I spent the past few days travelling with a Chinese girl who is pretty interested in the internet and SEO stuff. She’s really interested in what I’m doing and spent a lot of time asking me questions about my websites.

It was really interesring for me to be able to get a glimpse into the world of the internet in China. She was amazed that people buy so many things online, especially things like insurance. She said her boyfriend had had an idea to set up a car rental website because, at the moment, nothing like this exists in China. She also told me that most websites are very commercial and that information sites with advertising don’t really seem to exist.

She seemed pretty switched on about the internet so I think she knows what she’s talking about. It’s an exciting thing to think that the Chinese internet market might not be at the same stage as the Western world. If China is a bit behind, think of all of the opportunities there must be out there!

It’s exciting stuff but if, in fact, the net in China still has lots of room for development, I think gtting on board soon will make a lot of people a lot of money. Does anyone know anything about the state of the internet in China? Are there still opportunities here that us web marketers could only dream of having in the West?

I think it’s worth investigating so any of you out there with internet savvy Chinese friends might want to start looking for partners.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Bored of slaving away on my stupid Beijing website that is taking up all of my time and kind of sucking the life out of me at the moment, I decided to head on over to Archive.org and play with the Wayback Machine as a distraction.

I did the usual stuff… checked out some of my own early site attempts then I looked at the sites I read regularely and I managed to kill a good amount of time essentially doing nothing. Then I thought of looking up a few websites that I used to visit but had vanished from the internet for one reason or another. I managed to find a few of them and has a little trip down memory lane.

Then I had a brainwave… lots of these defunct sites have a lot of good content that is rotting away in the archives of the Wayback Machine. What if some of that great content were to be rescued? It would be completely unethical to copy an article entirely, but I don’t see anything wrong with have a poke around for some ideas.

Or maybe I’m just looking for a way to justify wasting so much time on the Wayback Machine!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

As anyone who read my last post knows, I’m working on a Beijing website at the moment. I’m attempting to build an area guide to make it easy for new arrivals to see what the main residential areas are and where they’re located in the city. This kind of information would have been great when I first arrived but I couldn’t find anything like it. So I guess I’ve got to build it myself! Yay!

To build this section of the site I need a list of the residential areas and I need to know where they are. I’ve been here for over a month but I’m still wandering around in a semi-permanent state of confusion. So I need some help. I made an initial post on Beijing’s main forum community, The Beijinger, and got some good suggestions for areas. Then, after having complied a list, I made a second post to the forum to see if my list seemed ok and if anyone had more suggestions for other areas I could add.

Well most people have been really helpful and full of suggestions, a couple have been arseholes, which can be expected on any forum, and one guy has suggested that I shouldn’t be using the forum for free information since I will be profiting from my website in the future. The guy is sort of a dick, but it got me wondering whether he has a point.

Is it fair to hit up internet forums for information that I will eventually be using to earn money from? Would it be better to make it clear from the start what my motives are and then go from there? I eventually listed exactly what I planned to do with the information since I’m not aiming to hide anything and I’ve only been met with interest and more suggestions.

I get free help all the time from sites like Digitalpoint and the Google Maps people but is it different when a forum is aimed at webmasters? Other people post events all the time to the Beijinger forum with an aim at making money, why should asking for help on a website be any different, especially when my site’s information will be free?

Is this guy just being a jerk, or does he have a point?

I’m curious to see the reaction when I make a post looking for paid writers. I bed there will be plenty of suspicious people rearing their heads. I’m not sure what it is about the crowd on these forums but they’re a testy bunch. The people on the London forums never gave me so much hassle!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

No doubt you guys have noticed that obnoxious, red ’I BOUGHT A SHELTER’ logo over there on the right side of my pages. That’s an organisation that is helping out with earthquake relief in Sichuan. They’re contemplating teaming up with Hands On (the organisation that I worked with in Bangladesh at the beginning of the year) who are in the area now assessing whether they’ll be able to do a deployment. I’m told they’ll have an answer for us at the end of next week and if it happens, I’ll be down there in a flash to volunteer. I loved the Bangladesh experience and now I think I’m hooked.

If the Hands On deployment doesn’t work out then I’m going to head to Mongolia in late June for three or four weeks. Because of the visa I have, I need to leave the country at some point and my current visa extension expires on June 19th. Mongolia has been on my list for ages… horsies, Ger huts, Gobi Deserts, Naadam Festivals, vodka… what’s not to like?

So with a Hands On deployment looming and Mongolia as a pretty awesome second choice, this means that I really don’t have much time to work on my new Beijing site. Sure, I’ll be here for all of August, but so will my friends and so will the Olympics which means I will either be at an event, at a bar, or in bed hungover for the entire month. Sad but true.

So I’ve got about 10 days to get all of these fun and wonderful things done:

• come up with some kind of non-crappy logo or header image
• write a bunch of articles (or find people to write them for me)
• figure out how Beijing is divided and the names of different residential areas (harder than I thought)
• find people to write area guides for me
• make time to meet my writers in person to pay them
• get some more figures for my price guide
• snap some more photos

For anyone who wants to see how things are going so far, the site is live (living in Beijing) but seriously empty. Depending on the response I get from any writers I can find, I think this is doable but it won’t be easy, especially since I’ve been distracted by more interesting projects lately. But the pressure is on and knowing that if I don’t do it before June 19th it will never get done is a big motivator.

If you check the site in a week and it looks the same can you please send me threatening emails? Wish me luck!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I seem to be throwing money figures out there into the internet world without really sharing exactly what projects I have on the go to get those numbers. I thought it might be useful to give you guys a bit of information on what I’m working on now, what sites I already have online and what domains I might develop in the future so you can maybe compare it to your own group of sites and see if it gives you any ideas about how to move forward.

Currents sites:

• Travoholic - This is my oldest site (8 years I think) and Google loves it. I’ve neglected it for years but putting links on it to my new sites always gets the new ones listed really fast. It’s also a link sales whore and I have no plans at the moment to do anything with it.
• Stuck in London - This is my best site for Adsense and traffic and my favourite as far as looks and content go. It earned me $200 last month in Adsense but I haven’t really explored other monetisation options. I keep meaning to attempt to strike up partnerships with rental agencies and other London based businesses but so far haven’t made the efffort. I know several affiliat eprograms that might work too but need to add them still.
• Working Holiday Info - I lied when I said my London site is my favourite, it’s this one. I spent lots of time putting a personal touch on it with the cartoons and spent even more time researching dozens (or more) of working holiday programs across several nationalities. It has a huge Adsense clickthrough rate but doesn’t get  as much traffic as I’d like, despite being at the top of Google for ‘working holidays’. The gap year, work abroad niche has a lot of companies operating in it so I think there’s some scope for teaming up at some stage.
• Wanderstruck - This was meant to be a travel blog, country guide, place for hostel reviews and oh so much more. I’ve been neglecting it lately though because I’m finding writing travel blogs posts difficult. If I can’t make them entertaining I don’t write them and I seem to be in an unfunny mood of late. But I love the domain name and it’s an ongoing project that isn’t really about making money.
• Nerdy Nomad - You’re on it! Just a site for fun, to share ideas and to explore the blogging world. I would like to be more involved in the blogging community but it seems like I read more blogs when I was chained to my desk at work with no other choice.
• Van Tour - This is a site I through up because I saw a gap in the market. I don’t really know much about it but just chucked up the little bits of information I do know. It’s very niche and only really gets busy around May and June when people start researching their trips. It’s been a good moneymaker because of affiliate programs and a partnership with a van rental company.
• Working Holiday Insurance - I have a site aimed at working holidaymakers who need to find insurance for their trips that covers working. It doesn’t get much traffic at all and I only get a few bucks a month in sales, if I’m lucky. Inexplicably, the site is PR5! I have no idea how that happened. I know for sure it has very few backlinks and it exists purely to pimp affiliate programs. Google is mysterious indeed. Not that I’m complaining.
• Super Niche Event Site - I have a site dedicated to a single day out in London that is attended by thousands of people. It gets 2000+ visits a day around the time of the event but I haven’t managed to make much off of that traffic beyond selling a few t-shirts.
• Traffic Driving Sites - I have two keyword rich domain names with one page sites on them that were built to drive traffic to an affiliate program. The program has been a success but I’m not sure how much it owes that to these sites.

Sites I’m working on:

• Beijing Guide - Identical in layout to my London site and with the same target market. I came to Beijing early to work on this site but have been lazy since it involves hitting the streets to snap photos and finding (and paying) content writers. This one won’t be done for several weeks at best.
• Working Holiday Insurance - I’ve created a copycat site of my other working holiday insurance site. No idea why since the other one isn’t really working that well. This one will be aimed at my favourite target market with my favourite currency - Brits. I just need to write a bit more content and she’ll be done hopefully within a couple of days.
• Mystery Mobile Site - I’m excited about this idea for a mobile phone site but have no idea how to monetise it. But still think it’ll be a great resource so I’ll worry about that later. The site will be stupidly simple but I need to do quite a bit of research. Fortunately I can get all the information I need from Google, other sites and online forums. I think I might be able to get this one up in a week if I work hard and can figure out  a few coding type things without too much hassle.

Undeveloped Domains:

• Canadian Travel Insurance - I have a good .ca domain name for selling travel insurance but haven’t developed it because I haven’t been able to make a go of my other site and because there aren’t that many affiliate programs aimed at Canadian backpackers.
• Backpacker Party Site - I have what I think is a catchy domain that might make for a good festival/party guide type site but there are lots out there and Im not sure if I can do it better than them.
• London Pub Crawl - I have a domain which I was going to turn into an information site for the Circle Line pub crawl in London but lost interest.
• Another City Guide - I’m going to attempt to build another guide similar to my London site and plan to spend a few months living in the city in early to mid 2009.

Most of my sites are pretty high quality in their content. I’ve research everything really well and tried to provide really unique, informative information. I think it’s important to stick with what you know and I’ve done that, focusing on backpackers with a specific interest in the working holiday niche because I know a bit about it and, more importantly, I’m always interested in learning more.

I’m not really aiming to have a set number of sites. I’m not one of the people who want to have 100 dollar a day sites about stuff I don’t know anything about. I want sites that are complete, full of good information, complement each other and run themselves so that if I do decide to add another one, I won’t be struggling to keep up with my old sites.

So there you go, hopefully this puts my monthly earnings into context a bit and shows that I’m sticking to a niche I love. I know there are lots of other ways to do things but I’ve always thought that doing what you love will pay off in the end and so far it looks like things are working out for me. Yay to backpacking and working holidays!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Just a short note to let you all know that the ‘Map‘ link at the top of the page has finally had some life breathed into it. All of the links will take you out to my Wanderstruck travel blog but it might be handy for anyone who wants to read about the travel side of things by location.

I rigged the thing up with Google Maps which I think are great little things. I’ve got so many ideas for sites using Google Maps and wish I had more knowledge on how to use them. I managed to struggle my way through and the people over at the Google Maps Group are ridiculously helpful and saved me from pulling all my hair out on several occasions. I keep meaning to sit down and learn more but I really should master CSS first before branching out.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I met a guy in Manila who described himself as a web marketer and of course I had to find out more. I think his idea is an interesting one and something I hadn’t thought of or heard of anyone else doing.

His plan is to register lots of local domain names for various services. So for example, torontodentist.com, hamiltondentist.com, niagarafallsdentist.com etc. The options are limitless really because you could focus on any sort of small business and any location.

He was in The Philippines because he had just employed four locals to work making cold calls back to cities in the US. His plan was to get to the top of Google for whatever keywords the domain was focused on and then to call around to related businesses to see if they would be interested in renting the top spot from him for $200 a month.

He doesn’t actually know anything about SEO beyond that it exists and plans to pay people to optimise all of this sites to get them to the top. Because he’s focused locally, he doesn’t seem to think he’ll have any problems ranking in the top spot for all of his domains. He’s aiming to sell 500 this year and at $200 each a month he’ll be rolling in it if he can pull it off.

What do you think of this idea? I think it’s quite creative and I can see why a business would want to rent it because if they don’t, their competition might. I think he might have a harder time than he thinks getting the domains to the top, especially without any good content on the site, but he seems confident.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I’ve been spending a ridiculous amount of time trying to create a Wordpress theme for Wanderstruck.com that I happy with and I’m about ready to throw my laptop into the streets. Well, not my laptop, my parents’. Not sure how well that would go down.

I know I could pay someone to whip me up something that suits in no time but this is something I really want to learn how to do and toying with the theme’s CSS is frustrating my to death but if I don’t keep hammering away at it, I’ll never learn.

So what are the results of my three weeks at home in Canada? Not much besides a lot of hair pulled out and late nights. I’ve done a few important things but as far as this new site goes, it’s like a black hole that sucks my time into it without showing much progress.

I thought it might be interesting to give the site’s link and let anyone who is really bored and wants to see how confused I am to have a look at my progress (or at this point, total lack of any progress). Nobody ever shows their sites as a work in progress. It always seems to be an all or nothing deal which makes sense but it might be interesting to some people to see how much I still rely on trial and error and to also see how many design changes I’ll make before this puppy goes live.

I’m doing my theme editing work at http://www.wanderstruck.com/blog but you’ll probably spot changes to the main page soonish as well. I was initially hoping to have this site alive and kicking by the time I leave Canada on Monday but if that happens then it will be some kind of act of god. I’ll be kicking back on the beach for my first week in the Philippines so if I can find some wifi and avoid temptation then you should start seeing some progress.

Hopefully.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I know, I know… I’m supposed to be working on cleaning up my old sites, adding new content to them and making them easier to update when I’m on the road. Plus I should really be using this time to look a bit further into some tax issues and maybe even learn a bit more CSS. What am I doing instead? I’m doing what I love to do - building a new site from scratch.

This is my favourite thing about web development and now that I’ve got a great new domain in Wanderstruck.com, I’m pretty eager to get all creative on its ass. I thought it might be useful to know what sorts of things go through my head at this stage and how I go from a blank canvas to the beginnings of a website.

• Get a list of potential categories - Before I can decide on layout or navigation I need to have a rough idea of how I’m going to organise things. In this case the site will be a travel magazine, guide and blog combo so I’ll need bits for feature articles, static guides, a blog bit and a travel map that will tie into the blog. As time goes on I will alter this list by combining certain categories or taking things away altogether but I need to have a few major areas defined before I can move on.
• Look at similar sites - At this point I’ll have a look at other sites that might be similar to what I have in mind and see if they’re doing anything interesting that might fit well with my site idea. I’m not saying copy other sites, but checking to see how they’re organised usually gives me a lot of ideas on how I’d like to arrange my own content. I usually see lots of good ideas and think of ways to improve upon them or adapt them to fit with my ideas. I do this with as many other sites as you can and eventually I start to get my head around a navigation system to use. This is also a good way to see if there are any categories I missed out on that might fit well with the content I want to offer.
• Develop a navigation system - This is actually one of my favourite things to do which is surprising to me because it’s really just a paper exercise. I think having a logical, intuitive navigation system is very important and if I can’t get it right from the start it can be a nightmare to fix later on so I put a lot of time into this. At this point I should have a list of major categories and some minor stuff too like ‘about’, ‘contact’, ‘advertising’ etc. I’ll have an idea of how I want the major sections to interact with one another and will start doing some sketches with lines shooting all over the place and navigation lists popping up everywhere. After this point I will have a good idea about my layout.
• Design the layout - This has nothing to do with the actual aesthetics of the site. It’s about defining sections and where chunks of information will go on each page. It’s closely tied in with the navigation and I’ll tend to change bits of both and juggle things around to come up with a design and navigation that work together.

To me this is where a website is really made. I will get a shell of a site up and test it before any graphics or content are even created. This used to be pretty straightforward back when I was building sites using only HTML but now I want to kick things up a notch. In the past, once all these steps were finished I would just build the site with HTML. Now, I know I’m going to have hours of wrestling with Wordpress and CSS to get things exactly how I want them.

This is something I need to learn anyways and I’m sort of looking forward to and dreading the challenge all at the same time. Wish me luck!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Before I started earning anything online I was pretty tight with my cash. Back in 2001 when I first started doing this as a hobby I was already shelling out about $20 a month in hosting fees and $35 a year for my domain. I figured that was enough for something that, at the time, held no promise of financial return.

But once I was able to cover my expenses and started earning more, my wallet suddenly loosened up a bit and I found myself putting most of my earnings back into my sites.

Website things I spend money on:

• Domain names - If I think of a good name and it’s available then I’ll be all over it! Back when they cost $35/year each with Network Solutions (I was getting ripped off by them up until a year ago) it wasn’t really possible. Now with them under a tenner it makes snapping them up a lot ess painful.
• Advertising - Ill keep this short because it’s a bit taboo but I will buy *ahem* links if I come across a great site with a good price. Not something I do a lot but if I see a good deal then I will. Havent in a while though. Honest.
• Articles - I’ve recently started buying London area guides for ten quid per area which I think is a total bargain. I could probably do some research and come up with guides myself but it would take ages and would never be as good as someone with first hand knowledge. This is something I’m going to do a lot more of in the future because I think first hand experiences make a site a lot more useful and interesting.
• Programming - I got a guy to do my London price guide for $20 initially then another $25 to re-jig it a bit. I think this was money well spent and I know enough about how it works to be able to adapt it to other sites. Having the idea is the hard part because it seems like these guys can make almost anything happen. Obviously, the more complicated the idea the more it will cost but it’s nice to know that there are people out there who will be able to put any big ideas into action.

Stuff I don’t spend money on but will at some point:

• Website design - My favourite part about building sites is, well, the building of the sites. I like sketching out the designs, tinkering with the colours and layout and experimenting until I find something I like. That’s ok with HTML sites but I’ve started thinking about using Content Management Systems (CMS) like Wordpress and Joomla to make managing my sites easier and that’s where things start to get a bit over my head. Paying someone to set something up for me will make sense if I ever want a site that’s a bit more complicated than I can handle myself.
• Nerd books - So far I haven’t had any time to learn new things but I’m thinking that will change once I find myself in Beijing without a ‘real’ job. I’d like to read up on CSS and PHP for sure at some point as well as general web design and SEO stuff.
• Logo design - This is another thing I really like doing myself but I can never seem to achieve the same professional finish that the experts can. I’m still a sucker for a site with a great overall look and I wouldn’t be against buying a logo to complete that look on my sites.

Most of my web earnings head straight into my Paypal account and all of my spending comes from it as well. It’s a lot easier to spend money that I never see and even easier to spend it knowing that it has been earned my sites in the first place.

So if you find yourself with a couple of sales and a bit of money in your Paypal account, have a think of ways you might be able to invest your earnings back into your site. Don’t blow it, but don’t be stingy either. If you make some smart buys it is sure to pay off later.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!