Nearly two weeks ago I set myself a deadline to have my latest site done by the end of October. Well… that’s today and I have failed miserably in my task. But setting the deadline was good for me because I worked my arse off. I think I underestimated how much I actually have to do because I’ve barely stopped working since then. My new deadline is Monday and it’s coming out, ready or not. I might not unleash the fury across the internet but I’ll post the link here to hopefully get some feedback from you guys.

Putting so much work in lately has got me thinking about how many hours I’m committing to this and I thought it might be interesting to attempt to get a figure for many hours of work I’ve actually put in. Because I’m working on a site that hasn’t been launched, none of the work I’ve done has directly affected my earnings but I’m still curious to work out a very rough hourly rate.

So I’ve tried to look back through the month and remember how I’ve spent my time. I spent 10 days up in Glasgow where I know I only worked about 5 hours during the entire time. I had one massive weekend when the rugby final was on and that was a write off and my other weekends were all spent working pretty hard, usually much longer than 8 hours a day. After I get home from work I go to the gym, eat dinner, watch some crappy TV (Hollyoaks!) and then do at least 2 solid hours of work unless I’m lured out to the pub after work or have something else on.

So all up my guess for number of hours worked in October is 73. That’s with 5 hours while I was on holiday, two hard working weekends of 20 hours each (sad but true), one weekend where my liver wanted to revolt and my brain didn’t want to work, and 14 weeknights where I did around 2 hours of work each. I usually work more than 2 hours a night so this is a pretty low estimate but it’s a good start.

I’ve conveniently forgotten about the thousands of hours I’ve put in over the past several years but there’s not way I’d be able to figure that out so I might as well make fresh start. I’m going to start a little spreadsheet next month to keep track of the hours I work in November to get a more accurate picture. I’m pretty curious about it myself!

Oh ya, happy Halloween! I can’t believe I’ve become one of those misers who turn all the lights off and try to hide from the kiddies… I am so ashamed.

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Last week I got an email from a guy called Justin who, I suspect, works for an SEO type company. Initially he was after a link on my Ireland page and later came back with a list of more pages on Travoholic.com he wanted to advertise on.

I know I talk about direct link sales a lot but I thought it might be interesting to use this example to give an idea of what sorts of things I look at when considering whether or not to sell off a chunk of my site for a quick buck.

• Does the ad make my site look spammy? - Usually people only want to buy text links but in this case the guy was after a short paragraph with several links so making sure I could pull it off without it looking to spammy becomes important.
• Does the link point to a quality site? - For some reason some of the links point to NASA and I have a sneaking suspicion he doesn’t own that site so I’m not too sure what’s going on there. The other links are all pretty decent sites so I can’t complain too much.
• Am I getting a fair price? - He originally asked for a permanent link for $35 on one page and I instead offered only a year for that price which he agreed. But then he found a few more pages of interest and offered $175 for six ads. I refused to put links on two of the pages but agreed the others (here, here and here). He then sent me the anchor text and it turned out that he was after paragraphs with 5 links in each. I’m not too keen on these types of links but offered to do them all for $250. He countered with $200 which I accepted. If he would have been after links on my main page I would have bargained harder but for those pages the price is fine.
• Will it take a lot of effort to add? - Because of the archaic way my sites are set up, some things are a huge pain in the arse to add, like site wide links and certain other things. The reason I turned down ads on the other two pages is because they wouldn’t have fit well with the page setup. All up, adding these four ads took about 20 minutes. That’s an hourly wage I can appreciate!
• Is the ad deceptive? - I think he would have preferred just having the paragraph in amongst the content of my site but I requested a ‘Sponsored Link’ type image be put above the ad.
• Will the link have a negative effect on SEO? - I don’t know what I’ve done right with Travoholic.com but nothing seems to have an effect on it in the SERPs (I am knocking on wood as I type this… or on something that looks like wood). I think the site is trust by Google because it’s so old and adding links, so far, hasn’t had any effect. Believe me, I’ve added lots.

My thinking behind my recent bout of link whoring is that the site is pretty neglected and going nowhere at the moment anyways, so if someone wants to buy links then I might as well let them. Once I start to put a little bit of tender loving care back into it then I’m sure I’ll be a bit pickier with who I sell links to and in what format. I have some major plans for this site that will involve phasing out paid links. I won’t be doing this anytime soon though so for now I might as well take advantage of the real estate!

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So it looks like Google has finally graced our websites with a PR update with some people getting a mighty bitchslap and others coming away unscathed. I was one of the lucky ones who made out alright with this update, though I’m beginning to wonder more and more whether worrying about PR is just a huge waste of time. But even still, I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon and post some thoughts about the recent update and how my sites did.

My budget travel site held tight at PR4 which is surprising since it’s a member of Text Link Ads and also an all out links whore. I’ve got so many paid links on that baby I don’t even remember which are legit anymore. I really should sort that site out but in the meantime I’ve got a bunch of links that are set to expire in December so hanging in at PR4 will make that a lot easier if I choose to go for renewals. When I sold them the site was PR5 so I’m curious to see if I’ll be able to get the same price.

My working holidays site also stuck at PR4 which I’m happy with. I’m going to attempt to sell links on this site but I’ll be going about it in a different way. Rather than heading to Digitalpoint in search of advertisers that are vaguely related to travel, I’m going to be contacting companies that would be a perfect fit as advertisers. Sort of like cold calling, I guess. I think selling links with this approach will rely less on PR and more on traffic stats and a well defined target market so I’m not too concerned with what the PR is on this site.

My living in London site jumped from PR2 to PR3 which was a bit of a disappointment considering this is my most popular site but I’ll be selling links directly to companies with this one too so I’ll be focusing mainly on improving my traffic.

It’s hard to say how my other sites did because I forget what their PR was before the update. I think everything has either stayed the same or jumped up by a point. Do I care? Not really.

I think the main thing that this whole manual downgrading of people’s PR has brought to light is how ruthless Google can be. They’ve identified private link sales as competition and are trying to stamp it out but I think they’re fighting an impossible battle, even for them.

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I’m about two months away from landing in Manila on a one-way ticket and at the moment I know absolutely nothing about the Philippines. I only recently learned how to spell it! I was bored at work earlier and I thought today would be as good a day as any to get cracking with some travel planning.

I spent most of my time this afternoon looking at maps and Googling things I read about on message boards. I wouldn’t say I’m planning some sort of crazy trip off the beaten path and I’ve noticed lots of gaps in the information that’s available for some pretty basic things. Once I realised this, my travel planning quickly changed gears and became website planning. Instead of jotting down names of hotels and the best places to buy ‘happy’ shakes, I started making a list of the places and things I can’t find anything out about.

It’s not going to help me much when I touch down in Manila without a clue and find myself sleeping in the gutter, but it will give my overall trip a purpose. The plan is to try to fill in as many information gaps as I can while I’m on the road and I think making a list in advance is the best plan because I won’t assume that people will know things, I’ll know exactly what sort of info people will be after because I’m after it as well. But then again if nothing comes of it at least I’ll be able to recommend all the coziest gutters in Manila.

This probably won’t work for places like Paris or the Queensland coast or anywhere with a path that is well worn but for anyone planning a trip that’s a bit off the typical tourist trail then paying attention to what you can’t find out should leave you with some pretty good ideas for websites. When you’re searching for something and mighty Google doesn’t come through, look at it as an opportunity to develop something of your own.

I don’t intend to spend all of my time as a researcher of obscure parts of the Philippines but it makes sense to make little notes here and there since I’ll be going there anyways. If I can pull a bunch of useful bits of information together into a good resource then I could be onto a nice earner.

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I’ve never been one of those people who researches keywords and traffic stats to find a new niche. I tend to just build sites based on my interested a vague idea of what keywords I’d like to target and hope for the best. Picking keywords is a science to some people and there’s plenty written on the subject and plenty about it that I don’t know. One thing I do know, though, is that getting as many keywords as you can into your domain name (within reason) will go a long way towards a good ranking with Google.

The longest domain name I have is four words and a whopping 29 letters long. At first I thought it was a ridiculous choice but each word in the domain is one I wanted to target and I figured if it didn’t work then I could always register something else.

The result? After about six months of nothingness, the site now ranks number three with Google for those very competitive keywords plus comes up high for various combinations of those words. The site is very targeted and aimed at selling stuff and I’m finally starting to see some results. The words aren’t searched for a lot but when people find the site, the traffic is targeted and they tend to be in the mood to buy.

The domain name is a bit spammy looking but the site itself provides quality information, provides value to the user and just happens to have a bunch of affiliate links lurking within the content. There’s no way of knowing how well my site would have ranked without stacking the domain with keywords but I have a hunch that it’s been really helpful.

I guess a bit of proof that this might work is another site I have that has a long domain name made up of four keywords as well. This one only consists of one page and has zero inbound links. Despite having virtually no content and nothing to offer the reader except outbound affiliate links the site does well for the targeted keywords and ranks number 3 with Google.

As usual I don’t have anything concrete to back up my mad theory except for my personal experience. I don’t want to encourage people to start registering 10 word domains or anything but, so far, I’ve had some success with domains approaching 30 characters and, though long, Google seems to still like them and I like to keep Google happy!

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I submitted my Living in London website to Text-Link-Ads about a year ago when it was very crappy and it was turned down. I overhauled the entire thing about 4 months ago and since then it has become my most popular and highest earning site. When I tried to resubmit it to TLA I got an email saying that it would automatically be reviewed each month and that they would contact me when the site qualified for the program.

So I’ve waited and waited and waited some more and waited again and no word from TLA despite some good traffic numbers. I had assumed that the reason for the site’s exclusion was that it is only rated PR2 (my other sites are PR4) and resigned myself to having to wait for Google’s phantom update.

Well this afternoon I shot off a quick email to the people at TLA asking them if they would consider the site for inclusion because I was sick of waiting and, low and behold, I just got an email welcoming the site into their program. Happy days! They’re only willing to sell a maximum of 5 links (as opposed to 10) at between $10-25 each (before their 50% cut) so it’s not exactly going to make me rich but every little bit helps.

So if you’ve got a site that you’ve already submitted to TLA and feel like it’s lost in some dusty filing cabinet in a broom closet of in a back alley of the internet then it might be worth sending them an email to ask what the story is. I’m guessing they might have become a bit more flexible about their minimum PR requirements since Google havn’t updated in ages.

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Every now and then a post pops up over on Lonely Planet’s Thorntree forum like this one and more recently, this one. They’re a skeptical bunch over there let me tell you!

They seem to like to group us hard working web developers in with the scam artists who sell ‘websites in a box’ and eBooks with crammed full of recycled information. I’m completely skeptical about those types of products too, but I’m also able to see the other opportunities that are out there that can only be capitalised on with a bit of hard work.

I guess it’s easy for people who’ve never heard of monetising websites to be dubious about the whole operation. Perhaps they think that anyone making money online is only able to do it by ripping off newbies like them. Do they think that everyone telling them that money can be made online are all in cahoots, working together to dwindle them out of their hard earned cash? Maybe it all just seems too good to be true and people just assume it’s a con.

Maybe I would have assumed the same thing if I was new to this. It’s hard for me to guess what my reaction would have been because I started this so long ago. I’ve known from the start that making money is possible but haven’t been able to make any of my own until recently. If I had never worked on a website in my life though I might be singing the same tune as the Lonely Planet doubters.

Did it take some convincing for you guys to believe money could be made online or were you a believer from the moment you heard about this? Does it sound too good to be true to you?  It really just takes a quick look around the web at various affiliate programs, Adsense, Text Link Ads etc. to see that this is the real deal but many of the people over on the forum don’t want to believe a word of it and don’t bother investigating further.

I can see why they’re skeptical but I can’t understand why our simple explanations still fail to convince them. I’m not too worried about it though… I guess it’s one less travel related website I’ll have to compete with!

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I was killing time at work today and came across a blog by a young guy called Carl Ocab. Maybe young is an understatement… I meant to say really young. This kid is only 14 years old and seems to be doing everything right so far.

He ranks on first page of Google for the competitive term ‘make money online’, his posts are informative, the site design looks great, he’s got lots of ad spots sold, he seems to be doing a lot of paid reviews, and he really knows his stuff.

The only thing I was doing on the computer when I was 14 was trying to figure out how to use Word Perfect and attempting to shake my addiction to Civilization. But then again the internet wasn’t really around back then so I suppose that’s a damn fine excuse for not starting as a youngster.

I really think what this kid is doing is fantastic and knowing that he’s only 14 and has been pretty successful so far is pretty motivational for us oldies to get cracking. It’ll be really interesting to see what he’ll be getting up to 10 years from now!

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So I earned nearly $1300 in September, more than I could have ever imagined and it all feels a bit, I dunno, like I should be happier than I am. If you were to tell me a year ago that I would be earning over $1000 doing this first I would have said “Shut UP! No way!” and then I would have been giddy with excitement.

But now that I’m at this point, I just want to keep pushing for more. It seems like the more I earn, the more I want to earn which is a bit of a worry because I’ve never really been the money hungry type. While I’m still working a regular a job I consider the money earned from the web as extra cash. Now that I’m packing it in, my thoughts are less about what I’ll do with the money and more about how much I’ll need to survive and suddenly $1300 doesn’t seem like as much as it used to.

I wonder what my reaction will be if I ever start making the really big bucks. Earning $2000 is within reach and more than enough to live in the places I’ll be going but I wonder if I’ll still be left unsatisfied because I won’t be able to stash enough away into my savings. Figures like $5000 a month seem out of reach and that would be nearly twice as much as I’ve ever earned in the rat race but I wonder if, once (if) I ever reach that point I’ll still come away wanting more more more.

I think this feeling might be less about greed and more about wanting security. Being my own boss is great but if the business fails, that’s it, there’s nobody to give me a severance package. Plus I think it might have something to do with the unsteadiness of the internet world. If Google decides they don’t like my sites anymore then things will come crashing down pretty quickly. Or the internet could just all implode one day, who knows! Then there’s always the drive to succeed and do well in business. I’m pretty competitive and hearing how much others are earning drives me to try and get to that point as well.

I’m not sure how much I’ll need to be earning to feel secure. I think it has less to do with monthly earnings and more to do with how much I have in the bank though. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still utterly amazed, grateful and excited to be earning this much but if you would have told me this a year ago I would be dancing in the streets. As yet, there has been no street dancing. Talk to me when I’m raking in $5000 a month though and if I’m not dancing jigs in streets all around the world then someone track me down and give me a massive kick in the arse!

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There seems to be a buzz on at the moment that Google is punishing website publishers who sell links. It’s Google’s search engine and they can do whatever they want but I think they’ve gotten things terribly wrong here and here’s why…

• Google are punishing the wrong people - It’s the link buyers who may be attempting to manipulate the SERPs and PR, not the sellers. If the big G can work out who are selling links then I’m sure they can come up with some way to figure out who’s buying them. It’s likely that sellers are already penalised because of an increase in outbound links on their site anyway.
• Not all link sales are meant to mess with Google’s methods - In the offline world SERPs and PR don’t exist but advertising is still sold in the bazillions. How can this be, you ask? Because the whole point of advertising is to get people to buy a product or service and that still applies to the online world. I wish someone would tell Google that not all links sales are based around finding evil and sneaky ways to beat their system.
• PR has no point - As far as I can tell, having a high PR doesn’t always equate to a better ranking in the SERPs. So what’s it’s purpose? It seems like the only point of PR is to help in determining how much people should pay when buying links (or websites). Ditching PR might throw the whole system into disarray and possibly even cause the internet to explode but at least it’d be harder to value links and maybe fewer people will buy them. Or not. Just a mad theory or mine.
• Google can’t own the whole internet (can they?) - Direct link sales puts all of the money into the webmaster’s pocket. Google doesn’t get any piece of the pie and they don’t like that. It also means there’s a little bit less of a chance the reader will click on Adsense, and it probably also reduces the amount that businesses are willing to spend of their marketing budget on Adwords. One wonders whether their aim is really to keep the integrity of their search system or if it’s more of an attempt to control as much of the internet’s advertising income as they possibly can. Things that make you go hmm.
• Punishing sites will compromise Google’s search results - Lots of sites selling links are of a good quality and if Google starts lowering PR and knocking them down the SERPs because they sell links then their search engine will start to lose some good results from the main pages and the user will suffer as a result.
• They’re not the boss of me, man - It’s my site and I’ll do whatever I want with it. I rely on The Goog for a lot of my traffic and if I ever got banned from their search engine it would be game over, but I guess that’s life. I’m not willing to let them tell me how to do business on websites that I’ve spent a zillion hours creating.

Try as they might, Google can’t control every aspect of the internet but it doesn’t look like that’s going to stop them from trying. For the love of god how much higher can their share price go?? Let us little people have a few crumbs, will ya?

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