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.

When I create an Adsense unit to insert into a blog post or product page, I always seem to opt for a banner style or square that seems to get placed underneath and always looks out of place.

I thought by floating Adsense units within the text so it wraps around the ad will give the better exposure and make it part of the article.

Here’s what you need to add to your post at the start of an article or page in HTML. This is what I’ve added to the top right of this blog post.

<div style=”display:block;float:right;margin: 10px 10px 10px 10px;”>

Your Adsense code or advert script from Google

</div>

Google also recommends you place at least 3 adverts on every page for maximum results and sometimes prompts you do do it when logged in.

See how many more clicks you get by making this small change to your postings and pages Adsense blocks.

Having built a few for certain towns I thought it would be an idea to find a few generic domains such as the one mentioned below and lists town / city areas on them.

Not sure it will have a good uptake from people or search engines but worth a go. The domains I choose were common phrases that people have searched on my Geo sites looking at the stats from the many sites.

• FencingSuppliers.org.uk
• LapFencing.co.uk
• Fencepanels.me.uk

Looking again on Google trends these are common phrases people use to find these types of items or companies.

Ideally they will turn into a directory listings for fence suppliers all over the UK and will use them to back up our other city focused websites.

Over the years I have found that certain products or services shine more with the seasons from the revenue generated from the sites I produce. Obviuosly Christmas Present related site do well from October and increase right up until 23rd December. BBQ sites do well in summer and snow shoes would do well in winter.

Taking this onboard I thought how much of a boost having a mini site would be if in general your business sinks during the colder months for example if you are a fencing suppier in Glasgow if your sales were 20% of what they are in summer what would effect would it have if it just dropped by 50% to 50%?

Having mini sites for areas of your business that taken individually are quite niche and letting me create micro sites for them maybe a case of sink or swim during hard times. You can pay on a monthly lease basis for 12 months at a time, for example if you have a fencing business in Wakefield and you lease a site from us in summer you”ll get more sales due to the site and a buffer in place for the winter months.

This to put figures to the idea and to make it easier – you have a normal (no niche mini sites) year in summer and take in £100’000 having a mini lease site for say a fencing business in Leicester may get on average 2 calls extra a day from the site. This would maybe from 1500 visitors to your site a month but you maybe would convert out the 60 calls a month just 10 of them. Taking a job with a profit of £250 on average, that would take in at least £12’500 over the summer months.

That’s just converting 4% of all visitors to your leased niche website!

So a nice sale this week through SEDO from JobsinHull.co.uk

Although I’d of love to have kept it I needed the cash flow and also focus (as usual) on fewer projects. Not sure what my biggest sale of a domain is but I know it’s never been over £1k  and £650 was a good buy and sale in my eyes.

Over the past 2 months I have been at “The One Point Ltd” working on and batting projects about. To fast forward to today I now work with The One Point on their marketing and development. With me been into the whole SEO, mini site, back linking, websites, VoIP, domains etc this was an ideal opportunity to gain a desk away from working from home, be in a real office environment, have a good team to work with and help set my aims on target with The one Points and my own goals.

One of the first deals stuck was with my HullFencing.co.uk site that daily is getting leads by phone, email and the unknown shop visits now to a local Hull company HPR Fencing Ltd. Giving them a unique number from The One Point so we can monitor our marketing from the site helps reinforce our no brainier method and costs for a Hull Domain mini site.

The monthly fee covers, domain renewals, hosting, editing, a new phone number and any SEO to help propel the site on to page 1 of search engines for key phrases.

On the affiliate front I’m a bit disappointed with BlueDress.co.uk not converting at all and a slight dip in adsense rev too.

This month (a bit delayed i know) Humber TV will move from Mk1, BETA, or what ever you want to call it and should be a nice breeze of fresh air but most importantly offer some great services to the Humber area. In video advertising, commercial videos, DVD production for distribution, Media company access to help with advertising packages for their clients and enduser media submission.

To finish off on it was nice to warn KCOM about a major security hole for email and hosting accounts with Karoo accounts. Hopefully they will be on the case and enforced a fix by now.

I’ve spent quite a few weeks and to be honest are just finishing off the transfer of the bulk of my web site clients. This move has happened due to many reasons but the main ones enabling me to focus on Humber TV and my clients getting a better service with the new ISP.

I have also been trimming back a lot of domain I *may* develop but have decided to take the dive and let a good batch drop by not renewing them. We are talking 100s of domains and not just say 5 or 6 and so is a big saving in outgoings for me.

This morning I battled with my JOBPress theme on JobsinHull.co.uk and it now doesn’t error at the checkout with Pay Pal. I flicked the ON switch and is now live to submit jobs to at just £1 for 30 days. This is at just £1 for feedback and suggestions and will review charges once I feel happy with the setup and running.

Going back to domains, I have also curbed registeringdomains and booking drop catches for them.  A few examples of recent ones are WilliamWilberforce.co.uk and HullHairdressers.co.uk both nice ones to own and develop as catches and WingMirrors.org.uk as a fresh reg.

The only websites ideally that I will still run will be personal ones or ones that are generating revenue from leasing or affiliation from Google and alike. Not looking at older posts on here I am looking at building revenue from these types of sites to at least £30 per day or £1k a month.  This would be an absolute minimum long term as 250 sites should at least make £1 per day which calculates to around £7500 a month.

With my main focus been on Humber TV getting al sites live and performing I may freelance out as my ideal goal for Humber TV is to cover events and generate at least £250 a day from producing short promo videos, marketing using videos and selling video content.

Just as an example do a search in Google for “Fish Spa Hull” what would you click on, on the results page?

The videos I’m guessing, the videos will always be there unlike, radio adverts, PR services, leaflets, News Paper advert, Adwords campaign and so on…..

The new way to advertise… Huumber TV

;o)

Looking at ways to always make extra pennies from mini sites I was surprised to see £4-5 from a broadband site I’d set up a few years back. Looking into this a little more broadband clicks pay quite well from £1 to £5+ which does make it worth while.

Broadband in general and even mobile broadband isn’t really a niche no more and so >Geo<broadband.co.uk sites do well as they haven’t been tapped into that much as your Talk Talk’s BT’s and Virgins cover the whole UK.

proving that it does pay well and works I bought 3 domains of cities over 100’000 in population and setup 3 mini sites with a simple html template.

• LutonBroadband.co.uk
• BradfordBroadband.co.uk
• BrightonBroadband.co.uk

Once they show up in Search Engines and have a bit of age I’ll add the to a WordPress install and make regular posts to them about the pit falls and tips of broadband etc.  I’ve lost my login for Affiliate window and so need to send an email so that I can also add affiliate links which do pay more money but they have to sign up to get the commissions

Luton, Bradford and Brighton been fairly large towns should prove a popular search group with people online and if proven a winner easily cloned  ( not the content the idea ;o) )

Need to rant so here’s 1

-start rant-

Why do people think just because the phone isn’t agaist their ear its ok to DRIVE and use a mobile by having it on speaker phone and holding it infront of them AGGGHhhhhh.

-end of rant-

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.

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.

Looking back from March with Humber.Tv and the whole idea I do feel we have some good direction towards HOW the idea and company will make it’s living. Advertising is good but you need to offer twists and extra angles to secure advertising deals with local businesses.

I was once told as a young man by a local boss of a company…

It’s so easy to loose money but very hard to make it.

This is so true with the ideas and the paths I’m going down testing and trying out new ways to put shows and video onto the internet. Some things just don’t work and will never be worth the effort but you’d never know that unless you try them out to see.

Research is all very well but doing it and trying and testing ideas is good first hand live research!

I need to ge the few dozen postcode named sites up and LIVE ASAP so people can see the network I’m trying to create and get more people involved. First site live is HU15.co.uk covering Brough, South Cave, Gilberdyke, Newport etc and will grow to be on the same scale as Paul Smith’s HU17.NET along with all the others set to be put live.

Local news is key to keep people using your websites and updated regularly and people will find it through Google.

Build it and the will come

That’s sort of true but still need the  right kind of site for people to find it sticky enough they do come back for more.

I joined BCC or Business Community Co-operative Group which has NO annual fee, and only costs £10 per week to cover room hire and a hearty breakfast. Best networking group I’ve been to from just the feel and welcome you get from the people there and isn’t competitive with 5 web designers, 3 accountants, 10 life coachers. The categories are locked down so thats your area and is unchallenge “Video Production” been my area of business and category.

Just offering show reel videos to businesses in a certain area of business, Gyms and fitness for example and will be made up of 12 companies in that sector for an hour long show reel on local “Gyms and fitness” This will be ondemand from Humber TV and also showing as a schedule when nothing is showing live.

All in all I have lots of ideas and good interest for our road forward – Think Positive!

My Photo above by Pixelcreations.co.uk – Klaus Selke – Photographer

Bit of a bombshell hit me the other week which I won’t go into but god it felt like I had a voodoo doll somewhere and was getting it right in the neck! Hopefully I will sort that situation out before the end of September and can move on with a clean slate. Big black cross next to that individual.

I always say people who want jobs doing for next to nothing and/or haggle on prices are not worth the hassle. Well how true is it with a job I have now, it’s a peanuts job but they want the earth to revolve around them 24/7. Although the extra cash was welcomed I feel like a genie in a lamp who needs to perform miracles.

Setup and Getting into FaceBook, Twitter, You Tube, Vimeo and are seeing results by the way of people viewing the pages whether it be a video or a post but then clicking through to Humber.TV which is a result for unique visitors.

Twitter I use daily, i do seem to be getting on well and are trying not to follow every Tom, Dick and Heather that follows me.

You Tube is a great one as I’m posting RAW unedited video and prviews of video’s that are say 20 minutes long ASAP of me recording them. People are searching for that event and viewing the video but then clicking through to Humber.tv from You Tube which is a FAB way to increase the uniques per day.

Vimeo and FaceBook I only kicked off this week and so need to see results filter through over the coming weeks.

I’ve been building back links up for the site and am hoping that Google takes note and rewards it with a nice PR score and even better search results.

Recently we’ve done a bit of OB (outside Broadcasting) for Howden Show and Hull Pride to name just 2 and just them 2 alone drew in 100’s of extra visitors who wanted to find out more or wanted to see the video we shot. (T-shirts we wear have URL on back)

Just like buses this week I have had 2 calls regarding domains, but never struck a deal with either of them, which was a pity as they both need developing. I’ll maybe follow them up in a few weeks for a final nudge which would be nice to pay for an iPAD.

Latest bash at converting hard work into cash/results is my Hull domains AGAIN I know. I have bought a few 01482 numbers and placed them on a few sites one been Hull Recovery which gets a nice flow of traffic but not much revenue. It’s going quite well as I forward the numbers to businesses (helps to track calls) and hope once shown the statistics agree a small monthly fee, and then multiplied 35+ will a nice monthly income. (fingers crossed)

Final thought for today to self – Get out more, meet and talk to people but you must get an iPAD soon!
UPDATE: I have an IPAD WHOO HOO – If you need help setting one up and your in Hull call 01482 240087 and quote this site!

As for the numbers I bought for sites like Hull Recovery, Hull Taxis etc they died a dealth. When I called they didn’t think they would or was doing any good (call records proved other wise). It maybe that they would be ideal for a new start up who hasn’t got any traffic or exposure, but we’ll see.

Attended a Hull and Humbers Chamber of Commerce speed networking and lunch today at Cave castle (FAB grounds complete with moat) and I realised I need to get out more.

I did use to go to a few networking events but was trying to promote web design and VoIP. Web design is saturated and VoIP people didn’t want to take or trial it.

So out this morning and people I spoke to warmed to the idea of my Humber.TV idea and concept which made me feel fuzzy inside! Also people came up to me and was saying “Are you Mr Humber TV?” again this was a little strange and almost felt like a celebrity  😉

The Chamber hold a speed networking and lunch every month and WILL be going to every one from now!

On another note with Humber TV Valerie Prentice (our only host) is departing to France for a month and needed a stand in. Jess from Divine Clark PR was very interested as an extra permanent host and bagged 4 interviews next week at £50 a shot for advertising. “Result” I thought and hope she keeps her intro rate up.

This made me realise I need to up a gear with the whole Humber TV game and am now on the look out for more willing people to help out on a short term volunteering basis (hope to pay on invoice for their time ASAP). Wanting people who see the potential of the concept, are willing to stick with it and help out how they can to make it work/grow.

3 days till D day, D been DOG! “WOOF WOOF”

Adsense has nicely increased daily which is nice and aren’t sure if it’s with me adding new content on a few or just people looking on-line more leading up to gardening and getting out weather.

Needed to raise some funds and sold a few domains in the past week which in one way wish I never as I let them go for peanuts but altogether made a nice tidy sum to help out. Tried to sell my scuba gear too but think it may be harder than I think due to testing etc.

Signing off and catching some Zzzzzzz

Just a quick post and a few requests really.

Ok I have so many ideas and tasks to do that I don’t benefit financially from (YET) I am opening my arms to anyone wanting to get involved with (the below post) Humber.TV

People possibly needed for the following tasks below, all of which I can do but I don’t have 12 arms, 6 heads and 50 hours in a day!

• Graphic designer (show and site logo’s for shows)
• Voice over (some people with great sounding voices)
• Transcription (turning shows into text)
• Video Editor (tidying shows up and adding adverts)
• Marketing (the idea to advertise on shows)

I am getting a lot of positive feed back and people wanting to be involved in shows, so do YOU?

Do you want a slot to discuss the papers or latest news?

Maybe your into gadgets and have 3 you want to tell more on.

Are you an expert in starting up a small business and can explain and answer questions in how to do it.

Which pubs, bands, clubs or just nights out in general are shining in your area and why?

The Humber is a big area to cover for one person and would be sensible to have area helpers who orchestrate the people and shows for LIVE streams. Shows will then be ready for the broadcasting kit to just arrive at a designated venue and got for it. Local knowledge is better from a local person!

So does that sound a plan? Contact me!

I registered PriceCrunch.net to develop a discount code and affiliation site, but have never got round to it. ( no longer own this domain)

Although it’s a .NET it is a catchy domain and a great one to own and develop as we intend to soon.

Along with Anti Virals, and many other commonly used phrases nowadays we have a few others like PricesCompared.co.uk which would make a FAB comparison site if fully branded and developed.

If would give Money Super Market a run for their money I bet ;o)

Big sites that compare lots of items and products are so much harder to get earning for you compared to a niche area such as a Wormeries site. I do know of a few people that have made the bigger sites work and are earning £xxxx’s a month from natural traffic and not paid for clicks.

I feel a head ache coming on so screen rest and brew me thinks!

Face to a name?

This post is a bit of a moan and a blatant plug for the best advertising money you’ll spend within Hull!

Formed our limited company around April 08 and submitted the company details to many directories and other sites alike for free.

From that day on (un-ticking the box I wish to receive news letters etc) we have had nothing but a constant bombardment of phone calls and spam emails from most of them. I know they have to make money and to follow up listings but the annoying thing is when they try and sell us a listing and then when we decline SEO or a new website. They clearly have no idea,

That’s what we do!

Two points that bug me –

1. First of all, the call centre person who calls you has no idea what a company offers, who then calls them up to get a listing upgraded to pay annually and just wants your card details.
2. The next day not giving 2 hoots what happens to your listing or business leads now they have their commission and another tick in their box. This is backed up by everyone I’ve spoke to having NO results from paid listing on these national directories.

Really isn’t right that is it?

This got more and more grinding as the months went on. I asked clients and businesses at networking events, do you get these calls and confirmed –

“All the time! Bloody annoying”

Knowing how people generally do searches online using Google, Yahoo, BING and other search engines using a Geo location and service or product required. We decided to start buying up all Hull related domains, Services, products e.g. HullBeds.co.uk, you get the idea where we were going by covering all angles.

• 100’s of domains
• 100 hour’s,  late nights and long weekends
• £xxxx’s for registration fee’s and secondary market domains

We had a solid network of domains and a main directory they all interact with in some way- Hull Local.

We have found people like to speak to faces and real people, not some guy or voices at the end of the phone. We didn’t want to try and create a national directory but kept it a local one just to Hull which also made sense for travel and getting to know businesses. We don’t just expose your business from one website/directory which limits how many times you can be shown in search results but a whole spread of websites.

An example, If your company sells blinds, you can be listed under our Blinds, Conservatory, and Windows categories. All  of which focus on been in Hull and then on our specific mini websites again all focused on been in Hull – Hull-Blinds.co.uk, HullConservatories.co.uk and HullWindows.co.uk This gives your company 8 shots at any one search when people perform a search instead of the usual 2 shots. If you need this explaining a little better please do contact me.

I could write a book on how the network of websites would benefit your business. I’ll leave it there and just ask you to take a look, see how it works and if you do want a chat let me come and show you how it could work for your company!

I thank you ;o)