New SEO tricks (new to me anyway)

"There is nothing new under the sun" is one of my favourite sayings, but I am going to gamble that there are sufficient people around who may not have come across these specific search operands, I only came across them the other day:
When researching keywords hoping to maximise the keyword placing on your site, how useful would it be to know:

1. those web pages that have title tags containing your search term
2. those pages whose backlink anchor-text includes your search term

Well those searches can be done using the Google search operands allintitle and allinanchor, in the following formats:
allintitle:keyword(s)
allinanchor:keyword(s)
[no space between the colon and the keywords.]
Open up a google search and try this for some of your search terms and see what you come up with - all this helps to focus on the keywords that visitors might use and your competitiors have not yet latched onto. The way I would be using this is to see if I could exploit the terms that return fewer results.

Making a Favicon

I may have covered this subject before, but here is how I made my favicon for this blogspot blog:

1. First you will need to find a strong image that is going to be recognisable at 16pixels x 16pixels - you may actually be surprised at how much detail the human eye can see in such a small picture. Martin Lewis of MoneySavingExpert.com actually has his photograph as a favicon...
So you have your picture - I can often be found searching for images using Google image search and then editing the picture beyond all recognition using 'Fireworks'...
Some cropping and colorizing may be required, but the final step will be to shrink that sucker right down to 16x16 and export it as a 'gif' file.

2. The next step you will need to take is to get the thing uploaded somewhere - can be anywhere as long as it has a unique URL... FTP the file to a site that you have control of or host it with a free image hosting service.

3. The final step is then to get some HTML into your template, this code can be used within the HTML of a normal website or a blog if you have access to edit the HTML. This should go somewhere before the /HEAD tag (end of head section), and should look something like this:
The red part is the URL of my icon (called 'hammer.gif'), this section in your code is the complete address of your icon including the 'gif' file extension. I have used this on a number of different platforms and it seems to work on all of them. Normally you can just leave a 16x16 gif file entitled 'favicon.ico' in the root of your website (assuming you can use FTP) and that will automatically become your favicon for the entire site. This little bit of HTML code gives you the freedom to place your favicon file anywhere and even have different favicons on different pages or sub-sections of your website.
If you copy this code letter-for letter into your site, my hammer motif will become your favicon, changing the red part allows you to pick any image on the web (limited to files of 16x16pixels...)

Website building resource

I have done a little work on this blog today I was fed up with the blogger 'favicon' so I changed it for a hammer to illustrate 'website building'. I came up with a new banner too incorporating the same hammer motif. I thought it would be interesting to use exactly the same title as the default 'blogspot' banner for this template, but to introduce the motif into the design. So it's 'off the shelf' blogger template, but with a twist...
In keeping with the intention to provide information about website building, I am going to provide a link to the 'website building' section of Livewyre.NET. This takes you through many of the steps you will need to consider if you intend to build a site of your own.
In the next post I will give some pointers as to how you can have your own favicon, even on blogger blog or a site that doesn't allow you to FTP an 'ico' file.

Survey on back up...

The latest survey from dNeero can be seen below, if you would like to get paid for doing surveys, click on the widget and get involved!
This survey is all about backing up the files from your PC which is an absolute 'must do' for anyone using a PC nowadays. I use a 250GB external hard drive, but will soon need to get something bigger...
I have suffered the failure of two motherboards on the PC I am using today, all in the space of about 18 months.... Although the latest failure didn't affect my hard-drives or my operating system at all, I was able to carry on working using a different PC having access to all the same data whilst the MOBO was being replaced.

Livewyre.NET

I needed a domain to use as a main website for a platform for future projects. I decided to develop a site at livewyre.net which was based loosely on the content of livewyre.blogspot.
I have taken the themes of make money online, website monetisation, SEO techniques etc.. and created a site around these topics. I have managed to persuade a couple of collaborators to join me and add their own content, allowing them to monetise their own pages.
The intention is to develop this into a large internet resource and there is plenty of content there at the moment, but there is a great deal of information which needs to be added at some future point.
I have added a number of affiliate adverts to this site to test their viability, and hope to be able to develop this site in the near future to it's full potential.

Munny4Hunny

My second-ever excursion into blogging was Munny4Hunny which started as an investigation into whether money could be made from paid posting. This has been through many different phases, and has experienced some PR fluctuations.
Currently on a PR of 0, it has been anything from PR1 to PR4 and gets a small amount of traffic with a decent amount of subscribers.
PayPerPost has recently dropped my Munny4Hunny blog because of the paid-posting to non-paid posting ratio. I have recently started doing posts for PayU2blog and they tend to send a lot of opps (paid posting opportunities) . PayU2blog do not mind about paid to unpaid ratio and it is generally fairly easy to meet their requirements.
The best I managed to get was about $300 for a months paid blogging, but this is not so easily obtainable since Google clamped down on Pagerank. Currently monthly income for blogging alone is around $100 a month.

The Credit Cruncher

This Credit Crunch blog is my proudest blogging achievement so far, I have used the extent of my blogspot knowledge to customise this template as far as I can. Many of the usual blogspot traits have been removed including the post dates and 'posted by' labels etc.. I have added some neat 'digg' and 'stumble upon' widgets - in fact this blog opened my eyes to the power of stumble upon. This blog has had a custom-made header provided by an internet associate which has meant that I haven't had to rely on my own questionable design skills.
The blog gets plenty of traffic compared with some of my other projects, is a PR2 and actually yields some adsense earnings, so as far as niche blogging goes, it has proved reasonably profitable. Inspiration for posts comes from the news every day so there is no shortage of subject matter. My schooling has included a certain amount of economics which has helped to provide some background information.
I have tried to keep a consistent design policy and have used linking at the bottom of each post to try to link the whole 'site' together. My philosophy has been to attempt to create a blog that looked more like a website and to give it quality content. I tend to use forum posting to drive traffic to the blog as questions about the credit crunch are reasonably common.

Really Traveling blog

This Travel Blog was inspired by all the photo's that I had from various trips abroad. Once this particular resource was exhausted (my travels have been curtailed by financial restraints in recent years..!), the emphasis switched to travel news. This has proved a suitable niche for paid posting and some text-link monetisation. I have been able to exchange links with other sites within the same niche with some ease usually from site visitors.
I have found it relatively easy to gear paid posts to this niche and find a way of making them look (almost) on topic in most cases. I have found some resources that keep me inspired with new subjects to post topics on and that allows me to keep the paid post to non-paid post ratio at a reasonable level. This blog currently has a PR of 2 and a small but growing amount of regular subscribers.

World of Beckam

My Beckham News blog is on a blogspot domain, this was my first venture into niche blogging, but was not successful enough to merit purchasing a domain. I experimented with monetising ideas, but my overall conclusion is that there is too much competition in this particular niche. I was not prepared to open up the niche to include gossip rather than soccer content, hence it does not really get as much traffic as I had hoped.
Having said that, the blog has some subscribers and is maintained out of interest rather than out of profitability... I have used this blog to help develop some techniques, I was offered help by a banner designer who was interested in the content. This designer went on to design a banner for this blog and also one of my other blogs.
Sport is one of those topics which also allows you to monetise on text-links, the blog currently has a PR of 1 and could probably be developed with more inbound links.

Livewyre Update

Things don't stay static for very long in the world of the internet and in blogging in particular. This was my first blog and I now have five of them, all hosted by blogger, but three of the others have their own dot com domain names.
I started this blog to promote and talk about the website that I originally had for converting cassettes into CD's. That website is still running, and I now run a second website which is really an extension of this blog formulated into a proper site on it's own domain.
I have learned a lot since I started this blog and am hopefully a bit better at blogging and particularly at monetising... Over the next few posts, I am going to shamelessly plug my own sites for three reasons:

1. To get some current content on this blog
2. To provide links to my other projects
3. To update any visitors to this site so that they will be aware of where the 'Livewyre' world is now at...

Hopefully anybody reading the next few posts will be able to see how much I have learned particularly when you contrast this blog with my latest offerings... I can tell you that I have found a way of blogging that is able to provide a reasonable return from Adsense. This flies in the face of advice that I have given that implies that it is very difficult to make any Adsense from a blog at all... Finding a niche is the key, and this is not something that can easily be done time and time again...

Surveys for making money online

I have probably been investigating making money online for about two years now, around the time that I started this blog in fact.
Originally I was interested in offering a service converting cassettes to CD's which is still active today, I started blogging in order to create some backlinks to my cassette to CD website. I then got interested in paid blogging and this was briefly very successful before Google stepped in to remove PR from blogs that engaged in providing paid links (what do they think directories do?).

Paid posting alone could net you a several hundred dollars a month in those days, but those that were doing paid posting are now forced to diversify. I have never been keen on 'paid to click' or paid to read' programs as I can't see any real benefit IE.. I wouldn't feel like I was contributing anything for the payment (also the pay sucks...). So my second stream has been paid surveys and I will talk through the schemes that I use or have used and rate them according to my experiences:

Ciao (rated 3/10)- I used to do these surveys and cashed out twice, but I became frustrated by the amount of times I would spend more than ten minutes on a survey only to find I was not eligible for the survey and would not get paid... The annoying thing was that it was always the same type of questions and if they paid any attention to my profile they would know full well that I would not be eligible for the survey - enough about them, I dumped 'em and will not be going back!

PureProfile (rated 7/10) - much better system where you get paid for filling out certain parts of your profile to start with and they use this data to filter the surveys you are sent. Not only this but they pay you a small amount even if you turn out not to be eligible to complete the survey. It may take me a while to reach payout, but the process is painless, no problems so far with PureProfile. My second favourite service at the moment.

dNeero (rated 8/10) - this is a great scheme and likely to payout quicker than other schemes. the surveys are always short and easy to complete occasionally requiring you to sign up for something, but nothing too onerous. They pay you a set fee for the short survey, then you can earn more by posting the survey widget on a blog based on the traffic it receives. Not only that, but you get paid a percentage of the earnings of your referrals. You get a referral when someone joins after clicking on a survey widget on your blog... like the one in the post below this one.. I think it will not be too much longer before I reach payout on this one. Two or three tier referrals are available I think which is a nice passive earner if you can get some fairly active ones...

YouGov (rated 6/10)- The lastest scheme have tried... Like Pureprofile, they pay a small amount regardless of whether you are eligible for the survey and mostly they send surveys which are geared to your profile. Like PureProfile, I think it will take me a quite while to get to payout (hence the lower score), but I have had no problem with this scheme so far...

get paid for surveys

dNeero surveys pay you for taking part in their simple surveys, you can earn more by placing the survey widgets with your answers on your blog....
watch this space for more about paying surveys soon...

Car Hire for you

Wherever you plan to visit in the world Car hire Direct has a deal for you. Any type of car from a small car to a people carrier from the UK to Europe and the US. Instead of traipsing through all the individual car hire companies, you can compare the prices on one site with Car Hire Direct - They can get cars for you from all the major hire companies so there is no risk involved. Whatever your requirements, try out Car Hire Direct for a competitive hire quote for every destination.

Citizenship survey

dNeero surveys are fun and easy to do, and you can earn a few cents doing them, and then a few more cents by blogging them too.
the latest one I have done is about US citizenship as viewed by Non-US citizens. Why not join the conversation?

Domain names

I have bought several domain names this year and one of the frustrating things about starting a new website is the 'sandbox' factor where Google does not attribute any pagerank to the site for several months until it can judge that the domain is being used properly.
Hence many people will pay higher prices for aged domains especially where they already have a good pagerank.
I came across an SEO website today which has a very well-written article about how important the age of a domain is, and the age of it's content and links in SEO terms.
The author of this site, Stephen shares a lot of his SEO knowledge with his visitors and offers a good deal of sound advice.
You would be well-advised to spend some time looking around his SEO website and picking up some hints and tips that you can use to promote our own site.

Free RSS widget

I recently needed to display an RSS feed of a forum on a website, so Googled for 'free RSS widget', up popped Feedflash. The widget is customisable for size and colours, and the widget-making page will even locate your RSS feed from just the URL of the site...
I have since created another three of these on separate blogs, each one promoting another one of my blogs. My thinking is that maybe the readers from one blog might be attracted by the stories on one of my other blogs...
I recently started a new site called TheCreditCruncher, here are the latest stories displayed using Feedflash:


So far, there are just a few posts published, but I have a couple more articles to be added this week, and should have no trouble adding to the content. I have customised the colours to match this blog and have widened the standard widget, this can all be done very easily - why not try it?

Make money online

So a few years on from the start of my first steps as an internet entrepreneur (!!) what have I learned? Has it been worthwhile? and more importantly: Is it possible to make money online?
I think I was always skeptical about how much could be made online, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that you can make a bit without selling your soul entirely... I run a service that ONLY has a presence online and am happy to report that I have been reasonably successful making a little money with that service. I really started blogging to promote this service and talk about my experiences creating a website.
I moved on then to create some more blogs, and then some more blogs as I started to examine the earning potential of different niches. Earnings from these have come in the form of sponsored posts and both static and dynamic adverts. Success rates with these methods vary according to the popularity of the site, the 'quality' of the content and especially with PageRank.
I get a certain amount of revenue for context-sensitive ads (say around $50pm), and an amount for fixed ads (around $45pm). Sponsored blog posts vary a lot for me, but have averaged about $150pm lately. I figure that means that with my experience and a few hours a week bashing at a keyboard, I can earn around $250pm if we take into account some text-link sales here and there..
Add this to the revenue that my website brings in and it is enough to stave off the worst effects of the credit crunch. I know of people who spend full-time hours with online earnings and the general conclusion would have to be that there is often no one single thing that is a big earner, but combining several different sources can provide earnings equivalent to a wage if you are prepared to put the hours in.
My resources are mostly contained in the following links:
The TurnOnePoundIntoOneMillion blog (Rachel makes a decent income from online earnings), and the online earnings pages at Livewyre.net which helps to sort out the scams from the real proven earners.

What happens if you lose PR?

The perceived 'value' of your site goes down, but that is because many, many people (too many people) use PR as an indication of value - I think the smarter people will start to look at traffic figures and readership as an indication of value.

I believe in the long run, your content is the most important element, and the less relevant PR becomes, the less people will use it as an indication of value.

I think what is happening now is that bloggers must rethink whether they are looking for traffic or monetisation, Google is making it difficult to achieve both, if you want Google's SERP you have to bow to their rules. However this is not the only means of getting traffic. If you don't require traffic from Google, then SEO does not matter THAT much.
If you are totally traffic-oriented then you must be absolutely topical or mine a niche very thoroughly.
I have made a post on my main blog which examines closely the effect of losing PageRank on a website, I have looked at the statistics to work out if the PR drop (unjustified as far as I can see since the site in question does not pay for links at all) from a PR of 3 at the start of the year to a PR of 0 right now...

I have two blogs with which I have been more SEO conscious and these are designed around two niche areas. Of these sites, one has a PR of 2, and the other one is yet to be ranked. For these, I will be very careful about the content ensuring that posts are strictly in line with the niche, and careful about how I link to other sites, only choosing on-topic links. This will enable me to do very specific on-topic paid blog posts, and also sell text-links to on-topic sites. This is the more subtle paid-blogging which will replace the more blatant forms that we have become accustomed to.

The reason for this careful behaviour is that for these sites, I will require Google to send me traffic organically, one in particular reports on current events, and will frequently attract search engine traffic. This is not true of all blogs, and the key is deciding whether you need to model your blog along PR lines, or whether you can afford to ignore PR and plough your own furrow. Remember PR is not directly linked to traffic, it is only linked to traffic from search engines.

Survey on Celebrities in Politics

The latest dNeero survey concentrates on the hotting up of the US Presidential election race. The survey is concerned with the celebrity endorsements of specific candidates. Does it help?, does is hinder?, can it even do the celebrity some harm??

Google polices the internet

I was using my Google webmaster tools today when I noticed a link that I have not seen before 'report paid links' is what it said (I'm not sure if this link will work if you don't have a webmaster tools account - but if you don't - get one!!). Curious I clicked on it and there is a form giving me the opportunity to 'snitch' on someone who uses paid links to gain PageRank.
This is a fantastic way to destroy the effectiveness of your competitors websites!! (this comment loaded with ironic sarcasm - I'm not sure that there is an emoticon for that!). Personally I don't pay for links to my main website although I have linked from wherever I can including my own blogs, yet mysteriously my PR dropped from 3 to 2 and then 0 recently. (Not a blog, but a 'proper' website offering genuine information and a service to my clients). Have I been targetted by a competitor?? I was getting good search results for keywords, so maybe I have? I think that PR changes lately are all related to perceived paid linking, so it does seem a bit odd that this site with good stable content (and no paid links) has suddenly dropped PageRank completely - and I don't suppose there is any point in me complaining to the big G!!