How this Website Makes Money - Blog

Are You Really Working Hard On Your Blog? Or Do You Just Think You Are?

roman — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 11:10:23 +0000

You hear it all the time – to become a successful blogger takes a lot of hard work. Seems logical enough, like everything else in life, if you want something with big rewards then it will take hard work.

To become the CEO of a large corporation is hard work. To become a movie star is hard work. To write a book that becomes a New York Times bestseller is hard work. And so of course, to become a successful blogger takes hard work.

But what does hard work mean? To dig a six foot hole in the desert sun is hard work. To carry a piano up ten flights of stairs is hard work. To copy the entire dictionary under candle light is hard work.

So when the advice is: to become a successful blogger you need to do a lot of hard work – what does that mean?

What Most People Think Hard Work Means

Some confuse hard work with time. They believe that doing something for many hours a day means that they are working hard. They say, I have been working so hard – I work on my blog from 7pm to 1 am every evening. For them hard work means spending a lot of hours working on the blog.

Then there are those that believe that simply doing something, anything, relating to the blog means they are working hard. They do not specify what they are doing because it is not important. They say: I am always doing something to my blog therefore I work hard. For them it is important that they are working on the blog and irrelevant what they are doing. If they are doing something to the blog then they are working hard.

Finally there are those that think working hard means finding the time to work on the blog amongst all the other things that need doing throughout the day. They have a full time job, 2 kids, and a dog with a broken leg. Their days are busy at work, feeding the kids, and rehabilitating the dog. The fact they also manage to work on their blog for 2 hours a days means that they work hard.

Spending lots of time on your blog, doing something to the blog and being a busy person does not mean you are working hard. Working hard by carrying a heavy rock up a mountain everyday for 6 hours a will not help you become a successful blogger, neither will these forms of working hard. They seem like hard work, but they are not and so will not increase your chance of having a successful blog.

What Does Hard Work Really Mean?

Working hard has nothing to do with how much time you spend on your blog, or how busy you rehabilitating your crippled dog.

Working hard means doing things that are hard to do. To succeed with your blog you need to do the things that most people do not do because they are hard. Most people are lazy and gravitate towards the easy road – most people have failing blogs.

Everybody can change the background color, leave comments on other blogs, visit forums, submit low quality articles. Doing these things might help your blog a little bit but they will not make you success. Becoming a successful blogger is hard work – if you are doing easy things then you will not succeed.

Think of the thing that you keep putting off. The thing that you know you should do but always find an excuse to do something else – something easier. That thing is the hard work. That’s the thing that will increase your chance of becoming successful.

By doing actual hard work, work that most people do not do, you raise yourself above the masses. Most people would rather spend the whole day leaving comments on blogs, then spend 2 hours doing concentrated and mind twisting work.

Writing a guest post is an excellent example of real hard work. Guest posts have to be good or they get rejected. You have to think, write, rewrite, rethink. Not everybody can write a post good enough to be accepted. Its hard work and easy to avoid doing.

Writing comments on other people’s blogs is simple cruise control work. No thinking required. Read the post, something pops in the head, spit it out and hit submit. No risk of rejection. No stress. Its so easy anybody can do it. And that is the problem. Leave comments on blogs if you enjoy it, but do not consider it as working hard on your blog.

Fortunately differentiating between imagined hard work and real hard work is not difficult. Just ask yourself, I am doing something that most bloggers do not do because it is difficult? If the answer is yes then you are really working hard and the rewards will come.

Any Comments?

What Happens If You Do Not Update Your Website For 3 Months

roman — Thu, 27 May 2010 12:25:54 +0000

Among the usual bunch of praise filled comments my previous post has a very interesting comment:

Come on dude. Update your blog. How do you expect your website to be a success with no updates?

Good point – how am I going to be successful without frequently updating this blog? The song sung every week by the choir is “Frequent posts lead to success”. The preacher thumps his fist on the Good Book and sprays the first row as he shouts, “A website will die if unattended – DIE!”. Traffic will decrease, readers will unsubscribe, Google will stop sending you traffic.

Ignoring This Website And How it Effected The Success of This Website

For a couple of months my gaze has been elsewhere. This website and blog have been on their own. I have done nothing to prop or push it. The last blog post was on Feburary 25, 2010. Three months between blog posts – that can’t be good.

Normally things ignored deteriorate. Empty houses spawn cobwebs, boards fall off fences, rust grows on pipes. Without constant care lovers turn into ‘friends’; without constant care pet goldfish start doing the backstroke.

But surprisingly this website did not mind that I was gone. There has been no deterioration, no rotting – the fish did not die. 3 months unattended was no worse for the website then 3 hours unattended. Actually the fish are fatter and swimming faster. Some of my stats have gone up in my absence.

Website’s Daily Visitors

Average daily visits has increased by 20%. Nothing spectacular for 3 months, but pretty good for not doing anything at all.

But if the content is not changing then how can the traffic be increasing? Without visitors coming back and reading new content you would expect traffic to go down as visitors realize the website is static. How is it possible that the average daily visits has increased?

The answer is simple. Even though the limited number of subscribers are not coming back, the almost unlimited number of non-subscribers are increasing.

Website’s Search Engine Traffic

Google seems pleased with my website – it keeps sending more and more . Although not shown on the graph May 2010 is already at 290 Google visitors and will be at least 350 by the end of the month – making it the second best month ever.

There are millions of internet users for whom this website is fresh and new. For them 3 month old website is fresh content. They are looking for answers and this website provides them. They do not care that it has not been updated in 3 months. Google knows this and sends traffic my way.

Google does not care that my subscribers have not been provided with new content. Google is concerned about the millions of internet users looking for answers to their’ how to make money with a website’ questions. Which of course, this website provides.

Website’s Subscribers

But what about my poor subscribers? Every morning they check their RSS readers with anticipation only to be disappointed – every morning for 3 months. The agony and despair they must feel. You can only court a crush for so long until repeated rejection forces you to look elsewhere.

The subscribers to this website did not miss me at all. There was no despair due to my absence. Hearts were not broken, dreams where not shattered. There was not a mad rush to unsubscribe. Nobody seem to care that I did not post – no one was angry enough to unsubscribe.

The only reaction was from the commenter above who pleasantly requested that I write another post soon. He did not unsubscribe, he simply and kindly asked for more.

This website had around 80 subscribers 3 months ago and it has around 80 subscribers today.

What Will Happen If You Stop Updating Your Website For 3 Months?

Nothing.

Feel burnt out? Is the sight of low traffic and no revenue really starting to get on your nerves? Are you yelling at the dog for no reason? Are you twirling around on your pivot chair trying to force new content out of your head? Are you starting to think that the time spent on your website has been a complete waste of time?

If you answered yes to the above then you are like 99% of all webmasters. You have 3 options:

Keep yelling at the dog.
Quit.
Take a 3 month break. Don’t worry about your website, it will be there when you come back.

A Successfull Blogger Is Good At Pretending To Care

roman — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 19:03:23 +0000

If an apple falls out of an old ladies bag and rolls down the street stopping at my feet I will bend down, pick it up, and hand it to the lady. She will smile and say, thank you kind young man. I will return the smile and move on – she is right, I am a kind young man.

A guy is walking down the street staring at a map and obviously lost. He looks at me with a face that is a plea for help. I will look the other way and try to ignore him, making a silent prayer that he does not stop me. Why should I help him – he should be able to help himself.

I feel the same way about my readers – why should I help them?

I do not possess any need to help people that can help themselves. The old, the blind, the slow, I will help if forced – if an apple hits my foot. But everyone else are on their own. I do not care if somebody is lost or needs a dime, there is no force driving me to help people in need. If they have a brain, eyes and the major extremities then they should be able to help themselves.

And that is why blogging is difficult. Blogging is about giving advice, tips, suggestions and information with the intent of helping the reader. Provide content that helps readers. They do not know how to do something – show them how. They do not know about something new – tell them about it. They want to be entertained – stand on a beach ball and roll around juggling bananas. Blogs are not for the blogger, they are for the reader. You exist to serve the readers. They should be able to help themselves – but no – they want you to help them.

But honestly, I do not care about the readers. Besides the couple of visitors that leave comments, I know nothing about the other readers. There is no connection with them – they are just bodies without souls. No different then the hundreds of bodies I walk past everyday on the streets.

Do Successful Blogs Truly Care About You?

Successful blogs are run by kind people. People who care. Their posts offer free advice in a pleasant and loving way. The bloggers care about their readers – they want to help.

But do they truly care? Or are they just good at giving the impression that they care?

Obviously they are just pretending to care and are very good at it.

Just like the vacuum salesman who arrives at your door worried about your children. You open the door and see a man holding a vacuum and beaming a smile. You say, hello, may I help you? Suddenly with a worried look he proclaims: there are a lot of bacteria in your carpets, bacteria that can make your children sick, your children! Like you, I care about your children – I do not want them to cough and sniffle, poor little things. Please buy this vacuum so that your children will not be sick.

Being a vacuum salesman is difficult. You have to look sincere when you talk about ‘the children!’. The best salesman are those that can form a little tear at the edge of their eye as they speak. How could you say no to somebody caring so much.

You cannot sell vacuums if you do not care about the children. To be a successful vacuum salesman, I mean blogger, you need to appear like you truly care. Be kind to your readers.

How To Test Whether a Blogger Truly Cares

Probably there are successful blogger that truly care. To test whether a blogger really cares is easy. Write the blogger an email and ask them a question. Be easy – do not make them work hard. Ask them something simple like:

Hello.

I have really enjoy your blog and your style of writing. Just wondering how long does it take you to write a post?

Thanks,
You

After you send this email there are three possible outcomes:

No response. Does not care.
A quick response. No hello, no punctuation, no capitalization, poor spelling. For example: it takes 2 hours. Does not care.
A well formatted email response with greeting, punctuation, correct spelling and capitalization. Truly cares.

Of course, if you email me my response will belong to the ‘Cares’ category. But that is only because I am not successful and I need to appear to care even in my emails.

It’s Not About What Content You Provide, It’s About How You Sell It

roman — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:46:28 +0000

The concept is simple. Buy an empty lot, build a little office, toss in a desk and two chairs. Go through the newspaper classifieds and buy a dozen used cars. Hose the cars down, put on a fresh layer of wax, buff and shine, vacuum the carpets, Armor-all the interior and kick the tires to make sure the car holds together. Get a bright shiny red pen and write a price on the windshield – add an exclamation point and circle. Then wait for the customers to arrive.

Had I been born 30 years ago I would have tried being a used car salesman. I understand cars, know how to fix and clean them. Nothing about the prospect of selling cars would of scared me. Just like blogging – easy money.

But this website has taught me that I would have been a terrible used car salesman and would not of made any money – just like blogging.

A family walks onto the lot, I approach them. They tell me what they want and I show them a car. They like the color, it is clean and it runs. Does it run well the father asks. Yes, it runs well I reply with honest smile. The man takes it for a test run. Good acceleration, good brakes. The kids like it too. Daddy, buy this car. The man looks at the price, then at the sky, then at his shoes and finally after a short pause at me. The car is a little out of our price range. What is your price range? The man looks at his kids, then at the car and then at me. He coughs out a price 40% lower then the sticker price.

The family drives off in their old car. Another sale lost. Haven’t sold a car in weeks. I would have been a terrible used car salesman because I cannot convince people to buy at sticker price. That is why I am also not making money with this website.

It Is All About The Dazzle, Lights And Big Signs

Used car salesmen do not work with new content. They are selling used cars, not making new ones. Every used car lot has the same bunch of cars. Being successful is all about how you present the used cars.

Successful used car salesmen are flashy, fast talking, excited, and they can convince their customers that lemons are chocolate ice creams with rainbow sprinkles on top. Their lots have blinking lights and neon sings. Prices are crossed out, slashed and reduced. They have the best deals in town. Their deals will not last – limited time offers. They have grand openings, clear out sales, end of years sale bonanzas.

They will do almost anything to sell you a car. No restraint – it does not embarrass them to embellish. The actual condition of the car is irrelevant. It is everything around the car that matters – the salesman’s slick haircut, the sexy receptionist, the bright lights and exlamation marks.

Successful bloggers would be great used cars salesmen. Especially the bloggers in my niche – ‘make money online’. There is no new content in this niche (true for most niches except probably astronomy and Britney Spears) – it is all used content. Everything about making money has been said. There is no new information – it is just repackaged information.

But there are good salesmen on the internet. They can take used information, put lights on it, wax it, call it a limited offer, and make you feel like you need it. They can take something that is free and sell it for $99.99. It is not the information that they provide, it is the packaging they present it in.

Being a used car salesman is a talent. Not everybody can do it. Not everybody can get into the roles of adding value to something by making it sparkle and shine.

Becoming a successful blogger is the same as being a successful used car salesman. It is not enough to just get a lot and put cars on it. You need to get into character. Your content is the least valuable part of the blog. Everybody has content. It is all about how you present the content.

Have a look at the successful bloggers. There are some wild characters out there - successful used car salesmen. Cowboy hat, chest hair growing out in-between his top shirt buttons, proud father of a new baby boy. A college football trophy on his desk. You feel good around him –a friend. All smiles and good news. With all the lights and sounds of the lot every day is New Years Eve party.

Compare that with this blog – a parking lot with a bunch of old cars on it. Someone approaches and asks, can I make money online? In plain black unbolded text I reply, ‘ya maybe, but it’s a lot of work’. No wonder nobody is buying cars from me.

Avoid Being An Employee – Get A Website To Be Your Monkey

roman — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:01:30 +0000

The Problem Of Being An Organ Grinder…

The problem with being an organ grinder is that the monkey will dance only while the music plays. So to make the monkey dance you need to be there to turn the handle round and round, over and over again. You turn, music plays, monkey dances.

As an organ grinder, everyday you get up early in the morning. Feed the monkey a date, shine the organ, and head to the streets. You drudge along and push the organ to your allotted spot on the corner – the monkey still tired, sleeps on your shoulder.

At 7:30 you start. Put the monkey on the organ, place the jar in the curb and step behind your organ. Seeing the first group of people come around the corner you place your hand on the handle, heavy breath, sign, and spin. For the next 8 hours the monkey will dance and you will spin the handle. All day you hear the same melody round and round interrupted only by the sound of quarters clinking as they fall into the jar.

The monkey needs you to be there. Without you spinning the handle there is no music, without music the monkey does not dance, without a dancing monkey nobody puts money into the jar.

The Problem Of Being An Employee…

The problem with being an employees is that your boss needs to see you dance. 5 days a week 8 hours a day you need to dance in front of your boss. Your boss only pays if he sees you at the office performing the employee dance.

7:30 you arrive at the office and the music starts. “Good morning boss”, “Good morning employee”. You hang your coat in the cloak room, say hi to employee2. Turn on your computer, go to lunch room, get coffee mug with company logo, pour coffee in cup, say hello to employee3, walk back to desk, check your email, the phone rings, you click some keys on the keyboard, 8 hours to go. Your boss needs to see you dance for 8 hours a day.

If your boss sees you dancing for a month then at the end of the month he will throw money into your jar.

The major drawback of being an employee is that you only get paid while you are at work. You only get paid if your boss sees you in the office. As soon as you leave the office the money stops – you are off the clock.

To get money, you need to be in front of your boss going through the motions of an employee. It doesn’t matter if you are adding value or not, only that you are there. As long as you are spinning the handle the monkey dances.

This is a huge waste of your time. The work that you accomplish in a day could be done in a couple of hours. You are smart, you know what you are doing, you know the most efficient way to do your job – you could have everything done before noon. But that does not matter. You have to be there all day.

Also being an employee means that throughout the working day, regardless of what you are doing, you get paid the same amount. One hour you are designing a product that will make the company 1000’s of dollars in revenue – you get paid $15.25 for that hour. The next hour you are painfully relieving yourself from last night’s spicy chili dogs – you get paid $15.25 for that hour.

As an employee there is no way to value your time. Each hour has the same value to you, every hour you get paid the same amount. So the obvious thing to do as an employee is to try to do the least amount possible – the amount just above the point of being fired. And why not? Why work hard, why try to get things done efficiently, properly and quickly? Regardless of how it is done you get paid. Why get it done early? You have to do the office waltz till 5pm regardless if you are done or not.

Being an employee sucks all creativity, productivity and incentive out of you while while you are there – and when you are not there you do not get paid.

Websites Are the Perfect Dancing Monkeys

In one hour I have to be at work. The next 9 hours will be a complete waste of time. So, to cheer myself up I will remind myself of the benefits of having a website:

Websites work all the time. You do not need to be there. You can be clipping your toes, tormenting the cat, or wondering the street aimlessly – does not matter what you do – the website will be working. You do not have to be always spinning the organ’s handle to make the music play.
Working on your website you become a productive and optimized superhuman. You do not look like you are working – You are working. It is not a dance. You are actually trying to get the most done in the least amount of time. And there is a direct relationship between the quality of work and the amount you get paid. The better your product the more you earn.
As an employee you only get paid one time for your effort. If you write a great report you will get paid the hours that where spent writing the report. Even if that report is used by the company for years after you leave – you still just get paid one time. But for a website the webpage you write keeps paying over and over again – potentially forever. You only need to write it once. Online it will be generating revenue for you 24 hours a days, every day, for years.

Websites are dancing monkeys that never stop and you do not need to always be there turning a handle round and round for it to dance.

I Would Rather Not Think About This Website

roman — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:28:22 +0000

These words are written in hesitation, almost agony. For more then a month I have not had to think about this website. It was a month of total bliss. My mind was clean. I ignored my traffic stats, I did not read other blogs, I did not add new content. It was back to the good old days – before I had this website. My mind was free to roam about anything and everything.

Time was my own. Reading, I was able to concentrate on what the donkey was saying to the turtle. When I had a shower I was able to sing. I ate slow and chewed all my food. No rush and nothing pressing me. No pressure to be at the computer doing something to the website.

I did not care about this website or about the online world. It was great; but like the courting phase of a relationship, it must come to a end. The fun stops and work begins – kisses and hugs become obligations and commitments.

So here I am, back at it. Writing about the website. Oh God, the agony. With these words come all the attachments: HTML, visitors, traffic, Adsense, comments, backups and that is just the technical aspect. There is also the physiological damage – mental strain, sense of failure, syphilis pushing a rock up a hill only to have it roll back again, a slave to the website. Back at it, back to having the website as a constant companion while I walk the streets, take a shower and sip my coffee.

Why do this? Why put one self through it? What is it all for? The same reason destitute and repressed people left their homes, traveled the stormy seas, and landed on the beaches of the unknown called America. A dream. I do it in pursuit of a dream. Pilgrims came to America to avoid suppression and start a new life on their own terms. This website is in pursuit of a dream of living on my own terms. To be free from the terms of my employee contract. To be free from my 1 hour lunch break. To be free from my boss’s mood swings. Free to call time my own. I have a dream.

Lots of people died on the journey to America. And a lot more when they got there. In their case failure turned the dream chaser to fertilizer. Fortunately for me the worst that can happen is I spend a lot of time and money and end up with 20 megabytes of useless HTML.

I have spent a year on this website. In terms of making money it was a complete waste. I could of made a lot more with a lemonade stand setup beside a water fountain. During the year I spent a lot of time thinking about the website – mental time that I will never get back. Was it worth it? Maybe if I spent that time thinking about something else, like building a perpetual motion machine, I would be a lot better off now.

But that was last year. Who knows if it was for the best. But I am not a crazed nut that pursues an impossible dream of turning dung into gold. One more year is all that I will allow this website to suck out of me. If nothing drastic happens within a year I will release myself from its grasp and be free to sing in the shower again.

How Spammers Prevent This Website From Being Better

roman — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:32:12 +0000

This website’s primary function is to provide accurate statistics for its visitors. How many visitors a day, how many page views per visitor, how much revenue it has accumulated. My task as a webmaster should be an easy one – get the stats and put them on the website for all to see. Simple. What could go wrong?

I am trying to do good in this world. To bring accurate information to my visitors. My intentions are pure and well spirited. The world lacked knowledge about what a new website must go through at the beginning. I saw the need and made it my purpose to educate. With my sword of honesty and truth in hand my quest to educate began.

But there are evil forces in this world. There are people whose pursuit is not good. Whose intent is to destroy rather then create, misinform rather then education, to take rather then give. It is these types of people that are my enemies. Everyday my pursuit of truth and good information is being hindered by these villains. Instead of focusing on bringing more and better information, I must spend time fighting vermin.

I am talking about spammers.

If I was a catholic missionary in Africa trying to educate the natives about all-mighty God’s preference towards a single sexual position, spammers would be there handing out copies of the Karma Sutra.

Everything I do in effort to better educate and help my visitors is hindered and exploited by spammers.

The Contact Page And How I Must Fight Spammers

The contact page use to have a captcha. To send me an email visitors had to decipher distorted numbers and letters. This is a common method used to differentiate between humans and machines. Humans can read the disfigured characters but machines cannot (yet). Although it prevents spammers from sending me emails it has disadvantages. The contact page takes longer to load because a unique catchpa image needs to be produced. And sometimes the image is so distorted that even a human cannot read it. So my good intentioned visitors must squint and move their head at different angles to figure out the characters – sometimes getting it wrong and having to try again.

To do some good and make it easier for my visitors I removed the catcpcha and replaced it with a simple question: What is 1+1. Most humans can easily answer this question but machines cannot. Now the page loads fast and my visitors do not need to decipher a captcha image.

I did good – but what does the universal rule state? You do good and spammers will take advantage of it. And they do. Now I constantly get spam emails about pharmaceutical products. Because answering the question what is 1+1 is easy, spammers find it worth their time to answer it for an opportunity to spam. Captcha is too much work for spammers – but 1+1 is easy. Easy for visitors but also easy for spammers.

I teach the villagers to read and the spammers hand out copies of “Teach Yourself 28 Different Positions in 28 Days”.

How Spammers Bring Traffic To Websites (Thousands Of Unique Visitors For Only $9.99)

At the beginning of every month my server side stats are cleared and begin at zero. For the first few days I clearly see who is visiting my site. Here is what my server side traffic stats looked like at the very beginning of the month:

There are 25 unique traffic sources to this website. Only 7 of them are from legitimate sources. The rest are spammers. The most visits from a single source is also a spammer.

How do I know they are spammers? Because I click on them to find out who they are and why they have a link to my website. What do I find? There is no link to my website. These website are sending traffic to my website without having a link to my website. How? Why?

How they do it I do not know. But because these are server side stats, all it would take is for these websites to ‘ping’ my website for it to show up in my stats. A ‘ping’ is simply a knock on the door. These websites come to my server and say – ‘hello, I am here’. That’s all – they do not come inside and they do not read any of the pages. They just knock and leave. This is verifiable because these visitors do not show up on my client side statistics; if they were viewing the pages then Google Analytics would show it, but it does not. According to Google Analytics these visitors where never at my website – they do not exist.

Why do these websites do it? Why do these website’s just knock on the door and leave? The answer is deviously simple. They do it for traffic.

These websites paid for traffic. They hired a company that promises 1000’s of unique visitors for $9.99. As soon as this company receives its $9.99 it presses a button and a program runs that pings thousands of websites. This creates thousands of webmasters that now have a new traffic source. These thousands of webmasters click on the new traffic source to see who is linking to them. Bingo – traffic. Thousands of webmasters are now visiting the website to checkout the new traffic source. 1000’s of unique visitors for $9.99.

Of course these webmaster are not ideal visitors. They click on the traffic source, see that it is a spammer, and leave the site in disgust. But the company selling the traffic does not care – it delivered what it promised – 1000’s of unique visitors for $9.99.

Not only are these traffic selling companies ripping off naive webmasters by sending them useless traffic, but more importantly, they are hindering my ability to do good in this world.

They have rendered my server stats useless. If I was to report my statistics according to my server side stats alone then it would be misleading information because most of my visitors are spammers. Instead of showing how many visitors this website receives, I would be showing how many spammers it receives.

Because of these bastards, every morning I need to look at both the client side stats and the server side stats and figure out the actual number of real visitors to this website.

If only there was no evil in this world. If only I could be left in peace to perform my good works and provide great information. Instead of spending my time informing and giving, I am forced to hack away at demons who are always trying to undermine my efforts.

I know how the missionary must feel when during the middle of Sunday school one of the students raises their hand and asks, “Why does the Lord disapprove of the Reverse Cowgirl position?”

Search Engine Traffic Is My Sock

roman — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:26:49 +0000

Last month this website did not make a lot of money. No surprise. I have become comfortable not making money with this website. My world would be in chaos if this website made money. What would I do? How would I act? Who would I be?

Obviously making money does not motivate me to keep this website. For motivation I need to look elsewhere. Like the man who is suddenly happy because he finds an unscathed sock amongst the ashes of his burned down house, I too have something to smile about.

The Search Traffic Graph

There are many graphs on this website. But none of them please me as much as the organic search traffic graph. If I was a father and graphs were my children then the search traffic graph would be my favorite son. The one that makes me most proud, the one that is going to grow up just like dad, the one I always take fishing.

When everything looks bleak and I start to feel like Sisyphus, all I need to do is to look at my beloved search traffic graph and everything becomes alright.

Every month organic traffic increases to this website. Last month was a huge increase. Almost 500 visitors from Google – twice the amount compared to the previous month. For the entire year the graph is almost a perfect 45 degree upward slope. For the last few months organic traffic has been doubling every month. If this keeps up I will have 8,388,608,000 monthly visitors in 2 years.

It is a well known fact that to increase search engine traffic you need two things: time and backlinks. As more time goes by the amount of search engine traffic should increase naturally – the older your website the better. Google checks the date your domain name was registered to determine the age of your website.

(It is also claimed that Google checks the expiration date of your domain name. If your domain name registration is about to expire, or registered for only a year at a time, Google thinks you are a fly by night operation – maybe even a spammer. It looks better if your domain name is not close to the registration expiry date and is registered for the next three years. It is claimed – I am not sure if it is true but it makes sense to me.)

Besides time you also need backlinks. The last few months were a guest post frenzy. Continuously spinning the lever on the guest posting machine gun: Problogger, Dailyblogtips, JohnChow, Blogsessive. Not because I want to entertain and inform people, I do it for the backlinks. And it works; the graph keeps stepping up and up – 8,388,608,000 monthly visitors in two years.

The Real Value of Search Engine Traffic

500 visitors a month is not a lot. There are websites a lot younger then this one that receive more search engine visitors in a single day. But that does not make me envious because not all search engine traffic has the same value. Some visitors are worth more then others and mine are worth more.

Google sends me visitors who are searching for “how much money can be made from a website’ and variations on this theme. These are valuable keywords – I know because I tried to buy them.

Last month I created an account on Google AdWords. I wanted to buy traffic. I was going to pay money to have my website appear on search engine results in the sponsored links section.

I opened the account and then 30 minutes later I abandoned the account. Visitors for this niche are expensive. Imagine someone does a search on Google for ‘make money with website’. My website appears on the side of the search results, if the person clicks on my link then I pay Google around 5 dollars. 5 dollars to have somebody land on my website, look around, and leave. My earnings which took a year to accumulate would be gone in 4 hours.

Of course if I thought that the visitors would buy the ‘website starter kit’ then 5 dollars is a small price to pay. I would be paying 5 dollars and receiving 65 dollars when a paid visitor buys the starter kit. To break even I would need 1 in 13 paid visitors to purchase the starter kit. Being a realist, I know that is not going to happen.

My keywords are expensive so I cannot afford to pay for visitors. But the flip side is that this website receives valuable visitors from search engines. People looking for ‘make money with website’ are worth a lot more then people looking for ‘how to comb down a cowlick’ which cost only 5 cents per visitor.

Last month I received 500 visitors from Google. Visitors that if I had to pay for them would cost me around 2500. In other words, last month I saved 2500 dollars.

This website receives only 500 search engine visitors a month while other websites receive 500 visitors a day because the ‘make money with website’ niche has a lot of competition. Visitors who want to make money with a website are worth more because they spend money. Visitors looking for hair combing tips do not spend money and that’s why they are worth only 5 cents – nobody wants them. Other websites get 500 visitors a day, but these are messy haired visitors without a dime to their name.

Other websites get 500 search engine visitors a day worth (500*.05) 25 dollars a day or 750 dollars a month. My visitors are worth 2500 a month.

Now all I need to do is figure out what to do with these valuable visitors. I have them but how do I use them – how do I convert their value into cash. People come to my store with cash stuffed pockets – how do I get them to give me that cash. So far they just walk in, look around and leave. Some of them accidentally dropped a few pennies on the floor but the bulk of the 2500 dollars that came through my door left. I need to convince visitors to give me their money before they leave.

How to make visitors give me their money? My days are spent thinking about this question as I lovingly gaze at my beautiful search engine traffic graph.

Does Being a Webmaster Make You Bitter? Rake The Zen Garden

roman — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:15:39 +0000

Like a green oasis in the desert, a life giving miracle has appeared. This website is making a profit. Finally after 320 days this website has incurred $538.23 in costs and made $544.71 in revenue – revenue is a bigger number then the costs number. That is a cool $6.48 that goes straight into my pocket. A crisp five dollar bill and some jingling change.

Of course $6.48 is a lot less then the $10,000 I was hoping to have. But I take is a learning experience. I have no other choice, the only other thing I can take it as is a total failure; so in this case I am choosing optimism over the truth. I learned that my expectation was way to high. I year ago I thought that in 320 days I would be drinking hundred dollar wine and deciding between a red or black corvette. Instead, I have made just enough money to buy a coffee and ride the bus.

Bitter? Yep. Basically I got ripped off. I have put in 494 hours of work and received a meager $6.48. This is criminal – a scam. A rational human being would never accept these terms. The only way a person could end up in this situation is by force or trickery. In my case it was not force – nobody made me make a website. I chose to make a website. I chose to build a website because I believed that I would get paid fairly for my efforts.

Who knows how I fell for it. Or who did it to me. Or how they benefit. It is like the Kennedy assassination – the deeper you look the more mysterious it gets. I have tried to analyze what happened, how I get duped, where did it all start. My investigations have led nowhere. Somehow I believed that the internet would be a great source of income. I have no idea who did this to me. But to keep my sanity I have stopped asking who and why. Kennedy is dead and the circumstances around it strange – period. I spent 494 hours to get $6.48 – period.

What To Do With The Bitterness?

Being bitter raises an interesting problem for a webmaster. There is no way to vent or redirect negative feelings. At the work place it is easy to redirect bitterness.

Let’s say you do not get the bonus you expected. No problem. Do not buy toilet paper, pens, calculators, or coffee – the office will supply you with these. Take one or two items a day. It’s not stealing, it is your bonus. You can come to work a little later, have a longer lunch, leave a little earlier. Its is not abuse, it is your bonus. One way or another you will get your bonus.

Boss does not appreciate your work? You work over the weekend to get the report on the boss’s desk first thing Monday morning and all you get is a ‘great – thanks’. No problem. Monday and Tuesday you play solitaire and browse your favorite websites with a clear conscience because you are simply recouping your weekend.

Having a bad day at work: Co-worker talking in your ear about her stupid domestic issues? Crappy computer crashes? Client upsetting you with unrealistic demands? Phone keeps ringing? No problem. Hit the keyboard a few times, open and close the laptop monitor many times and really fast, hang up the phone extra hard, start a dirty rumor about your co-worker and give her real domestic issues.

That’s what so great about the work environment. You get bitter and upset, but at least there is something you can do to vent. The workplace offers many ways to redirect that bitterness onto other people and office equipment.

Sadly a webmaster has no such luxury. A webmaster works alone and with their own equipment. Nothing to steal, nothing to hit, nobody to bad mouth. Something goes wrong and all you can do is sit there and stew. You could hit the keyboard but then you need to buy a new one. You could have a longer lunch but then you will have to make it up later. You could yell at the dog but he will just wag his tail and want to play catch.

Like a egg, a webmaster can only boil in their pot and harden.

Raking The Sand

The other day I was browsing Amazon for something to spend my $6.48 on. I quickly discovered that I have enough money to pay for shipping but not enough for the product. So I went to the only place where I can spend my website profits – the dollar store.

The pin wheel hat was too tight and the plastic gun did not look real. But then I saw it. As soon I as I tried it I knew it was exactly what I needed. It is a simple thing. Sand, rock and a rake – a mini zen garden.

Now it sits beside my computer. Before I check my stats I pick up the rake with my left hand and begin to slide it across the sand. It has a calming effect. Little rocks are placed randomly in the sand so I rake around them. The four little lines in the sand twist and turn around the rocks and relax me as I check my revenue stats. Monks have zen gardens to bring them closer to nirvana. I have my little zen garden to avoid destroying my own keyboard.

My zen garden has taught me something else. Just because I spend lots of time on my website and receive almost nothing in monetary return, does not mean my time is wasted. Now I know that there are even bigger wastes of time possible – like raking sand around little rocks. This calms me and the bitterness floats away.

I strongly recommend that you purchase a zen garden. It will really help you as webmaster and make you gentler and kinder blogger.

If 26 of you buy the zen garden via the Amazon link above then I will earn $6.50 from Amazon – almost doubling my annual profits. I am raking with my left hand and pecking the keyboard with my right.

What Are The Intentions Of Your Visitors?

roman — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:52:05 +0000

Your visitors are strangers. You know almost nothing about them. All you are told is where – where in the world they are located, and where on the internet they came from.

There are occasions when knowing the location of your visitor matters, if you are selling snow tires and your visitor is from Egypt then you will not make a sale. But for the majority of cases geographical location is irrelevant. At most it reveals the local time for your visitor. If it is morning for him then he is grumpy, if it is evening then he is either full of wine or tired – how you can use this information is unknown.

The other where is the important one. From where did the visitor come from? There are three possibilities:

Some other site
Search Engine
Address bar or Bookmark/Favorite

Knowing from where your visitor arrived is vital information. Because when you know from where they came, you know their intent.

Know Their Intent, Predict Their Behavior

Like the father of a beautiful daughter, your main concern is: what is the intent? A boy walks up to the door, rings the doorbell, father opens, “hello…what are your intentions with my daughter?” The coy boy replies, “Nothing much, we are going to play baseball. I like to pitch and your daughter enjoys being catcher. After the game we are going to a BBQ for some hotdogs, which reminds me, your daughter needs to bring some buns – I bring the wieners.” The father smiles and shakes the young boys hand, ‘you kids have fun’.

Unfortunately you cannot ask your visitors about their intentions, the best you can do is infer. And the most useful piece of information about their intent is to know from where they came. Unlike the word of a horny school boy about to take your daughter on a date, knowing how your visitors came to your site is a true description of intent.

Why is intent important? Knowing intent allows you to predict visitor’s behavior on your site.

Obviously you want your visitors to behave a certain way. For this site I want my visitors to do at least one of these four actions:

Click an Ad
Purchase an affiliate product
Purchase my product
Backlink to this site

Visitors who do none of the above can be ignored – they do nothing for this site. If you are reading this blog then you probably belong to the ignorable category. You are familiar with this site so you will not click on the ads or buy the products. The only way to turn yourself into a valuable visitor is to backlink to this website. Some of you have done it, but most of you have not and will not.

If I want visitors to behave in one of the four ways above then I need to look at their intentions. Once I know their intentions then I know how they will behave. So once I know which traffic sources brings me the properly behaving visitors then I can focus all my energy into getting more traffic from those source.

The Intent of the Social Website Visitor

Social website visitors have no intent. They just drift around aimlessly from one website to another. They like funny, shocking, sexy, and strange. If you do not provide one of these then they are gone – looking for the next zap of instant satisfaction.

They are pigeons moving the mouse and pressing the button hoping to land somewhere that dazzles the eye. Click, look, click, look, click, look. If the there are lots of colors, pictures, videos and sounds they will clap their hands ecstatically and stay – otherwise they are gone.

These visitors have no intent. They are aimlessly wondering around the internet killing time. With no intent they are useless for this website. They are not interested in anything I have to offer. They arrive at the website; see all the words, yawn, and leave. That is why I completely ignore social traffic. No need to promote via facebook, digg, twitter. I give visitors the option to do it for me, but I will not do it.

The Intent of the Search Engine Visitor

These are visitors with direction and purpose. These people are not wasting their time walking around randomly hoping that something interesting happens. They arrive at your site with their intent written on their foreheads. Hello, I am here looking to ‘make money online’, can you help me? Yes I can. Click on one of these conveniently placed ads which will show you how to make $5000 a month online. Thank you, thank you too.

Hello, I am here because I want to know ‘how to build a website’, can you help me? Yes I can, buy my starter kit and you will have a money making website in no time. Thank you, thank you too.

See how pleasant it is when you know what the visitor wants. No guess work involved, no trying to find something that the visitor finds interesting. When you know exactly what the visitor wants you can easily direct their behavior into an action that benefits you.

Image you have a website selling a Philips screw driver. What would you rather receive – 10,000 visitors from a social website looking to be entertained, or 100 visitors from a search engine that typed in ‘buy philips screw driver’?

Intent is everything.