Project AdSense

The last time I wrote a note I was still in transition from my shared hosting to dedicated hosting. I am 99% done that transfer. I am still keeping my GoDaddy shared hosting account as all of my "gocurious" sites are still on it (including this one).

I did about $390 in October and am looking at more than $500 in November...who knows how well December will do? All I have to say is thank god for Christmas, some of my other sites are not performing as well as they were pre-move, but my two Christmas sites are doing fantastic. In fact, my North Pole Christmas site is really killing my bandwidth. If you search on google on christmas wallpaper, or christmas backgrounds then look at the images you'll see: http://www.north-pole-christmas has a pretty high ranking on some images. I'll discuss why in a later post, but I believe the "why" is what's draining my bandwidth (120GB so far this month).

In more new, I'm still using SubmitEaze to do my Directory Submisssions. I find this to be a really well written piece of software, easy to use and updated frequently. They've just added Article Submissions to version 6...wahoo!

After taking a quick look at the article submissions portion of Submit Eaze, they still have some work to do to catch up with Article Post Robot, but it's a start and it's included with the software at no extra charge. It's certainly better than doing the article submissions by hand.

I like Article Post Robot (which I had been using), but I do wish that APR had the polish that I see in the rest of SubmitEaze, especially the automagic updates that SubmitEaze has. For the money, SubmitEaze has been my best purchase so far. If you'd like to try it out, follow the link below (or on top of the page). I believe they have a free trial.

SubmitEaze Directory Submission Software.

And yes, I am a SumitEaze affiliate, but remember I only recommend software and services that I actually use and really believe in. I recommend GoDaddy because I've been with them for more than a year and while the rest of the world will tell you horror stories, they have been better/fairer to me than "other" hosting companies. The same goes for SubmitEaze, I found it to be best of breed and after using it myself for the last 6 months decided to join their affiliate program and endorse their product here. You will note that I did not join the Article Marketer affiliate program or the Article Post Robot affiliate program. I like and currently use Article Post Robot for article submissions. I found Article Marketer to be very unprofessional (read through some of my earlier posts if you'd like to see why). Article Post Robot is a few features and a little polish away from being a real top notch product. Maybe in time I will fully endorse it (I still use it).

On other news, I am trying to get some of my sites listed in the Yahoo Directory. A tip I found on a certain web forum said it's easier to get listed regionally and since my sites have a certain Canadian Flavour to them, I am going that route. I'll let you know if this works or not.

Still nothing in DMOZ after 9 or 10 months. I'm starting to think that you need to know an editor, be and editor or pay an editor to get listed in DMOZ.

Oh, I made some performance improvements on the sites, APC cache and MySQL query caching. I was able to get twice as many visitors in the last UFC (35,000 on fight night) with these changes. I'm thinking of installing/configuring squid in front of my web server to get even better throughput for the next fight as it still got pretty slow (and some denials) during the main event.

Don't forget to try out the SubmitEaze Directory Submission Software. It's a free trial and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

When you first start thinking about building your first web site you are faced with a lot of choices. You need to choose a domain name, but also somebody to register that domain name. You need to decide on whether you'll use a CMS tool like Joomla or a blog engine like Wordpress, or maybe you'll purchase a nice template and use that. One of the biggest choices you'll need to make is your hosting service. The right hosting service can be the difference between spending time installing and configuring your site and spending time adding content.

Once you've chosen your hosting service you will be asking yourself one more important question. Do I choose shared hosting or dedicated hosting? There is not an easy one or the other answer to that question. In fact I'm having trouble even phrasing it generically so that you can size up your situation and decide, but I'll lay down a few rules and gotcha's and see where we end up.

On the surface shared hosting seems like a great deal. For instance from Go Daddy you can get shared hosting plan for just $3.99 a month. The plan will give you 5GB of disk space and 250GB bandwidth. For a little more, $6.99 you get 100GB disk and 1000 GB bandwidth. Now, I just used Go Daddy as an example, but Host Gator and others are similar, some with slightly higher prices and some with slightly lower, but all have the same rules.

Hidden somewhere in your shared hosting agreement there will be a clause about not hogging system resources. What that means is that even if your site is not busy 99% of the time, if you get a big spike they have the right to shut you down. You see, the factor to be concerned with is not bandwidth or disk storage, it's CPU cycles. It's not average CPU cycles over the month, if you spike even for a short time all hosting services will shut down your shared account.

How do I know about the shared host shutdown? It happened twice to me. I'm not complaining, that's the price of having a successful web site while paying for bargain basement hosting. In my one case I got shut down because I had 8000 hits in about an hour. My daily average was about 500 hits. It seems that the blog engine I was using was using too much CPU time on my shared host, so they shut me down. Okay, so you're thinking that you can go shared and when you get to around 7000 then you can switch over to dedicated. Maybe that'll work, but in another case I was shut down with just 346 hits. Now for the 346 hit case my host sent me the log file and to my eyes it didn't seem that I was using much CPU at all. It showed my account using 100% CPU for .2 seconds. It also showed (in another case) my process taking 29 seconds, but using 0% CPU. I believe this was a case of mistaken identity. They saw that their server was slow and looked for long running processes, but didn't look at actual cycles taken. The long wait by the way was because of a YouTube vid running on my site.

So, after a full year on two shared hosting accounts, from two different companies, it was time to try my hand at dedicated hosting. One thing you must know about dedicated hosting is that you are running and responsible for all aspects of the box. That means that you are "root". There is nobody else monitoring for hung processes, nobody else installing software for you, but the best part is nobody kicking you off for using too much CPU for 10 seconds of the month.

My shared hosting accounts were $6.99 and $10 (total of $17/month). My new dedicated hosting account started at $79/month, but I bumped up the memory and CPU on the box and the final price is $111/month. That's a huge difference when you're just starting out, and over the first year I've saved $1200 going that way, but now I feel to move forward with my web sites I need the freedom that dedicated hosting allows. Freedom to have a busy day, freedom to be successful.

I don't want to make you shy away from shared hosting when you're just starting out. It's a great way to get your feet wet, establish a proof of concept and build your knowledge while keeping your budget low. Many small businesses or personal pages may never need more than a shared hosting account. For me, one year on shared hosting gave my little business enough time to grow enough for me to justify paying for dedicated hosting.

As a closing note, my ongoing move from my shared hosting accounts to my dedicated hosting account has taken about two weeks. The first couple of days was experimenting and learning, followed by a few days moving my best performing sites over and the last week has been spent moving the rest of my web sites over, cleaning up security and doing more learning. In the end, I chose Go Daddy as my dedicated host. I figured they deserved it, at least when they shut me down at 8000 hits it was conceivable that I was over stressing my shared account. As for the other company, the one who shut me down with the log file which proved nothing at 350 hits, sometimes you only get one mistake and in the web business when your site is having it's best day ever and your host shuts you down without good reason, it's time to move on.

It's taken me about a week (not solid, but doing something every day) to migrate most of my sites from my two shared hosting accounts to my new dedicated hosting account. I ran across some security issues and had to figure out some mysql command line options. I also needed to figure out what needed to be changed in the .sql files which represented backups of my databases and which were the core config files for Serendipity, but other than that it was fairly painless. I've written an article about migrating your Serendipity blog and posted it on some article sites and on my Open Source Depot site as well.

Things have calmed down a bit now (money wise), but September was still my best month ever with approx 50% more being made than any other previous month. Note that this is about a year into Project Adsense, so we'll see how it goes from here. I'm certainly not going to retire any time soon and with my new dedicated server costing me $111/month this isn' t paying back what I'm putting into it yet...but I will not quit.

I think my next step will be an article on shared vs dedicated hosting and the perils of each.

What a difference a week makes. Last week I was very happy with the performance of my web sites. My martial arts site is doing quite well and my Christmas and Halloween sites are coming along nicely. The recipe article site is now making around $30/month or so ...

Last Saturday I submitted one of the entries from best ever recipes to stumbleupon and a couple of hours later my hostgator hosting account was suspended. I only had 350 hits on the site. Hostgator said I was taking up too many resources on my shared hosting account. I was nowhere near my bandwidth limit and my account should be capable of handling more than 300 hits in a couple of hours.

So, I started looking into dedicated hosting options. Since I already had dealings with hostgator and godaddy I checked theirs first. Godaddy had the cheaper options (more bang for my bucks), so I decided to purchase a "virtual dedicated" server account to test the migration waters before going full dedicated (which is more expensive). My testing was almost complete when UFC 76 hit.

First of all, my MMA site is hosted on godaddy shared hosting. I have had hits of 12000 and 18000 in a day on that account without so much of a word from godaddy, but UFC 76 would be different. At about 8000 hits and on my way to my best day ever they shut me down (same reason as hostgator). So, I found myself without a web site for the biggest two days of my existance. My MMA site does the best during the fights and the day after...thus it's name "UFC Results".

So, I completed my testing and I've ordered a dedicated server from godaddy. My config will cost me about $111/month and includes a p4 3ghz, 2gb of ram and 500G/month transfer. I have the machine all to myself, so no shared hosting woes of them shutting me down for using too many resources. My server should be set up soon and I will start moving my sites over to it.

So, this month could have been a $300 month, but it looks like I'll be closer to $220 or $230...still by far my best month ever. Of course next month a huge amount of my earnings will be tied up in hosting fees, but with the config I ordered this should not be an issue in the future. I may (hopefully) need to bump my bandwidth, but I think my largest month so far is under 10GB bandwidth anyway, so I won't need to worry about that for at least a year.

Note to self: If I do 50x the bandwidth, that's 50x the potential earnings...50x300=$15000/month...it's safe to say if I hit the 500GB / Month then I will not mind adding another $20 to go to 1000GB bandwidth.

Anyway, take care...I've got server migrating to do.

Well, now that I've got your attention, it's time to report. First a product summary:

I am back to using Article Post Robot again (for article submissions). I found Article Marketer submitted my articles to too many sites who were "cheating". In other words, blogs who take in a certain type of article, then just post it. No backlinks, no acknowledgement. Most of these blogs also have no way to contact the web master (big surprise).

I am also using SubmitEaze for my directory submissions. Seems to work fairly well and since it has a way to keep track of submissions I have already done then I can do 5 or 10 a day on each of my sites and pick right up where I left off.

Article Marketing works
I know I've been back and forth about Article Marketing since starting this blog, but I finally have real examples of it working. As an example, go to google and type in the phrase: "mma is scary" without the quotes. The first site that comes up is Halloween Village. That's one of mine. The actual article was about martial arts, but in the author resource box I put something to the effect of "If you think MMA is Scary, try Halloween Village". I wrote that article in March, 2007, so it might take a while to see the rewards, but it does work.

Article Chimp is making money
I'm finally getting some traffic to my Article Chimp article directory and it's starting to make money. Not a ton, maybe $20-$30 a month, but it's a start. I'm trying a novel approach with my article directory of not loading it down with a million ads and keeping the response times good. Maybe it'll pay off in the long run.

Halloween and Christmas is picking up
My Halloween and Christmas themed sites are starting to pick up steam as the holiday season approaches. Still under 100 impressions a day, but a lot more than the 5 or 10 I've had since they've opened. I credit a bit of SEO (link building) and a bit of the season.

ultimate-fighter.net is back on Google
I've spent quite a while undoing the damage I think I did by creating a myspace page and linking to ultimate-fighter.net. Note that I also bought a paid link, but had that undone. I was de-listed for months, but I seem to be back now ... whew!

mma.gocurious.com is going great
I really wish I'd purchased a domain when I started building my UFC Results fan site. This is by far my most popular site with around 40,000 or so visitors a month and is also my main money maker (not a ton, probably will do $100 this month). Some directories won't even look at listing sub-domains.

DMOZ
I still have no listings in DMOZ, despite signing up in January.

Well, now you're up to date...keep trying, keep your expectations realistic and be patient.

We all know that Santa Claus does his very best to make sure all of the "nice" children get toys at Christmas. He works all years making his toys and then spends Christmas Eve traveling the globe in his sleigh delivering the toys to all the good boys and girls around the world. But, what if Santa Claus worked for Google? Could he be doing things better?

Google Claus as the new improved Santa would now be known would make Christmas more fair. He would optimize his routes, his toy making and bring even more joy to the good , or should I say most popular, boys and girls of the world, but how?

This is dedicated to our good friends at google...who keep us on our toes and are the rulers of all things internet.

Welcome to the Google Circus

I am here to tell you first hand, do not buy paid links. Many will tell you that paid links do not incur a penalty with Google, but I tend to disagree. Let me give you a case in point.

My site blah.com. (that's not the real name, the real name is kept secret to protect my real job)

Once upon a time (a month ago) blah.com was rated #1 on all 3 search engines for the phrase "Blah". That makes sense for sure. I've owned this domain for more than 5 years, but only started using it for a web site about 6-9 months ago. It's been #1 or #2 for the phrase "Blah" almost since day 1.

Then I was reading in some SEO forum that it's more effective to buy one good PR paid link than doing a ton of free directory submissions. I'd like to meet the guy who made that suggestion.

Anyway, to make a long story short, life is never that easy. Now that I've purchased my link, my site has dropped out of the top on google...how low did it go? Let me put it this way, I got tired of hitting the next button. Now, I am still listed somewhere (i.e. not banner), but I am being penalized for buying a paid link (I'm sure of it).

To compound the situation, I am having trouble getting the link dir that I purchased the link on to remove it. I've sent them 4 e-mails with no responses. My next step is to try to involve paypal...but then what?

So, now I need to do everything I can to remove the link, then beg google for re-inclusion, admitting that I've been bad (even though I didn't know it) and saying that I'll never do it again.

Many "experts" will tell you that I am not incurring a penalty for this, they are WRONG. Nothing else has changed on my site and "Blah" is not a common search term (even at #1 I only got 10-20 hits a day on the site, but I was starting to get ranked on other keywords as well and traffic was starting to grow).

So Paid Link Penalties are real, deal with it, don't do it...find a better way. Nuff said.

I've taken a while off from submitting articles to increase my sites link popularity (not this site, my other sites). In place of that, I've decided to start submitting my sites to link directories. There are many services out there which say that they do manual submissions and also some software packages to help you out. I of course decided to pay about $100 for a software package. I believed that this would be the right thing to do, considering I have about 20 sites to submit.

I chose SubmitEaze and it seems to work well enough. I can create as many projects as I like and SubmitEaze is pre-populated with a number of directories (likely from DirectoryCritic). SubmitEaze has a drop down for free, paid, reciprocal. SubmitEaze also has the ability to add your own custom directories. I think it would be great if they added several niche lists and also deep link lists. Perhaps someone from SubmitEaze will read this and add it, or I could get off my lazy butt and send them an e-mail.

In addition to using SubmitEaze, I decided to utilize a manual directory submission service that came recommended from a popular seo forum (search in google for seo forum and you'll find it). The service was www.seoster.com. I chose the 500 submissions for $50 package. It took about a week for them to start my submissions, but after that they seemed to do about 100/day. At the end I got a file with the submission list. A lot of the directories send confirmation and/or informational e-mail, so be sure to use an e-mail account that you don't mind some spam in...also, make sure it is an account under the domain you are submitting (or lots of directories won't even look at you). Last of all, be sure and check the e-mails in case they do require confirmation.

So, other than maintaining my sites that's what I've been up to. My AdSense numbers have been growing steadily, but at my current rate I won't be able to retire for another 20-40 years or so. I'm sure if I threw more money at the problem things would move quicker, but what is one to do?

If google ever shows my article links (the ones in the article directories themselves) then perhaps I'll re-visit that strategy, but for now it's link directories, niche directories and a few choice blogs that I post at to build my links.

If I was more focused I'd keep a list of blogs and forums related to my subject matter and make it a habit to post to each of them at least once a day (but only if I had something to say).

One of the most over discussed topics on the net is whether or not PageRank actually matters to search engine results. 99% of the time, the discussion ends with some "authority" giving you an example of a search which shows a lower pagerank site higher than one with a higher pagerank.

What a load of bull!

Let me tell you this, PageRank counts. Now, that statement requires a little extra explanation. Let me give you some point form notes:

• 2 sites with the same PageRank on the Google toolbar do not necessarily have the exact same pagerank!
  
• When all other things are equal (SEO wise), then PageRank is the deciding factor for search engine placement.
  
• The PageRank you see on the toolbar, or by looking at those "Future PageRank" sites is almost always out of date.
  

So, if you have a site with PageRank 3 and you're comparing it to another site with PageRank 3, they are not the same PageRank. PageRank is more finely granulated than a 0-10 numbering system.

Here's my concrete example (you knew it was coming, didn't you).

I had a web site: http://recipes.gocurious.com, entitled "Best Ever Recipes". I added a bunch of content to the site and got some backlinks.

I then decided to register a domain: best-ever-recipes.com because I know that domain name helps in SEO results. I then permanently forwarded the old to the new (so that I didn't lose any of my old backlinks) and proceeded to get backlinks to http://www.best-ever-recipes.com and add more content.

Just before the latest PR update, I decided to use new software on the recipe site, Serendipity instead of Jooma. My better half (who does all the work on that site) was not happy about loosing the old site's look. So, I decided to split the sites into two distinct sites. The old one using Joomla and the new one using Serendipity.

Now, just before the split the site was ranked #1 or #2 on google for the phrase "Best Ever Recipes", depending on which day you did the search. It was also ranked well on "Best Recipes Ever".

Apres split, both sites had PageRank 3 (cool), but neither site was #1 or #2 on the phrase "Best Ever Recipes". The old site (http://recipes.gocurious.com) was ranked #9 and the new site not ranked at all even though it had the exact same domain name and had the phrase "Best Ever Recipes" all over the place.

This leads me to one conclusion.

3/2 = 3 (in google terms...in other words, there is a lot of difference between 3 and 4 in PageRank), and PageRank matters. You can take a high 3 in pagerank and split it to two low 3's.

The new site is coming along well and getting ranked much better than the old (hooray to Serendipity), but the old still wins on the phrase "Best Ever Recipes"...

For those of you new to Project AdSense, this blog is not necessarily meant to draw conclusions, it is meant to document what did/didn't work so that others can learn from it. The bottom line is that PageRank matters, it is always out of date (on the toolbar) and getting quality backlinks is something that you should strive for.

I found this little article by Wendy Suto and decided it was exactly the type of thing which belongs on Project AdSense or the AdSense Project or whatever this site is called:

Businesses can gain a competitive edge with Google and other significant search engines through relevant link building strategies. The search engines track links in ranking algorithms while crawling the Web. It is advantageous to grow the number of incoming links to your company’s site alongside effective search engine optimization techniques.

There are numerous link building solutions.

1. Free and paid link directories

Link directories all provide either one-way or reciprocal links. Some are free, while others are paid only. Link directories are beneficial because Websites that place your link on their site without requesting a link back to their site are considered more valuable than reciprocal or link exchanges, in the eyes of major search engines. There are many reputable directory sites that are well trafficked by potential buyers for your product. You will find one-way and reciprocal link directories by typing into any search engine search box, keywords like “submit a link”, “add a URL”, or “add link”.

Some small business owners will only link to sites that link back to their site. This creates reciprocal links pages and triangular link patterns. Reciprocal links do not improve a Website’s rankings, and should only be done to give value to your site visitors. This is not a savvy SEO tactic or a wise link building practice. Stay clear of SEO companies who use these link exchange strategies; they are not considered real SEOs by other professionals in the field.

2. Business Blogging

This is an ever growing Internet trend gaining in popularity with businesses – corporate blogs. Blogging started as personal spaces for individuals to share their thoughts and the events around them, like an online diary. Corporate blogging is then defined as another way to publish business-related content and gain more visibility for your company on the Web. By offering information and sharing knowledge, a company can quickly establish itself as a leading industry expert, get information to customers quickly, increase sales, attract journalists seeking news releases, and attract new customers looking for relevant information.

3. Article Directory Submissions

Article directories are sites that house free reprint articles, allowing authors (people like you) to become known as experts in a field or industry. These sites help authors gain one-way link popularity because others seeking free articles to reprint on their newsletters, Websites, blogs and in print can find them here. Reprint articles can only be used elsewhere if providing a link back to the author’s Website. You also receive free advertising and promotion.

4. Press releases

Submit your company’s news releases to sites like PRWeb.com and PRNewswire.com to allow journalists and bloggers to find important information about your company, its products and services. These releases also build links to your site, and attract attention from prospective buyers.

5. MySpace.com

This is a tremendous opportunity for free publicity, through networking with prospects from around the world. Place your business profile, your company logo and business pictures, commercials and videos, write comments on other myspace.com profiles, receive email, instant message, and search for prospective clients. MySpace.com also has a business section that is cost effective and a great way to share your business with people searching for a certain product or service. This is another way to increase your link popularity.

6. Yahoo! Answers

This site is relatively new, and lets people in all industries become an expert in their fields. Answer questions in categories related to your expertise. Choose a subject from an extensive list of categories. Create a profile on Yahoo!, and you get to list up to 3 other one-way links. Yahoo! Geocities offers free a Website template and tools to build a simple Website. All these avenues add a host of easy ways to increase link popularity for your business.

7. One-Way Links on other Business Sites

Even with these link building strategies, having one-way links are considered much more valuable than link exchanges, also called reciprocal links. One way links from other related business sites or blogs with pertinent subject matter to the Website is an excellent way to drive traffic to your site. Although it is time consuming asking other sites to link to your site, these methods will assist in building stronger link popularity interest among the major search engines.

8. Business Networking Sites

FastPitchMedia.com and LinkedIn.com are two business networking sites that give professionals and business executives many resources under one place. These one-stop shops give professionals a lot of excellent exposure for free, by housing a database of business owners linked to each other’s online networks. Try something new! Create a profile through these sites, and you will reach other decision makers, stay in touch with others in your network, fill a key position, and keep contact information current.

Wendy Suto is president and CEO of Search Circus, Inc., an ethical SEO firm specializing in one-way link popularity building. The company also offers natural search engine optimization, blog marketing, Website copywriting and article submission solutions. As a certified search engine optimization consultant, she teaches SEO seminars throughout Cleveland, Ohio.

wendy@searchcircus.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Wendy_Suto
http://EzineArticles.com/?Increase-Links-Naturally-With-Link-Popularity-Building-(LPB)&id=550935

Yep, we're #1 on Google, #1 on Yahoo and #3 on MSN. It's all about SEO, page title and domain name choice. Cool!

Of course, it's #1 for the search term "Project AdSense", but this confirms a number of things.

1) Domain name counts (even sub domain)
2) Page Title Counts
3) Irritating repetition of keyword phrases counts.

Of course, I'm getting absolutely no traffic on this site from that search term, but hey...it's nice to know that it's listed as #1 for even one search phrase.

Well, I had my best 3 day period ever this week. It's all thanks to UFC 68. I scored about 1500 visitors to http://mma.gocurious.com the day of the event, 2100 the day after and another 1400 two days after. Traffic has calmed back down to normal levels today.

I saw the ramp up start earlier this time, starting a week or more in advance of the event and peak traffic was three times what it was last month. That is very promising and makes me conclude that traffic increase goes up exponentially as your rank in google searches gets better. This makes perfect sense if you think about it. Most people who do a search click on the first or second item, going much below that there will be less and less. By the time you get to 15 or so, you're probably not getting clicked. So as an example, if there are 100,000 potential visitors on "UFC 68 Results", I would guess that first place gets at least 30,000-50,000 second getting 15,000 and it drops of quickly once you get below 6th place.

So, we'll see if I can climb another spot or two and get more visitors for April 7th UFC event. I am still promoting my other sites, alternating between recipes, the two christmas sites and halloween. DMOZ still hasn't listed any of my sites (they sure take their time).

Later

Earnings have been very weak for the second half of Feb. My traffic numbers have been good, but CTR has not. I think this likely indicates that I am getting return traffic as opposed to new traffic. Return traffic is less likely to click ads. Hey, any traffic is good traffic!

I expect things to pick up as the next UFC event gets closer( March 3rd). I am still ranking high on UFC 68 Predictions and my articles seem to rank pretty high for other ufc type queries (although the articles are hosted elsewhere...article directories), they all have links back to me

If you'd like to take a look at some articles I've written (when reading, remember that my #1 reason for writing this is to create backlinks and traffic, I know that I'm not a very good writer).

My Articles on Ezine Articles