Well, I've been putting out fires, trying to do some learning and mostly trying to sort out the fog from the information overload I've been experiencing. I intended to get into the whys and wherefores and, indeed, the purpose of my doing this blog earlier but better late than never I suppose. I'm a 70 year old dog trying to learn some new tricks. I am retired and have been looking for some way to add to my financial security in my old age.
About two months ago, a life long friend who shares the same quest as I, sent me some information as to what some college kid, who is a friend of his son, had shown him about a website and Adsense. The kid showed my friend some statements from Adsense about his earnings. They looked pretty good. The kid made it seem very easy to do so I said, "Why not?". So I ordered the same program he had been using called Directory Generator.
Not knowing anything else to do, I picked some keywords out of the air. I chose 'crafts' and 'collectibles' since my wife was into those and I thought she could lend a little expertise in that area. Full speed ahead, I created a number of sites: CraftsMadeEZ4U.com, CollectiblesMadeEZ4U.com and EspressoMadeEZ4U.com. I did one thing right, I believe, I hosted these sites on GoDaddy. Customer support there as been absolutely wonderful, holding my hand each step of the way. (And, BTW, I'm not an affiliate for anything I mention on this blog. I couldn't see how I could be objective about these websites and software otherwise.)
Before I continue with my adventure into the unknown, let me explain my reason for doing this blog. I'm thinking there are others out there in the same boat as I am. Kinda wandering around in this online wilderness with a lot of hopes and dreams but not knowing how to put it all together without going through years of "trial and error" and a lot of expense. I am hopeful that some kind and more experienced souls who might run across this blog would find it in their heart to offer some help to me and those who choose to follow my trials and who want the same answers to their predicaments.
Now, back to the adventure. Subsequent to my ordering the software and creating the websites, I began to get these strange emails. Emails that indicated there could be other things I might need to do and/or to learn in addition to throwing up some websites. Strange things like keyword research and SEO (whatever that was). And, much to my chagrin, they said I needed lots of content as well. Lord o'mercy, this wasn't looking as easy as it had at first sounded. But, determined, I decided to forge ahead. I discovered a site called Keywordtopia which I have found to be a good way to research for keywords. (still haven't learned of a good way to search for those pesky little things called 'niches' though - hint). So I redid the sites using what I thought, at least, were a more comprehensive set of keywords.
Another friend down in southeast Texas had one of these submission programs that submits to just short of a billion sites, so he submitted the collectible site and, about three weeks later, I learned of a site from one of those strange emails called ScrubTheWeb. Here I could validate my html (I am not so proficient at html, they lost me after they got beyond tables. I am creating this blog and do a lot of page editing using HTMLNotepad, a handy little program that you can probably find searching Google), it would analyze and write Meta Tags and has a program called Easy Submitter that I used to submit the craft site. I use MarketLeap Link Popularity to see if I'm making any progress at all. In checking daily, I agonized watching the count creep up. Collectibles in about a month only had a 30 count. In two weeks, crafts sat at 8 for about a week then slowly climbed to the staggering heights of 30 while Collectibles wound its way to 70. From there something really weird happened which I still don't understand. In the past week or so Collectibles dropped back to 30 while Crafts has continued to climb to 291 as of today. Also, Crafts had a Googgle pagerank of 1 for two days then back to zero. (would someone please explain that to me?).
Also, about the same time I stumbled across another program called SEOElite and ordered that. I think it's a magnificient program if I can ever learn to use it correctly. It automates finding sites to exchange links with (I didn't know you needed to do that!), researches your competition by keyword, checks to see who is linking back to you, automatically creates links pages and greatly reduces the time required to email link requests as well as many other features (which I still have to learn).
My latest acquisition is a membership in a program called LinkMetro. For $19.95 a month, this thing saves me a tremendous amount of time. You can go to the members directory and then to the category you choose and with the click of a mouse simultaneously send an email request for a link exchange and add their site to your links page. Also, other members send you emails requesting a link and a mouse click both approves or rejects their request and, if approved, adds their link to your links page. Unbelievable!!! Wouldn't be without it!
Will close for now. Next time, will update you as to progress (or lack thereof) and share some more trials that I've gone thru over the past two weeks. Not the least of which was getting this blog to RSS feed (what the heck is that?) to my Yahoo page. Later.
