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I am writing this more for my benefit than anybody else’s, so bear with me.  I recently needed a new hosting account and decided to try another host just for the sake of it.  Well really there was a purpose but I can’t go into that here.  So I signed up for an account at hostgator.com and started moving some of my domains over to them.  The first couple of days I notice that the server is really slow and some of my empty Wordpress and Joomla sites fail to load properly.  So I called their support and they check the sites and also notice that they are at times, timing out and running very slow.  The support person couldn’t figure out what the problem was so he filed a trouble ticket and promised 24 hour turn around.  Well maybe that is acceptable but 24 hours to me, when I am trying to set up domains is like an eternity.  Yes I can be very impatient at times, I acknowledge that fact and try to work on it, but none the less it was bothering me.  So I took a deep breath and went to work on other sites.  The next day everything seemed to be working fine, and I went back to work on a site that I really wanted to get up and running.  I spent the next 2 days setting it up and got everything just the way I wanted it.

2 days on a Joomla site is not unrealistic for me because there was a ton of content and video to add to the site.  Well anyway it was up and running fine for about 3 days and then I started getting 500 server errors on all of the domains, but only periodically.  Keep in mind I only have simple Joomla and Wordpress sites running on this server with nothing special, no extra scripts or plugins and nothing I have ever had trouble with before.  I called support again after seeing these errors on all of the sites for about 5 hours.  Again the support person also sees the errors but can’t figure out what the problem is.  This time he puts me on hold to find a technician and when he comes back he says they found the error and it is all fixed.  I thank him and hang up.  Next day rolls around and I start seeing the same errors again.  Again I call support and another trouble ticket is filed with the standard 24 hour turn around.  But by now I have started promoting the site and have started getting a few visitors, who cant access the site because of the errors and of course the search engines are seeing the errors also so this brand new site is obviously going into the sandbox.  Yeah for me!

24 hours later I still have the same errors and since I haven’t heard anything regarding the trouble ticket I call support again.  This time the support person informs me that it takes 24 hours to resolve a trouble ticket.  I politely assure them that it has now been 24 hours and 18 minutes, they put me on hold to speak with a tech.  20 minutes later they come back on the phone and ask me if I received the email from support, I assure them I did not receive the email and even if I had the problem still persists.  At that point the email is sent to me explaining how the error is my fault because one of my sites is not disconnecting from the database.  If I had written or changed the script I can definitely see how that might be the case, but remember all I was running on the site in question was a Wordpress blog with 0.00 content.  There was nothing on the site at all, I had only set up the blog and done nothing else with it.  I cancelled the account and moved everything to a new bluehost.com account.  As a topper I receive an email from support after they were informed that I have decided to cancel the account with a helpful link that should fix the problem I was having.  I didn’t bother clicking on the link and instead replied to the email with a question.  “Why would you wait until a person has decided to cancel their account to try to help them fix the problem?”  It really bothered me that they may have had a fix for the problem but were unwilling to share the fix until after the account had been cancelled.  I guess they know that once a person has set up 1 or a bunch of domains it is a real pain to move them so the person feels stuck.  Don’t make the same mistake I made because it really is a pain to move sites, especially if they are old and established sites with lots of content.

It cost me another 2 days to move everything over and I still don’t have the important site back up and running because I know it is going to be crap holed in the SERPS for a while yet, plus I am very frustrated.  Just so it is perfectly clear the same sites on the new bluehost.com account run fast and no errors.  This is all my fault I have run into hosting problems before, and I know how good bluehost.com is, but decided to try something different.  Yes I am kicking myself, and one day I will make the same mistake again, but hopefully not anytime soon.

A few days later I made the same mistake with PHP-Nuke.  I will tell you about that also.

HTML Linking

It occurred to me that as a beginner one of the things that you need to learn is how to correctly use html linking on your site.  I will assume for the purposes of this article that you have already chosen the keyphrases that you are targeting and are starting to build links to your site.  A link to your site is great and every one of them counts, but specific targeted links are what we are really after.  So a link to your site that looks like this “I found this really great site about pest control and you can get there by clicking here” is a worthwhile link to have if someone puts it up for you and you haven’t spent any effort to get the link.  What you need is a link that says “I found this really great site about pest control“.

When you are working with Wordpress it is very important to title your posts with the exact keyphrase you are trying to rank for.  For instance the title of this post is “html linking” so if you wanted to do a trackback to this article the link on your site would read html linking.  It is important to consider the title of each and every post that you write.  When you are trying to build a volume of visitors you have to learn to go after keyword phrases that people are actually searching for and also have a low rate of competition.  I wanted to title this article the art of linking because linking really is an art.  It is my art, well it is the art that I know how to paint.  I can’t draw a picture to save my life and it would be a crime for me to pick up a paint brush, but I can build an audience through the art that I paint in the search engines.  I can splatter words in every direction and make them come up looking like roses because it is the art I understand.

Here is what I know about the term html linking.  Approximately 140 people search for that term in any given day, and just by the words I know that they are inexperienced people who would benefit from this site.  I also know that there are 39,200 other pages with that keyword phrase on them.  39,200 is actually a very low number so immediately it catches my attention, I can compete with 40 thousand a lot easier than I can compete with 40 million.  I also did a search for html linking to see what my competition looked like and while they are nice highly ranked pages they are not really optimized for that phrase.  And as a small experiment I will place some links to this page with the phrase html linking to see how long it takes to make the first page, and how long it takes to actually get some visitors as a direct result of the phrase html linking.

The actual words that are the hyperlink are what we call the anchor text.  In the examples above the anchor text of the first link is “click here” and in the second link the anchor text is “pest control”.  I would never care to rank in first place for the term click here because no one ever searches for the term click here, but ranking for the term pest control is a whole different story, there are a lot of people who search for pest control every day.  So the really important lessons in this article are to build your links the right way, and to choose your keyword phrases carefully.  It will make the difference in not raking for your pages and zero traffic and ranking for something that people actually search for and getting lots of traffic.  That is the end of the lesson on html linking.

There seems to be a little confusion about placing ads on your weebly.com site. Weebly does not use Adsense they use a company called Adbrite.com to place their ads. Unfortunately at this time it doesn’t look like weebly has a revenue sharing program. I believe this is a major drawback to using weebly and will hurt them long term in the number of users they will attract. I will go over a few things about both programs just as an FYI. Adsense makes it nice and easy, choose the placement of your ads and put up the code and you are pretty much done. Adbite on the other hand takes a little more care to get right. You have to choose which ads you want to show, so that your audience is getting what they want.

Just a quick note about Adsense. If you aren’t getting the result that you think you should try moving your ads around and or placing them in the text of your article and you may find that you get better results. You may find that with the right placement your results can double or even triple. For further help with Adsense you can always check out the official Adsense blog. And you can sign up for Adsense here.

An issue that I have with some of the Adsense ads is the amount you can be paid per click. I have had way too many .01 clicks. You lose your visitor and you make a penny. It’s just not worth it for the long term health of your site. If you have a site that demands a high payout per click then Adsense is one of the best alternatives there is, but is your site has lower payouts per click there are better alternatives.

When you are setting up your site for Adbrite choosing the correct location for ads is just as essential as it is with Adsense. But now you have the added element of accepting advertisers and approving or denying ads. It does take a little more work on your part to run the program but there are some real benefits that make the Adbrite program worth the effort. After you have signed up and placed the code on you site you can set the Adbrite program to either automatically approve ads or manually approve ads. I recommend that you set it to manual and after they send you a list of advertisers go through the list and only approve ads that you feel will suit the audience of your site. Also take a look at the amount that each advertiser pays per click and weed out the lower paying ads. It just isn’t worth the effort in the long run if you can’t make a decent profit per click.

Adbrte also allows advertisers to pay for direct placement on your site within your ad placement. Let’s say that you have the code at the top of every page and you show 3 ads at a time. Advertisers can bid for one or all of those spots and you get paid regardless of how many people click through. You can set the pricing for the spots and be guaranteed advertising revenue from your ads every single month. That is a real benefit that Adsense does not offer, and I have done very well with selling ad spots through Adbrite on specific niche sites. If you have a blog that is niche specific I would highly recommend that you try Adbrite for your ads.

Of course that depends on a number of factors, like what kind of website you own. If you are selling tangible products and you control your markup then you can make as much as is feasible from your set of constraints. If you drop ship items directly from the manufacturer or distributor then you are not constrained by inventory and employees. Your only constraint may be your ability to attract new customers. If your website is an affiliate website attracting customers to your site and sending them to another site for purchase or signup then you are dealing with a whole different set of problems. If your website is an informative website that attracts large numbers of people because of your content and you make your money from advertising, then you are dealing with other issues. Look for articles dealing with specific issues those types of websites face on this site. This article will deal with just how much money it is possible to make from advertising on a small niche site.

Small niche websites usually depend on advertising for revenue. Google.com has a terrific program called Adsense that targets the ads specifically to the content of your`website. This program works well because if the person came to your website to gather information then they are most likely interested in the ads that will be displayed by Google.com. This type of advertising works because you will only get paid when someone clicks on one of the ads on your site. A word of caution is in order here, never click on one of the ads displayed by google.com on your website this would violate the terms of your agreement and possibly cause your advertising contract to be terminated. When advertising is your source of revenue then you can understand why you wouldn’t want the contract terminated.

Alright finally to the answer to how much you can expect to make from your website. Let’s say that you have a website about Aruba and you attract 20,000 unique visitors per month and you have a good conversion rate of people who click on your ads. 2% is a pretty good conversion rate, so that would mean 400 people per month clicked on your ads. Take that 400 and multiply it by the amount you get paid per click. Some keywords like travel pay fairly decent per click but there is a lot of competition in that arena. So let’s say you get paid an average of .50 per click, 400 x .50 = 200.00 per month, not bad but it sure doesn’t pay enough to quit your job. What if you had 20 websites doing about the same amount of money as the first? 20 websites would do a number of things for you, first they would balance the load if one did poorly one month or was cut off by your advertiser for some reason you would have 19 more to fall back on. Having multiple sites is also a lot of work. You have to build content for 20 different sites every month tweak them and do redesigns every so often. Yes it’s just like having a full time job, and the truth is that any single website making 200.00 or more per month from Adsense has been around for a while and has great content that search engines that consumers are looking for. Having that type of great content takes time to build for just one website, let alone 20 or more websites.

My advice is don’t quit your day job just yet, maybe later but don’t get into this business thinking that you are going to make a living right away. Niche marketing takes specialized talents and tools. Successful marketers know how to attract visitors by using the correct keywords, and catering to the information surfers are looking for. You can become a very successful marketer yourself by following the step by step guide on this website.

Advertising works well but most niche sites make money by selling some sort of informational product to the people who are interested in that specific niche. Once you are selling a product to your niche that is when you will truly understand the power of Internet marketing. Learning how to build and market those products is the reason that netrat exists. Take a look at the front page and find out how to join how to make a website.

I did an article for hubpages today that gives a really nice overview of how to do keyword research, so there is not point of going over it again here.  The article with a video from create a blog can be found at hubpages titled keyword research.  I hope you have a chance to check it out and it you haven’t already go check out some of the great information for beginning bloggers at create a blog.

Cheers

Alan

Everyone is contemplating what WEB 3.0 will be but I believe that there are still far too many years of WEB 2.0 to be bothered with theory. I believe that the real evolution of WEB 2.0 is still in the works and the best is yet to come. Digg.com seems to leading itself down the wrong path lately but other great web properties are taking the lead and moving to the next generation. I believe that the user content driven sites are all going to have to find a way to reward users for the content that they are providing to stay in fashion. Sites like squidoo.com, hubpages.com, and peoplefuel.com are going to emerge from the pack and be the next really great “social networks”. It might seem strange to call those sites social networks but they really are social networks in the sense that people go to them to carve out their own little niche of internet realty.

Paying people for the content they provide will become not only the norm, but will be expected to keep people coming back to social networks often. Facebook.com being valued at 15 billion dollars will eventually lead the mass of users to resent that few are getting filthy rich on the content that they are providing. Facebook.com is valued by the numbers and frequency of its users and the users know that they are the backbone of the site, without them facebook.com is worthless. All WEB 2.0 properties are at risk of becoming just the next fad that faded away if they don’t provide real value to the people using them. Squidoo.com found a way to provide their users with a return on the investment of time they put into the site. Then hubpages.com took the lessons of squidoo.com to the next level and provided real traceable results for their users and an almost social kind of atmosphere.

I have taken the lessons from hubpages.com and built peoplefuel.com as a platform for people to not only get compensated for the content they provide but to also have a place where they can blog and be a part of a community. I built peoplefuel.com with Internet marketers in mind. Peoplefuel.com is a place where you can market your site, get paid for the content you provide, and keep your own blog in a social marketing atmosphere. And social marketing is exactly what I am going for with peoplefuel.com a place where people can market their sites while getting help from other marketers and contributing to the good of the entire community. And of course be compensated directly for those contributions. My vision of the future Internet is social marketing and all participants directly benefiting from the sites they choose to contribute to. I sincerely hope that you will consider using peoplefuel.com in your marketing efforts and will benefit far more than the effort you put into the site. Please check it out.

Google announced today, Microsoft said they are going to, big shakeup today at Ask.com. I am sure you see the headlines everywhere just like I do, and I have to admit I am a tech junkie and have to go read the stories, but one of the things I have learned in my multitude of years on this planet include: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Big tech companies feel the ever increasing pressure to evolve and make announcements about that evolution, but more often than not that is all they are announcements. This first post for the new netrat.com is to give everyone an idea of how I feel about Internet marketing exactly.

You read all the time that it is better to bow out gracefully and end a dead product or project before you get dragged under. Which is absolutely correct if you have a real stinker on your hands, and everyone is telling you that it is a stinker. But it is absolutely not true when you really believe in something and know it has potential for greatness. In my experience it is the people who stick with projects and put the extra effort that it takes to push a product past mediocrity who are the true successes. Don’t make the mistake that is so common with Internet projects and give up on them right before the tide is about to turn. 9 times out of 10 that overnight success that you hear about has years of back end development and hard work to make it the overnight success.

So here it is, this is exactly how I feel about Internet marketing. Internet marketing is hard work; there aren’t any get rich quick schemes that won’t end with jail time for somebody. But that doesn’t mean that the hard work has to last forever and it doesn’t mean that you can’t make a very good living on the Internet, or maybe if you work hard enough or have that GREAT idea that you may even become extremely wealthy. Yes it really can happen even for you, if you are willing to put in the effort that is required. It takes more than luck and more than effort though. You have to know what you are doing. And that is where this blog comes in. This blog is for people who are serious about Internet Marketing and making money on the Internet. With the articles and directions you will find here you should be able to strike out on your own with the confidence that you know what the outcome will be even before you start the first project.

I hope that explains a little about this blog and this site, and I hope that you will find it worth you time to return and learn often.