Blogging Along

Would it be an ideal situation if you could work away in a warm climate laid on a sun lounger next to the pool without a care in the world?

Well hell yeah !! of course it would be.

It’s all down to game plans in business and what type of business you are in. Affiliation is a bit of a roller coaster for many if you have all your eggs in one basket (sector or website) but can bring wealth and fortune for many if done right. I am talking 10s if not 100s of thousands a month too with some people.

So the ideal setup for working in the sun, next to the pool drinking beer. You grow a portfolio of sites in many sectors, such as private health, insurance, retail items shoes, presents, hotels, breaks and mobiles or electronics. Optimise these websites in a niche for each, so for insurance pick “Life Insurance” maybe. Build in a content management system called WordPress and besides all the standard tweaking to make the site SEO friendly post to the site every day looking at daily news feeds for article ideas.

A good tip for getting good traffic is to mention some of the main companies in the industries. Healthcare mention BUPA or AXA, Mobiles mention all the networks like Vodafone, Orange and Three.

This won’t be an over night process and will nicely age like a good wine.

A lot of affiliates who push services and products that make a small fortune use Adwords to drive traffic towards their websites in hope of an increase in sales. This is a fine art and I almost class it as gambling as it can make or break a lot of profit.

I had a website in the private Health sector that ranked and still does for really good phrases and made a nice amount each month from Adsense. I sold the domain to a friend who started using it for affiliation and instead of Adsense used a form for lead generation and made £25 per lead. This turned my effort of Adsense into a nice win fall by making 10 fold what I was from natural search results. He is also running an Adwords campaign that spiraled the amount to 100 fold again :-/ and as you can understand, a little bit sickening for me.

If he wanted and didn’t have commitments of a mortgage, a wife who’s a school teacher, and others he could and 100% would be working abroad in a warm climate, laid on a sun lounger, next to the pool without a care in the world!

If you do need any help with going down this road please do contact me.

Just bagged 2 more Yorkshire domains today.

• YorkshireDesign.co.uk
• YorkshireSEO.co.uk

These for a fair price are a nice addition to the other 4 I have of which 2 have page ranking of 3 and 2.

• FilmYorkshire.co.uk Page Rank 3
• FoodYorkshire.co.uk
• YorkshireBlinds.co.uk Page Rank 2
• YorkshireBeds.co.uk

They all are good solid investments in my eyes and are worth more with even one page or holding page on. This keeps them in Googles eyes and search bots and helps keep any page rank or back links. I could develop further with paid for content but with these going on top of 100’s  of other domains I think I’ll stick with the 1 page for now.

Noticing a lot of old domains dropping from been registered in 1996+ and have had a site up and running since then. So once fleshed out with a mini site they should be a good slow burner. The last 2 I missed catching were reysrods.co.uk and europeanlife.co.uk both from over 10 years old!

Last local one I caught is HullWhitePages.co.uk which will just have a simple custom Google search on, along with a few graphics. Hopefully should do well and is a good portal for people to catch on to.

Completed a few short 45 second long promo videos for the Freedom centre. These just highlighted future events and turned out really nice. Gave me a boost on pushing this type of video to other businesses and the good thing is they can use them on their web site and are featured on Humber.TV too.

Looking to cut back on my domains I’m letting a lot drop that in my eyes I could do without renewing as 10 would cost £70 for 2 years! On the flip side all my Hull domains are now listed on HullDomians.co.uk and give the ability for visitors to show an interest and place an offer in through a form system. To start my campaign off to either rent them out or sell them I’ve placed an Ad in the Hull Daily Mail for a week starting 19th February.

Just bought 2 domains YorkshireSEO.uk and YorkshireDesign.co.uk for £60 which I thought was a bargain and should be able to get them ranking and sold on to a local business. (if I don’t use them myself)

Looking through my SAGE accounts I noticed I’d dropped a bombshell and missed nearly everyones hosting renewals from last year. #fail But should be a nice boost for a few bills I have come up or have now.

I took a punge and turned off my shop plugin for JokeShop.org.uk and made posts as normal posts but mirrored the path so not to upset Google etc. Instead of actually selling products myself I’m giving” Paid on results” affiliate links from Silly Jokes. Traffic from my site is directed to them I make a sale and I get a cut of it but has proven shite TBH.

I may turn the shop back on if by the end of this month I don’t make one sale.

I’m quite a laid back “do anything for anyone” kind of guy, but over the past few months I’m seeing more and more reason to look after No1 more. Dog eat dog world it’s turning into I just need to look at every situation a little more before jumping in to the rescue or offering.

I found my CV on an old memory stick and decided to apply for a few jobs in SEO, Marketing etc just to see what response I get as theirs no harm in trying to see what bites I get from it. I actually wouldn’t mind going into a decent company to work on SEO and online marketing for companies. I would do a bad job too! ;o)

I decided to pull the internet connection from Beverley as I was only using it twice a week for 1 or 2 hours and was costing £40 + a month. So just a waste really.

Final thought for me about my Hull Domains, I may need to educate business about mini sites and “do what you say on the tin” domains buy hopefully enough will get it and opt for the rent option to try and test.

New Year and New goals will be in the form of a marketing service that weirdly enough rolls all the things I have been doing for the past 2 years into one! SEO, Domains, mini sites, Video, Photos, Content writing etc They goals will be having a ques of businesses wanting to get involved.

First stop will be to create 3-5 example showcases of how it looks and works as everyone likes to see examples of anything they are buying into. FACT!

On the domain front I am letting a lot of them drop if I think they are way too much effort to even start to gain any revenue or are not gems. I would say 5% are niche domains / Websites like PlayParachutes.co.uk (not dev yet) that will become cash cows for advertising rev or actual e commerce sites selling products on stock. The other 95% are the GEO domains like my HullBeds.co.uk which will be slowly moved over from the BIG ‘G’ to REAL – LOCAL companies where they will be featuring on other sites I have.

3 Words I hated since I started out in business in early 2008 is VAT, TAX and Books. If I could give anyone any advice in starting up a business, it’s “Get an accountant ASAP”. You may think £100-£200 a month to do ALL your accounts is steep but boy is it worth it in the end. It frees you up to do other work YOU get paid for and is one less stressful thing in your life.

Be careful (as I have found out) you do get shocking accountants that just don’t talk to you and you get some FAB ones.

Other Goals and plans that I do hope will help Humber TV are ones with local groups or business. I can offer News and video coverage to help promote their services and they can offer me the use of the facilities there. Maybe the use of  a Board room, meeting rooms, Gym, etc it’s a little bit of back scratching that costs both parties no cash.

Need website Advice? Give me a call 01482 247123 quoting this site.

Vebra helps customers find property that is for sale and rent in the UK. By adding properties visitors can search for property and Estate Agents with ease.

What a lot of Estate Agents don’t realise is as soon as you ask your website developer to add a feed from Vebra, you stop your website getting credit from search engines. The feed isn’t seen as content on your website and Search Engines such as Google and Yahoo know this and isn’t great for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

Here’s a test you can do just to prove what I’m saying is correct.

In Google search for the Phrase “Your company name 4 bedroom houses” e.g. browns property agents 4 bedroom houses

You’ll find it comes back with many websites with property on but NOT yours.

Sites such as:

• findaproperty.com
• rightmove.co.uk
• zoopla.co.uk
• primelocation.com
• homesandproperty.co.uk

When entering all the property details into Vebra’s system it goes on many sites such as RightMove.com and if embedded it will appear on your own site in what’s called an iframe.  As mentioned above this isn’t seen by Search Engines on your site only Right Move.

When people search for property and maybe your company name they will more than likely (if the company uses Vebra) end up on Vebra or Right Move etc amongst other estate agents listings and potentially going with another agent.

Here’s a good example of a site that does’nt rely on Vebra. Search again like the above example but with a company that doesn’r rely on Vebra.

Plum Properties 4 bedroom houses as you can see in the results the company website is top of the search engine and has the visitors full attention. Not listed with other agents.

I’m not saying DONT use Vebra just don’t completly hand over your websites content over to a simple feed from them add property to your own like Plum do.

Need Advice? Give me a call 01482 247123 quoting this site.

I have collected 150+ Geo & service/product domains besides the 500+ Hull domains I have like BristolGyms.co.uk and the others below.

• CardiffLocksmiths.co.uk
• CardiffNetworking.co.uk
• Edinburgh-SkipHire.co.uk
• BradfordNetworking.co.uk
• BelfastAccountants.co.uk
• LincolnDoors.co.uk
• LincolnEstateAgent.co.uk
• LincolnFencing.co.uk
• LincolnGarages.co.uk
• LincolnGyms.co.uk
• LincolnLighting.co.uk
• LincolnOpticians.co.uk
• LiverpoolNetworking.co.uk
• PlymouthNetworking.co.uk
• SheffieldAdvertising.co.uk
• SheffieldCleaners.co.uk
• EdinburghNetworking.co.uk

A guy contacted me trying to sell a .com domain he had registered only 30 days ago and I had the .co.uk version. By the sounds of things he has blasted emails out to all local businesses suggesting they make an offer for the domain.

Doing it they way he has, has probably pissed a lot of businesses off and has put a lot of brick walls up in front of them if I ever wanted to offer my domains to them. Although I do make money from them monthly it was nice to feel I could at some point offer them for sale to local businesses.

I’m just on a mission to get all of my geo domains live and have decided not to go down the WordPress route for them all to save time and resources – At the moment the sites live generate a nice bit and once all live, indexed and have visitors I think £1k+ a month would be ideal sum to start at (fingers crossed). It would help if the revenue increased a bit soon, as renewals come in batches and can be £100+ a pop.

I have had a few calls regarding the geo domains and would rather rent them out than sell out right! So I’d best build them quick and stack em high!

UPDATE

I was called in December 2010 by a local Aerial fitter who wanted a Hull, Goole, Scunthorpe etc numbers from my Hull VoIP website which diverted to his mobile. I got him setup with a Hull number and made my HullAerials.co.uk reflect his new number to drive traffic to him.

I can see he’s had a fair few calls but think it will be in the first few weeks of 2011 he’ll see more calls filter through. I will be renting the site out to him at just £25 per month and will add content weekly to help with rankings.

So April is here and I need a kick up the arse to get ideas focused!

I’ve been running around like a mad man this past 2-3 weeks juggling work, new projects and my little girl been in hospital. I just need to take stock.

Humber.TV is really doing well, considering I should be putting more hours in a week and now has a page rank of 2. The last webcast / podcast we recorded (still to edit the HD copy) was Cottingham Springboard and just loved the idea of musicians coming along who are in the 3 day music event and letting rip with some tunes.  Bring it on people…

Ok about this “Recycle old magazine content”. I had a HTC Touch Diamond spare after an upgrade to a Iphone 3GS and gave it to my son to use but just stopped charging, even with a new battery. Today (Sunday) is our local carboot day in Northcave and know theirs a guy who deals with mobiles. Got there, thought the phone was in the car but had left it at home – not to worry. 🙁

So we’re wondering around, Jo my Mrs buying books she’d wanted, me looking bemused by all the VHS cassettes people are STILL trying to sell and a round trip and I saw a mag stall. Geoff Anderson of Goole (01405-769574) was the pitch holder with 100’s of magazines, mainly cars ones that I could see but was told he has 1000’s of different ones at home!

A selection of Kit Car ones (a good pile of around 50+) caught my eye as I’d just finished a Kit Car Insurance mini site for a mate. The idea instantly popped into my head of reading really old content in mags from as far back as 1985, 1986, 1987 etc and then in my own words (helped by some creative use of the mags) write articles on a new domain I had bought especially for this idea.

How much Geoff? ……….. £3 the box! Wow I’ll take them.

So got home registered the below domain and another project was born ;o).

Kit-Car.org.uk isn’t yet designed or really started but does have a rough text flesh holding page for quick SEO and listings.

My guess is that these old mags will have content, ideas, wording and internet unpublished text in which it will give anyone who reads them great ideas! These mags are 25 years old and maybe out dated but have probably been long forgeotten about and never even heard of SEO.

My first trial is with as mentioned above with Kit-Car.org.uk and will see if it has any impact on rankings for the main phrase “Kit Car” but would expect long tail phrases to be it’s freind like “Cobra kit car replacement lights”.

Another 2 mini sites started today StainlessSteelBBQ.org.uk and GardenHeater.org.uk