 2010
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a very important component of getting traffic to any website. Ideally you would have a great site that magically spreads virally around the internet by word of mouth/email/Twitter/Facebook then holds on to that traffic long term. Until then, there is great traffic available free from Google if you know how to get it.
Think about this. When you want to chat with your friends and socialize you go to Facebook or Twitter or Foursquare. When you want information, you go to a search engine and type in some keywords. Matt Curtis from Google has stated that approximately 25% of all search queries HAVE NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE. That’s right, 25% of things people are searching for have never been searched for according to Google statistics.
And many of those new search terms would surprise you. I just did a quick check on one of my sites for an example and found this search that led someone to it today: “were are you aloud to ride electric bikes?” That’s right, poor spelling and all. Now I’m not suggesting you go out and try to get these type of completely crappy long tail search terms.
For a good keyword, one that is searched thousands or tens of thousands of times a month, the difference between the 1st and 2nd position in the search results is huge. The difference between the 1st and 5th is even larger.
A couple of years ago, AOL published some of their search data as part of a research project. Whole other story, a number of people at AOL lost their jobs over it. But before AOL wised up and realized that there was still personal data in the actual search terms themselves, people downloaded copies of the full data set. Some smart people then mined that for data on click through rates for various rankings in the AOL Search Engine, which gets its data from Google.
So what you are looking at here is an average number of times someone clicks on each search result position after performing a search. Take a look at the data:
% of clicks
Click Rank1: 42.13%
Click Rank2: 11.90%
Click Rank3: 8.50%
Click Rank4: 6.06%
Click Rank5: 4.92%
Click Rank6: 4.05%
Click Rank7: 3.41%
Click Rank8: 3.01%
Click Rank9: 2.85%
Click Rank10: 2.99%
1st page: 89.82%
2nd page: 10.18%
Now it’s important to note that this is aggregate data, and that the percentages are going to differ wildly for various keywords. I’d bet a specific search like “Walmart” would yield well over 80% hitting on the first result, where as something generic like “porn” would have a more balanced distribution between the top three or four items. However, it certainly is telling. For 10,000 searches on a generic term a day, on average, you’ll get anywhere from 10%-40% of those hits a day in the top spot, vs 2%-15% for the second spot, vs 1%-8% for the third spot and down from there.
Note that other junk shows up at the top of most Google search results these days that can wildly affect the number of clicks you’ll get for the #1 search spot. Depending on how much people are paying, the top three Adword ads can appear at the top of the search results rather than the side. Add that Google now displays things like top shopping results and images and top video results above the regular old search results, turning your old #1 text search result into a #6. Or if you’re smart, turning your old #6 ranking into a #1 by using video and images.
But the biggest lesson here is if you aren’t on the first page, you’ll get a fraction of the traffic. If you aren’t even on the second page, you might as well not exist.
by El Plumber (admin) on January 13, 2010
Even in the new Twitter/Facebook/Foursquare/Digg/Reddit Social Media onslaught, for an ethical marketer search engine traffic is still by far the BEST source of traffic for most sites, especially newer sites. You sometimes read other places about sites still doing fine after getting canned from Google rankings because of some grey hat (more on that later) technique they used, and I say best for most sites because there are always exceptions, but Search Engine traffic is still king because it is ACTIONable traffic and actionable traffic converts to $$$ better than random traffic.
Think of it this way. How did you get to this site today? Maybe a friend sent you a link about a scam on Facebook, or you came through someone pointing out an article on a forum post you were reading. I would consider you a passive visitor. You came because you were interested in the link, but you were not ACTIVEly looking for information at the time.
The likelihood of you clicking on an ad here is lower than someone who came here by specifically searching for information. Say you typed in “work at home” into a search engine and arrived here. You are ACTIVEly looking for information, and thus far more likely to take ACTION on an ad you see on this site for anything related to working at home jobs, since that is what you came looking for. Your mind will almost subconsciously be scanning for terms related to what you searched for, and you might find it in a context sensitive ad.
These terms are important to remember; passive traffic is not bad at all, it’s just likely to not as good as ACTIVE traffic. And Search Engine traffic is ACTIVE traffic.
NOTE: Targeting your site niche is extremely important here toward your “conversion rate”. Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors that turn into revenue. For example, if you get 100 visitors and 2 of them click a pay per click ad or buy a product, your conversion rate is 2%. Some search engine traffic will always convert better than others, but no matter what you need to carefully target your advertising. A search for “who won american idol” isn’t someone who is going to convert for an affiliate program for earning money online. However, they may convert for albums or DVDs of American Idol winners.
For example, we have one site that targets and gets over 75% of it’s traffic from search engines for people looking for generic terms. For example, they are looking for generic terms, things like “rechargeable power tool”, not “black and decker storm”. And in these cases, the ads on that site get a 8-10% click through ratio, vs a 1-2% ratio on sites that target specific products. Anyone searching for “black and decker storm” has likely already made a decision and is looking for product info or to buy. Anyone looking for “rechargeable power tool” has no idea what they’re looking for and want advice, will click around and be more likely to be interested in a targeted ad for power tools.
Again, search engines aren’t the only game in town, not by a longshot, but if you want free targeted traffic, Google is still king.
by El Plumber (admin) on January 11, 2010
Found another great Wordpress plugin the other day, this one called DoFollow Trackbacks. If you link to any article on The Electron Plumber you get a dofollow link in return back to your site from that article!
What is dofollow?
By default, Wordpress has a built in feature for both trackbacks and pingbacks, both methods used to update someone of a link back to their site.
Thus, if I was to link to your website from The Electron Plumber, you would receive a notification through your Wordpress or Blogger interface that someone was linked to your site. It’s automatic and requires no effort on the part of the linker or the linkee.
Another feature of Wordpress is that you can allow trackbacks to appear on the original article page as a way of thanking the other site for linking back to you in the first place. But by default those links at marked as “rel=nofollow”.
Now, if you have a website or blog or plan on doing any internet marketing and do not know what nofollow is and how it affects you, you’ll have to learn. Basically marking a link with a “rel=nofollow” tag is a way to tell search engines (specifically Google) that you do not trust that link and you do not want the search engine to count that link as a vote for the site you are linking to. The most common uses are to link to an affiliate program, or to link to a site you want to point out to users as a bad site, or simply to prevent spam. The theory is that if blog comments and user editable sites such as Wikipedia automatically nofollow links, then spammers won’t bother trying to build links using them to get a better search engine ranking. It certainly doesn’t prevent all spam, but seems to cut down on it for the most part.
Also, if you allow people to place links in your comments that are dofollow, search engines see that as an endorsement. And if that endorsement goes to a known spam or “bad” site, the search engine may actually penalize you for putting such a bad link on your site, that is unless is is nofollowed.
What does all this mean for you? If you link to any of our articles from your site or blog, you get an automatic dofollow link back to your site or blog from the page you linked to!
Enjoy!
by El Plumber (admin) on January 1, 2010
I’ve been an Amazon Affiliate for almost a year and a half, not on this site (although I really should add some links to books down the sidebar there someday) but on a couple of other sites. Last year before Amazon basically killed the practice, I was doing what is generally called Affiliate Arbitrage, where you could buy advertising somewhere like Google Adwords for popular product keywords and send the people directly to Amazon without needing to build a website in between. As long as you make more in commissions than in advertising, you make money.
That practice was killed by Amazon about 10 months ago, and I stopped advertising and started focusing on my niche product review sites.
Amazon lets you create up to 100 custom affiliate tags per account to help you track which links people are making purchases through. If you click on a link and buy something, I could tell which link you clicked on and thus which links were working the best. Rumor has it that if you wrote to Amazon Associates support, they would create up to 1500 affiliate tags per account for you to help with tracking, but I’ve never bothered.
Looking back at my sales figures over the holidays this year, I noticed a strange thing. Some of the tags I had used to track purchases made from advertising over a year ago were actually making sales and thus commissions during the holidays.
At first I thought I must have made a mistake and used an old tag somewhere, but when I searched my sites, I found nothing. Those tags had not been unused for a year.
Then it hit me, people had bookmarked my Amazon Affiliate links! Somewhere out there were multiple people who had browser bookmarks to Amazon with my tag in them, and everytime they clicked their bookmark bought something, I make a commission off it.
What is and what does this have to do with the Amazon Site Stripe you ask? The Site Stripe is something that appears at the top of the Amazon web pages for people who are logged into the Amazon Affiliate program. It looks like this:
Well, if you use the Site Stripe to make links to non-product pages at Amazon such as a Search result or a Category home page, your tag does not end up in the final URL and thus you will never get credit for sales by anyone who bookmarks that link.
Look at these two links below. One was generated from the Site Stripe using the Link To This Page function, and the other by adding my tag directly to the URL from Amazon proper:
PlayStation 3 Search – Not Site Stripe Generated
PlayStation 3 Search – Site Stripe Generated
See the difference? No? Well, the first one is a direct link. The second one contains a REDIRECT call from Amazon that takes you to the page but WITHOUT your affiliate tag in the URL. It still counts when someone clicks through it and buys something, as the redirect takes care of tagging it as potentially your sale but if they happen to bookmark it your tag is not in the URL.
How did I make that first link that has my tag in it? Simple. I took the original URL from a search at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss?url=search-alias%3Dvideogames&field-keywords=Playstation+3&x=0&y=0
and I jammed one of my Affiliate Tags into it:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss?url=search-alias%3Dvideogames&tag=playstation19-20&field-keywords=Playstation+3&x=0&y=0
Simple. My tag is playstation19-20, so I find the first & (or any &, doesn’t matter really) and I add this directly before it: &tag=youraffiliatetaghere, in my case it’s &tag=playstation19-20
Honestly, I find just grabbing the URL and adding my tag easier than using the Site Stripe anyway. Just make sure you get the tag correct or you won’t get credit for any sales. Go to the official Amazon Affiliate Link Checker to make sure any links you create are giving you proper credit.
Enjoy!
by El Plumber (admin) on December 29, 2009
Wow! I want a free fan of large bills too!
If you want the summary, yes, Travis did actually make cash. But he did it by stealing from you. And while you can work from home posting Google advertisements on the internet, you will get nothing but a giant headache and major screwing (and not the good kind) if you give these people your credit card.
It is our opinion that the people running the Travis Made Cash site and the people behind the Google Profits Kit are breaking the law pushing these part time online job kits that do nothing other than drain your credit cards. I really had hoped that something would change on December 1st. The FTC announced near the end of the summer that on December 1st, 2009, they would implement new guidelines clarifying the rules about what types of sites, advertising and affiliate offers were considered legal and how disclosures needed to be handled.
Well, looks like it was a complete and utterly empty gesture from the FTC, as these Google Profits kit type scams continue to invade every corner of the internet.
If this is your first time running into one of these fake news sites or fake blog sites promoting the, check out our article on the original Easy Google Profit scam that started this whole thing.
How does the Google Profit Kit work? Here, I’ll lay it out:
- Some unsavory character, lets call him Phil for lack of a better term, takes an old electronic book about how you can make money online by posting Google Adsense ads (which is a FREE program from Google), then makes a crappy website out of it. He calls it Google Profits Kit.
- Phil then sets up a flashy looking website, promising anyone who orders the Google Kit will make anywhere from $200 to $943 a day by doing nothing, and you can too for only $1.95! Note that if you want to make $944 a day using the magic of the Google Profit Kit, you’re apparently out of luck.
- What you don’t notice is that hidden in the Terms and Conditions in the fine print is that you’ll get charged $84.73 every month, and $43.23 and $23.47 for some other stuff you had no idea you were signing up for. Yes, this is 100% illegal, but the FTC is too busy and underfunded to go after someone running this scam from the Caymen islands. And if they do get caught, the worst that happens is they have to give the money back, as they can claim that since it is in the Terms they technically aren’t complete criminals.
- Phil then posts his site as an “offer” on an affiliate network site, saying he’ll pay anyone $40 for person who you can trick into signing up for his Google money making scam.
- Travis, whose name isn’t really Travis but it works here, sets up a fake blog or fake newspaper and pays for advertising. He’ll probably get 1 out out 100 people to fall for his fake site, click through and cough up their credit card to discover how they too can instantly solve all their financial problems for only $1.95. If he pays $0.20 a click for the ads, and he hits on 1 out of 100, and he gets $40 for the poor soul who gave these folks their credit card, he just made $20. Now pay for $2000 worth of advertising and make $2000.
- You get caught in this, and begin a nightmare of hidden charges and busy Customer Service numbers.
It’s the internet equivalent of the Three Card Monty, Phil is the dealer, Travis is the shill, and you my intrepid friend are the mark.
The sad thing is that THIS SCAM WORKS. People have been raking in the dough hand over fist using this scam, and it’s been going on for well over two years now. yet the FTC and other authorities seems powerless to stop it.
Oh, in case you were wondering, check out the hidden Terms and Conditions from the Google Kit that Travis links to at www.securesiteoffers.com. Note by the time you read this, it will likely have changed as these guys like to keep moving their sites every couple of days/weeks to keep ahead of the FTC.
Your Membership is the perfect tool to start making money on the Internet. We’ve helped thousands of people achieve their goals. By submitting this form you are ordering Creative Search Training and the trial membership for $1.95 Instant Access. If you do not cancel within the 3-day trial period, you will be charged a one-time amount of $129.95. In addition, you will be provided access to an online Learning Center which will bill at $39.98, unless you cancel, 30-days from the date of enrollment and you will be re-billed every 30 days at $39.98 per month until cancelled. To cancel call 888-753-4203 M-F, 7am-5pm, MST within 3 days of the date you ordered.
You will also receive a Risk Free 14-day Trial membership to HomeSource. You may cancel anytime during the trial period by calling 1-800-537-0984 M-F, 8am to 5pm, MST. If membership is continued you will automatically be charged $29.95 a month.
Yeah. That’s right. $129.95, PLUS $39.95, PLUS $29.95. Plus god knows what else you are going to find on your credit card.
How To Cancel The Google Profits Kit?
Well, they do provide a phone number you can call. HOWEVER, a number of people have suggested that calling their number is not the right thing to do.
If you call to cancel, they now have a record of you contacting them and if you later try to dispute the charge with your credit card company, they can show the record of your call to your credit card company as proof of the transaction. Only go this route if you can’t afford to cancel the card in question or if it is a debit card which is much harder to dispute. You’ve been internet mugged here, don’t take it lying down. It is our opinion based on the FTC guidelines that these people are breaking the law, plain and simple. You wouldn’t call a mugger to ask for your money back, you would go to the authorities.
Here is what we recommend:
- Don’t feel bad! Seems like hundreds if not thousands of people have been taken in by these sort of “negative option” offers that trick you by not clearly disclosing you are signing up for monthly charges. You were tricked, it happens to the best of us.
- Call/write your credit card company, dispute the charges and report the card stolen. Since this site does not meet the FTC requirements for clear disclosure for the charges you received, consider your card stolen. This will make sure they can’t charge you any more and that they can’t sell your credit card number to anyone else. If they tricked you once already, what makes you think they won’t try to squeeze every penny out of you they can?
- Start ID theft monitoring right away! Click here to sign up for Experian Protect My Id monitoring. You just gave some shady website your name, address, phone number, credit card and secret 3 digit card number. You can get Experian ID Protection for free for 30 days, then it’s $9.95 a month. I’d suggest signing up for AT LEAST the free month to check your credit report for free and make sure no one tries to change your address or open a new card using the current cards details you gave away.
I Didn’t Get Taken, But What Can I Do To Help?
Wh can you do to stop these guys from taking in more people? Warn everyone about it!
- Click Here to Share this on Facebook! Hit “Post to Profile” to warn your friends.
- Use the “Share This” link below to Digg or Stumble or Reddit or Email or whatever service you use to share this so that other people might see it before they get scammed too!
- Click Here to ReTweet this article to warn all your faithful followers.
by El Plumber (admin) on December 21, 2009
Every once in a while, someone with a misinformed opinion adds a comment to one of our Google Kit scam posts similar to the following. This time it was courtesy of someone named “Jonathan” on our post about the Easy Google Profit scam:
I think you guys are idiots, how can you guys not read the fine print. Its obvious there are only 2 of you stupid people who wrote this blog. Next time if you give out your credit card number i advise you to read everthing before you sign up. Basically what you guys have done was gave a person your credit card information without reading anything. Its like signing a contract without reading anything. Good Grief. I hope these stupid people may stop putting advertisement saying this is a “scam”, while there are advertising other online business opportunities and advertising there links to earn money from people. So lame hypocrites. Thank you and that is my 2 cent.
Funny thing is, if we go check out traffic logs, the people who post these types of comments typically arrive here by searching for something like “easy google profit affiliate”, meaning they are looking for how to get in on this scam and make money off honest folk like you.
Well, Jonathan, first off we do not advertise The Electron Plumber anywhere. Not even a tiny bit. We did buy $7 worth of Google Adwords once, and you can see where that got us. You found your way here either through a search engine who deems our content worthy of being at the top of a search, or from a reader or fan who linked to us from their page. We say it’s a scam because we really do think it’s a scam, not just to get your attention in an ad.
Second, these Google Fortune scams are not to be confused with the real legitimate online business programs we point visitors to here. For example, Site Build It is the only place we recommend right now for starting an online money making business, simply because it’s legitimacy cannot be argued. SiteSell has 40,000 happy customers, has been in business for 10+ years, includes a full 30 day refund policy and an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau to prove they honor their 30 day refund policy. Site Build It has hundreds of testimonials from real people whose sites you can actually go see for yourself. Lumping SiteSell in with those Google Kit scams is like lumping in Best Buy with the van hanging out in the parking lot selling “used” car stereos.
Third, people who are caught up in these Home Income Library type scams are not stupid as the poster suggests. For example, my Grandmother might be reading Fox News and think an advertisement is a legitimate link, click on it and be brought to a site where the format is exactly like Fox News but pushing the Home Income Library scam. How would she know she was about to be conned?
Put anyone in an unfamiliar element and see how they make out. Picture yourself walking into an antique store where almost all the items are a pretty good reproduction or knockoff. Could you tell the difference? Would you know enough to walk out of the store? Of maybe you see what looks like a pretty good deal on an antique lamp and buy it, only to find out after you get home and plug it in that it doesn’t work and has a “Made In China” sticker hidden under the bulb housing. Then when you return to the antique store it’s simply gone.
Do not blame the victim. This is crime, pure and simple. And it will continue to go unchecked until the FTC gets some balls and starts really going after these people, including the affiliates who advertise them, the ad networks who allow the ads (I’m looking at you AdBrite) and the sites that accept the advertising (that’s you Fox News).
by El Plumber (admin) on December 11, 2009
We get asked a question all the time when helping friends and family learn to make money online by setting up websites and writing content. That question is, “I see all these free webhosting places advertised everywhere. Can I just do that?”
The answer is of course not. There is not a free host on the planet that is worth the time you would put into it. And you will end up spending far more cash in the long run. It constantly amazes me at just how cheap people are when attempting to start an online business. Unlike a real brick and mortar business, you can start a real website with a real domain for around $10, then pay around $5 a month to keep it going. If you are that strapped for cash, do whatever it takes to scrounge $15 dollars together to pay for the first couple of months of real hosting, after which it will not matter. Even the lamest site ever can make $5 a month with minimal effort. That’s basically a couple of paid posts, or one Text Link Ad, or a bunch of random clicks on Adwords, or any combination thereof. Seriously, you can do it.
Still not convinced? Still thinking about using free web hosting? Here is the world of headaches you will be opening yourself up to by trying to save a measly $5 today:
- They’re Not Free – Most of the “free” sites will nickle and dime you constantly for things you need. When you go to sign up for that advertising program and they require you to have an email address @ your website, time to shell out $15 for an email address. Real hosts give you anywhere from 10 to 100 email addresses with a $5 hosting account. Want more than 100mb of storage or 100mb of bandwidth, another $15 per month. Want customer support? How about something non-standard installed? Good luck.
- Free, as long as they can show their Ads – Most Free sites put up their ads on your site. That’s what makes it “free” for you. And the ads they serve are the typically spam “Punch The Monkey And Win!” type ads
- Free, on their domain – Most allow you a “subdomain” on one of their crappy domains, so your address would be “worldsbestwebsite.freecraphost.cc”. Good luck getting anything to rank well on Google or look respectabl.
- Free, if you buy a domain – The hosting is free if you pay $30 for a domain name from them that normally costs $10.
- Free, for 100Mb of storage and 100Mb of bandwidth – Typically just enough storage and bandwidth to tide you over until your site might actually gather some real traffic, then you have to upgrade to their overpriced “premium” hosting.
- Slow As Heck – Free hosts have little incentive to upgrade their hardware and make your site load quickly.
- Scammy – Many free sites we checked out tries to get you to do “offers” in exchange for the free hosting, including Google Biz Kit type scams and those mobile phone number monthly charge scams. Many people do not realize it is not part of the 20 step process in signing up for “free” hosting and enter their phone number or credit card number.
- No Control – Especially if you go with a subdomain host, you have little or no control to what happens to your content and pages. Basically the free host owns it and can do what it likes, including reposting it on their own sites, etc.
- Likely to Disappear – Many of the free hosts of a few years ago cannot be found anymore. What happened to the sites that people created with them? Who knows, they’re just gone now. Why chance it?
- Support? – Good luck getting support from a free host should you ever have a problem. Why would they bother when you are not a paying customer?
- You Don’t Own Your Site – Many of the free webhosts make you use a subdomain which cannot be transferred. Real domains with traffic can SELL for good money, subhosted free sites are owned by hosting company generally and are not yours. All that effort down the tubes.
If anyone finds a free host that they think doesn’t suck, please let us know and we’ll take a look. You may not think they suck now, but give it a few months when you run out of disk space or bandwidth or a year when your site traffic starts to spike and you cannot transfer to a better host without paying a fee or sell the domain to work on a new project.
When you want to put a site on the web, go with one of the big three web hosts. You will see hundreds of sites that claim to “review” the top 10 web hosts or whatnot. The problem is, they only review the top 10 web sites that pay them a commission.
Let the internet do the voting on who you use as a webhost. If you go to Alexa.com and look up the three most popular web hosting companies BY ACTUAL TRAFFIC RANKING. You want the Google, Yahoo, and Facebook of web hosting, not a bunch of bit players.
The top three web hosts by Alexa Rank are:
Godaddy (Alexa Rank 168)
Hostgator (Alexa Rank 438)
Bluehost (Alexa Rank 941).
Note that the Alexa rank listed there is out of ALL sites on the internet, so to be in the top 1000 is pretty dang good.
We use both Godaddy and Hostgator for all our domains and websites and have multiple accounts on both. Honestly I like Hostgator better for a number of reasons. It’s far more user friendly and doesn’t try to upsell you crap you do not need all the time like Godaddy does. I think Godaddy is as popular as they are based on their television advertising campaigns rather than value or customer service. It’s far easier to buy bulk domains at Godaddy, but the hosting is better at Hostgator.
I have never used Bluehost, and would not necessarily recommend them. They require you to pay fully for 12 months of hosting up front (at $7 a month that’s $84) vs Hostgator or Godaddy where you can pay monthly.
Note that both Hostgator and Godaddy are Accredited by the BBB and both receive an A+ rating. Bluehost is not BBB rated.
Seriously, the rankings should tell you something. After Hostgator, you have to drop another 500 sites to find Bluehost. After the top three, you have to go almost another 1000 sites down the list to find the 4th most popular Web Host. Those “See The Top 10 Web Hosts!” sites you see advertised everywhere are just working for commissions from the smaller hosting companies that are just not worth it. Don’t waste your time.
by El Plumber (admin) on December 6, 2009
We have a bunch of niche Wordpress sites that target various semi-popular search engine keywords. Some are newer and earn less than $20 a month, some are about a year and a half old and earn over $1000 a month, others fall somewhere in between.
And on all of them we get complete junk comments left all the time. We use a great Wordpress comment spam plugin that eliminates all the auto generated spam by making comment posters solve a CAPTCHA if they want to post a comment with a link in it, so everything we see it actually entered by a human being.
Here is one example:
all kids wanted to have an bike,,any kind of bike,,it depend on their age,,but the top priority is security to be safe,,they need our guidance and advice on how to ride to the bike especially to the beginner..
That was left just the other day on a post about a kids bike. Just for fun, let us list what is wrong with it:
- No capital letters
- Double commas everywhere
- Terrible grammar
- No reference to the article in question
- Nothing interesting at all about the comment
Yes, I know the poster in question was just trying to build links for their site, but this is NOT the way to do it. Here, let me rewrite it for you:
I had this great bike as a kid. It had one of those big old horns and a basket in the front. It had only one gear and did not go that fast, but I loved it. This bike is pretty neat looking, but I would love to find an old school bike somewhere.
There you go. You can still cross post that on as many bike reviews as you want and it is still relevant to each.
by El Plumber (admin) on December 3, 2009
There seems to be a misconception out there that since English is the dominant language on the Internet that one should create and write sites in English. Do not fall into this trap.
If English is your first language, learn to write it correctly. Go read www.bartleby.com/141/ and www.economist.com/research/styleguide/ for all the rules you need to know. It is dry, read it anyway.
If English is your second language, do not try to blog in it unless you can write in English at least at a High School level. If you want to do it for practice, go for it, but make sure you get a good writer to review it and provide feedback and corrections, or you will never improve. Native English speakers will not respect you at all and will not read your site. Search Engines will ignore you.
Seriously consider writing in your native language. You actually have an advantage that many English speakers do not. You can take an already popular English blog and adapt the idea to your own language. Not steal the content mind you, but just the site idea. I can imagine there is no site like www.cakewrecks.com in other languages, but there has to be an equivalent cultural idea out there for China or India or Spain.
