October is over and looking at the figures pending in my EPN account, I can report to you that the month was not exceptional, but still acceptable in terms of revenues. I have made a little over $200 in October only in EPN. Almost all my sites contributed a bit, but there three of them did exceptionally well. I got one ACRU (eBay registration), which I worried a bit due to their "engaged traffic" issues, but my performance reports are showing very high marks so far (probably because I have very few ACRUs), so no point of worrying. I have finally reached a payment threshold in my AdSense account, so there will be an extra boost next month.
Another few good things to share is that my very first site, the main earner, that was in a sandbox almost all its existence so far is finally out and starting to pickup pace in the Google SERPs. My second website is still deep in the sandbox with Google, but apparently it's got very high in rankings on Yahoo and MSN and gathered over 2000 unique visits last month (it's a good traffic figure for me). It's a shame that most of the visitors were tire-kickers, but nevertheless, it was in the top three of my high earners.
That's it for now,
Be well,
Mik
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Getting Backlinks with Directory Submissions
Hello everybody,
I planned to get back to my blog earlier but circumstances have changed for me – I'm a father another time around and I'm helping as much as I can to the mommy to look after our brand new baby. And now back to business.
Directory submissions are the last technique I'm going to discuss in the subject of getting backlinks. Well, first things first and we'll start from basics: directories are websites that list other websites and group them in categories. For example, http://dir.yahoo.com/ is the Yahoo directory. Getting you websites into directories can be manual, manual-outsourced, automated, or automated-outsourced. Some websites charge for listing websites in their directories (e.g. Yahoo Directories) and some are free (e.g. dmoz).
If you select doing manual submissions, you will have to submit yourself your site to the directories manually, one by one. That's very time consuming and tiresome. In the case of manual-outsourced, you pay someone to do it manually. There're a lot of companies online offering directory submission services (and other submissions as well), but you have to be careful who you choose as cheapest is not always the best. The catch can be that you pay for manual submissions and they'll just use some automated program to submit your websites. It's hard to say whether they will or not in any case, just look for trusted sources. I'm going to advise one company that I used myself, the name is SubmitEdge . They're moderately big, affordable and trustful (in my opinion), have good customer services, and offer promotions quite often.
The automated way is to find a program that will do submissions for you and automated-outsourced is the same, but you pay someone to do it for you. I have not used automated services and I'm not going to for several reasons. First, when you do automated submissions, you usually submit to thousands directories at the same day and that will be very suspicious for any search engine, Google or not. They can even de-index your site and that kind of back-fire we really don't want to have. And another one is that submitting to thousands directories will eventually lead to submitting to not relevant directories and that can be penalized by search engines as well.
So two main things to remember when doing directory submissions: it should be relevant and it should be done gradually, not all at once.
There're still a lot to learn about backlinks and different ways of getting them, but these articles should give you a decent start and some understanding of the subject.
That's it for now, be well,
Mik
I planned to get back to my blog earlier but circumstances have changed for me – I'm a father another time around and I'm helping as much as I can to the mommy to look after our brand new baby. And now back to business.
Directory submissions are the last technique I'm going to discuss in the subject of getting backlinks. Well, first things first and we'll start from basics: directories are websites that list other websites and group them in categories. For example, http://dir.yahoo.com/ is the Yahoo directory. Getting you websites into directories can be manual, manual-outsourced, automated, or automated-outsourced. Some websites charge for listing websites in their directories (e.g. Yahoo Directories) and some are free (e.g. dmoz).
If you select doing manual submissions, you will have to submit yourself your site to the directories manually, one by one. That's very time consuming and tiresome. In the case of manual-outsourced, you pay someone to do it manually. There're a lot of companies online offering directory submission services (and other submissions as well), but you have to be careful who you choose as cheapest is not always the best. The catch can be that you pay for manual submissions and they'll just use some automated program to submit your websites. It's hard to say whether they will or not in any case, just look for trusted sources. I'm going to advise one company that I used myself, the name is SubmitEdge . They're moderately big, affordable and trustful (in my opinion), have good customer services, and offer promotions quite often.
The automated way is to find a program that will do submissions for you and automated-outsourced is the same, but you pay someone to do it for you. I have not used automated services and I'm not going to for several reasons. First, when you do automated submissions, you usually submit to thousands directories at the same day and that will be very suspicious for any search engine, Google or not. They can even de-index your site and that kind of back-fire we really don't want to have. And another one is that submitting to thousands directories will eventually lead to submitting to not relevant directories and that can be penalized by search engines as well.
So two main things to remember when doing directory submissions: it should be relevant and it should be done gradually, not all at once.
There're still a lot to learn about backlinks and different ways of getting them, but these articles should give you a decent start and some understanding of the subject.
That's it for now, be well,
Mik
Friday, September 12, 2008
Getting Backlinks for your BANS sites: Part II (Article Submissions)
Hello,
The next way of getting backlinks in our list is the Article Submissions. The article submission is writing articles about some products listed on your site and submitting them to article directories. For example, if we had a BANS site selling musical instruments, we could have written an article about Harpsichords and then submit it to one of the Article Directories, to list a few: Ezinearticles, Squidoo, and USFreeads. Somewhere in the article (anywhere if it's Squidoo or USFreeads and only at the bottom of the article if it's Ezinearticles) we would put a link to our BANS store inviting readers to come and have a look on current listings.
I have mentioned only three sites above, but there're really many more, it's just I'm using only these three and find it enough. Writing articles and submitting articles may not bring tons of traffic (but again in some cases it may if you do it smart, researching keywords etc.), but it will definitely get a backlink from a well-established sites that will be counted by search engines and that's what we're after in this exercise.
We will finish the series next time and we'll talk about directory submissions.
Until then,
Mik
The next way of getting backlinks in our list is the Article Submissions. The article submission is writing articles about some products listed on your site and submitting them to article directories. For example, if we had a BANS site selling musical instruments, we could have written an article about Harpsichords and then submit it to one of the Article Directories, to list a few: Ezinearticles, Squidoo, and USFreeads. Somewhere in the article (anywhere if it's Squidoo or USFreeads and only at the bottom of the article if it's Ezinearticles) we would put a link to our BANS store inviting readers to come and have a look on current listings.
I have mentioned only three sites above, but there're really many more, it's just I'm using only these three and find it enough. Writing articles and submitting articles may not bring tons of traffic (but again in some cases it may if you do it smart, researching keywords etc.), but it will definitely get a backlink from a well-established sites that will be counted by search engines and that's what we're after in this exercise.
We will finish the series next time and we'll talk about directory submissions.
Until then,
Mik
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Getting Backlinks for your BANS sites: Part I
Hello,
I was going to start doing "Unessential Expenses with BANS: Part II" when I realized that it might be more than just a few parts as I go into details for each subject. So, we will not abandon the idea as such, but it will come under different headings.
Researching your keywords is very important at the first stage, but not less important as getting your BANS sites to the top pages of Search Engines. And that task can require spending of a few more extra bucks.
There're two things that can help you to stay on the top of the search pages: first is having backlinks to your site and being rated well by these Search Engines and second one is having relevant contents on your site. We'll talk first about having backlinks and about contents later.
First, what is exactly a backlink? A backlink is an incoming link to your website, or in other words, if the link to your site is placed anywhere outside of you website, it is a backlink.
The next question is "Why do we need these backlinks at all?" And the answer is: Search Engines rate your site by several factors and one of them is the number of backlinks to your site. If you know about Google Page Rank, it's calculated using your backlinks as well. Recently, there is a lot of tendency to move towards counting only relevant links, but at the end, if you have enough relative backlinks to your side, you will rate better.
And the final question is where to get this backlinks? There're several ways of getting them, some are more advisable, and some are less. I know the following ones, but I don't use them all: social bookmarking, article submissions, directory submissions, and link exchange.
We'll start from the one I wouldn't recommend or at least call to extreme caution if you're going to use it: the Link Exchange. In theory, it means that you have links to somebody's site that is similar to your site and they have links to your site. Sounds quite simple and not too dangerous. The problem that this process got very automated and spam-prone at the recent years and you may not have control of what sites will have links to your site and may end up with a bunch of porno sites pointing to your musical instruments BANS site. This can lead to all sorts of complications, including losing your account with ePN and getting your site completely de-indexed (removed) in Search Engines. If you do it old way, exchanging links with somebody you know and trust, it will still work fine, just don't abuse it.
The next one is Social Bookmarking. Social bookmarking means getting your links into forums and websites created for people to socialize and share news (digg.com, stumbleupon, twittle, etc.). This way of getting backlinks is mostly free, but can be very time consuming, especially if you're going to use forums. And in theory leaving a few messages here and there with a link to your BanS website(s) in your signature would do the job, except for the fact that quite a lot of forums would ban you for this kind of behaviour and delete your messages. You will need to communicate with people, get them to know you and only than you can sell (figuratively speaking). I don't do social bookmarking anymore, except for Digg. I found communicating and participating in forums is way too much time consuming for me.
I think we'll stop for now and I'll continue about other techniques in my next post.
Be well and until next time,Mik
I was going to start doing "Unessential Expenses with BANS: Part II" when I realized that it might be more than just a few parts as I go into details for each subject. So, we will not abandon the idea as such, but it will come under different headings.
Researching your keywords is very important at the first stage, but not less important as getting your BANS sites to the top pages of Search Engines. And that task can require spending of a few more extra bucks.
There're two things that can help you to stay on the top of the search pages: first is having backlinks to your site and being rated well by these Search Engines and second one is having relevant contents on your site. We'll talk first about having backlinks and about contents later.
First, what is exactly a backlink? A backlink is an incoming link to your website, or in other words, if the link to your site is placed anywhere outside of you website, it is a backlink.
The next question is "Why do we need these backlinks at all?" And the answer is: Search Engines rate your site by several factors and one of them is the number of backlinks to your site. If you know about Google Page Rank, it's calculated using your backlinks as well. Recently, there is a lot of tendency to move towards counting only relevant links, but at the end, if you have enough relative backlinks to your side, you will rate better.
And the final question is where to get this backlinks? There're several ways of getting them, some are more advisable, and some are less. I know the following ones, but I don't use them all: social bookmarking, article submissions, directory submissions, and link exchange.
We'll start from the one I wouldn't recommend or at least call to extreme caution if you're going to use it: the Link Exchange. In theory, it means that you have links to somebody's site that is similar to your site and they have links to your site. Sounds quite simple and not too dangerous. The problem that this process got very automated and spam-prone at the recent years and you may not have control of what sites will have links to your site and may end up with a bunch of porno sites pointing to your musical instruments BANS site. This can lead to all sorts of complications, including losing your account with ePN and getting your site completely de-indexed (removed) in Search Engines. If you do it old way, exchanging links with somebody you know and trust, it will still work fine, just don't abuse it.
The next one is Social Bookmarking. Social bookmarking means getting your links into forums and websites created for people to socialize and share news (digg.com, stumbleupon, twittle, etc.). This way of getting backlinks is mostly free, but can be very time consuming, especially if you're going to use forums. And in theory leaving a few messages here and there with a link to your BanS website(s) in your signature would do the job, except for the fact that quite a lot of forums would ban you for this kind of behaviour and delete your messages. You will need to communicate with people, get them to know you and only than you can sell (figuratively speaking). I don't do social bookmarking anymore, except for Digg. I found communicating and participating in forums is way too much time consuming for me.
I think we'll stop for now and I'll continue about other techniques in my next post.
Be well and until next time,Mik
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