Google's Last Pagerank Update...Slow Like Molasses

I'm sure anyone who was anticipating Google's pagerank update may as well have hibernated like a bear because it took 6 months this last time around. October 26th is when I noticed page rank changes on my sites as the previous update was back in April. What a snooze.... I don't know if that's been the longest time for a pagerank update since I haven't been monitoring as carefully as this time around. Usually it's been quarterly, every 3 months.

It put a real damper on my web directories as I took on more than I could handle. They were all growing quickly like an octopus, in every direction, while I anxiously awaited the update hoping to flip them at a higher price with increased page ranks. Well it turned out google was penalizing pagerank on some directories for paid links, which didn't apply to mine since they were all free. But one went down in page rank while the others increased. I don't understand why but I think I must have got carried away with the link building strategy that it saturated to the point where instead of increasing PR, it decreased. And one of my Whpark sites fared the best with a 4 notch increase with only a few backlinks. So I've come to the conclusion when link building to concentrate on the quality of the links rather than quantity.

If Google goes back to it's quarterly update then the next one should be near end of January and hopefully not another 6 month wait like this last one. I'm not as anxious this time around since I sold most of my directories for a tidy profit and I'm on to new ventures.

Explosive Web Directory Sale Boosts Online Business

Internet News reported that R.H. Donnelley, a telephone directory company, just clinched a major deal to purchase Business.com, a web-based marketing directory, at a hefty price of $345 million. I'd say that's quite a sweet deal even if you take into consideration the value of the domain name which they bought back in 1999 at $7.5 million. Their current cash flow is $15 million and they are expecting revenue over $50 million for 2007. Not sure what the up-to-date value of the domain name is now but if just going by revenue then that's almost 7 times the yearly revenue. Donnelley obviously are seeing some significant potential and that is an explosion both to the domain name and web directory businesses.

Not that this will repeat again anytime soon or can compare to it, but certainly gives a boost to the web directory business. It's easy to start one up with either a free or paid directory script, a domain name and hosting. It by any means does not require a significant initial investment, just time and effort like in most things. A couple of popular sources for directory scripts are phplinkdirectory and esyndicat. Some of the benefits of a web directory is that it indexes easily with the search engines and can immediately gain traffic just through posting in forums alone since many websites use web directories to get backlinks. Of course the promotion part is necessary but once it's on track you don't need to spend more than an hour a day updating it.... unless you grow so big you have to hire employees.

I have a few web directories, two I started over a month ago and another one a few days ago. I am awating the next google pagerank update, which is around the corner, as expect the PR to increase on two of them and if they do then that would be one of the quickest ways in a short time to get a higher PR. I promote them in a couple of forums with posts & signature links and obtain free links from higher PR & traffic websites. And this alone is enough to get a good start and keep you busy. Right now they are all free directories so I don't charge for links and consider this the best way to go until you build it up and then can make it a paid directory or combination of both.

And make sure if you do start one to submit your links to other web directories too as you do want to get more backlinks, which also can mean potential higher PR and traffic. You are welcome to submit to mine:

Links Daily Web Directory
So Red Hot Web Directory
QLink Web Directory

Reciprocal links are not required though appreciated.

Also place your link for free on this PR6 Website . They do require a reciprocal but the added benefit is that it is also a contest where they are trying to achieve a PR10 and once they do will award the winner the site. Since your directory will be full of links anyway, no big deal to add another one in.

Who knows maybe someone will knock on your door one day offering big bucks for your directory.

Google Pagerank Update Around The Corner

It's almost that time for another pagerank update by Google...possibly around the end of this month or early August. And you will notice alot of movement now as webmasters scramble to get their websites in check with link building strategies going into overdrive...and the reason...to achieve a higher pagerank number. The pagerank numbering system can be confusing for a beginner. In the real world everyone would achieve to be #1 but in the google algorithm world it's the elusive #10 which is almost impossible achieve...far into the horizon even to see...and yet so valued and desired. And of course it's no surprise Google itself has already achieved it. And there is www.pagerank10.co.uk that is trying to achieve it in their 2 year experiment with less than a year to go. Right now they are at PR6 and not sure if this update will increase them to a PR7 or not but one thing for sure it isn't easy when getting into the higher numbers because Google doesn't reveal the secrets of their algorithm system.

You may be asking what would be a last-minute link building strategy that can help to increase pagerank....submitting to directories. Why? Because web directories easily get indexed and therefore can quickly help to build backlinks. A great place to find free web directories to submit to is at Digital Point Forums...so start cracking as a pagerank update is around the corner.

In an upcoming post, I will be discussing more about web directories as I also have an experiment going on and will see how well it does in this coming page rank update.

Ebay Makes Changes To Their Affiliate Program

Effective midnight June 1st Ebay is changing their program terms:

$25.00-$35.00 per Active Registration (Previous $12 to $22)
A registration is active when the user places a bid on eBay within 30 days of their initial registration.

Between 50% and 75% of eBay's revenue on all Winning Bids (Previous 40% to 65%) The eBay program pays on ALL Winning Bids or Buy It Nows (BINs) within 7 days of an affiliate action.

New Paid Search Terms and Conditions:
The eBay US Affiliate Program will no longer allow paid search traffic from Google.com, Yahoo.com, MSN.com, nor from any of their content networks, such as Google AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher Network, and MSN ContentAds to be linked directly to the eBay.com, eBay Express, or eBay Store domains.

So seems ebay is giving an increased incentive to send traffic that away but at the same time is saying don't send paid direct traffic from Google, Yahoo, MSN or their content networks. I interpret this to mean if you get paid traffic from these ad networks you need it to go to landing pages on your own websites first and from their visitors can click if they wish to go to ebay.

An increase in commission gives an added bonus to join the ebay affiliate program. And if you haven't already joined.... click here to find out more. To use a few of the tools you also need to be a member of ebay... click here to register.

Clock is Ticking on The Page Rank 10 Experiment

Well here's a clever idea....challenge Google's algorithm to achieve a page rank of 10 in a 2 year time period. And may as well not hide the obvious and make it perfectly clear in the domain name "pagerank10.co.uk".

With less than a year to go this site has already achieved a PR6, initially starting at PR0 on April 20, 2006, and is presently showing 548,326 backlinks. Their average daily traffic of 560 unique visitors may be from curiosity seekers or others rooting them on but could it be their popularity is mainly due to the added incentive they offer if you place a link and send referrals. Once they receive their page rank 10 they are going to give the site free...yes free... to the top referrer. Then the winner will be the proud owner of a page rank 10 site. Right now filesaveas.com is leading with 3292 referrals but hey you still have more than 11 months to catch up to them. I can see this really picking up closer to the end. And since there isn't that many sites that have a PR10, achieving it may not be so easy...will have to wait and see on this one.

Click here if you are interested in placing your free link on the site and entering the contest.

WhyPark Sites Get Page Ranked

Seems Google has recently been updating page ranks in their datacenters. My WhyPark sites not only got indexed, are now showing increased page ranks. Considering these sites started at zero and involved minimal effort, it is impressive the page ranks they are now receiving after a short time period.

Here's a few examples that I verified on page rank checker :

www.petshealthtips.com from PR0 to PR3
www.affiliatestipster.com from PR0 to PR2
www.singlemates.net from PR0 to PR1

Even this blog which I started 3 months ago is receiving a PR2. That also is an achievement since I don't post regularly. Imagine what would happen if I really made an effort.

If you have a bunch of domain names, WhyPark is an easy solution to quickly set up content-rich websites to customize as you choose. I found it to be a better alternative to parking domains and much easier than building a site from scratch. And now one of the added benefits the sites are reaping is page rank. If you would like to find out more about WhyPark click here.

High Value Domain Name Auctions on Ebay

Just came across these domain name auctions on ebay. All 3 haven't met their reserve prices and with a day to go, will be interesting to see how high they go.

Rambo.com

Twisters.com

USSenate.com


The seller also has Womb.com and MailList.com for sale with no bids at present which end in 7 days.

So if you've been waiting to own these names, here's your opportunity.

Ebay vs Amazon Experiment

Both Ebay and Amazon have affiliate programs that are free to join and offer commissions. I use both of them on my sites and now I am doing an experiment to see which one really performs and pays better. For Ebay, I think the best tool they have is the Editor's Kit since it shows running auctions and can be specifically categorized to whichever product(s) you want to promote. And Amazon's best tool I would say is their aStore, which is a storefront that you can customize and choose the products you want to sell. Here is an example of the Ebay Editor's Kit: Pet Echo and an example of the Amazon aStore: Pet Echo Store. Now for the month of April I am using same advertising techniques (Adwords, USFreeads, etc.) to promote both on one of my sites.

I will update at the end of the month as to which one overall did the best.

Domain Names The Booming Internet Real Estate

I recently was reviewing DN Journal's eye-popping report of top 20 domain name sales. A Canadian city domain name (Penticton.com) sold for $75,000 and a name for an Atlanta neighborhood (Buckhead.com) looks to be making it's way into the $250,000 range (coming up in their next report).

It's amazing about the domain name business, what may look worthless may not be as long as one potential buyer thinks it's a goldmine.

Here is their Top 20 list from March 12 to March 18 of latest domain name sales:

1. Penticton.com - 88,000 CAD= $75,823
2. Stocks.mobi - $70,000
3. IAB.com - $67,250
4. MobileTones.com - $60,000

5. Girls.mobi - $49,000
6. LocalPhone.com - $39,000
7. AsianGames.com - $30,000
8. Conn.com - $29,500
9. Salmiya.com - $29,138
10. CreditCard.info - $25,500
11. DeeJay.com -$21,611

12. MyBadCredit.com - $19,900
13. ScenicHomes.com - $18,000
14. United-Kingdom.com - $15,500

15. CreditCardApplications.net - $14,000

16. Physiotherapie.com - €8,500 = $11,315

17. iTeam.com - $10,650
18. DevelopersGroup.com - $ 8,900
19. NoFun.com - $ 8,780
20. Mint.net - $8,155

And seems like buyers have been snapping them up in the 4 figure range from auctions at front-runner SnapNames.com, eg. sslencryption.com which sold for $2,555. Surely then my domain name LHJL.com should easily sell for around 4 times that amount...at least according to LeapFish.

Making Money On The Other Side Of Ebay

Years ago I sure made a couple of mistakes. I didn't purchase ebay stock when it was low-priced or join their affiliate program where some are now making 5 or 6 figures per month. I guess I was too busy selling products on ebay never crossing my mind that if I was making money, then ebay was making much more. In any case I did eventually purchase ebay stock just for the sake of not having invested in the first place, made a small profit but nothing to write home about. Maybe it's not too late to make money on the other side of ebay...through their affiliate program that is.

Can you believe it their top affiliate reported commissions of over $1,000,000 in one month...all from promoting ebay. No large investment, selling products, shipping, dealing with customers, just using various marketing techniques to get people to join and buy on ebay. Sounds too good to be true and something I just had to try out. After working hard for years, who wouldn't want an easier way to make money.

Well nothing is ever as easy as it sounds but I can see how these people are making it big as an ebay affiliate. When you look at it this way you don't even need a website to get up to 65% commission on ebay's revenue and up to $22 commission on each new active user, all from your referrals.

I joined around 2 months ago and have been using various advertising tools & banners to promote ebay on some of my sites. I even have one on this site. Can you guess which one it is? I especially like their Editor's Kit which I use on two of my sites. My progress so far has been good.

If you don't have a website then you can use the Flexible Destination Tool or Keyword Tool for ebay landing pages which you can promote through PPC or free advertising sites like USFreeAds.

And if you have a website, then start adding on the Editor's Kit and ebay banners. If your site already has traffic, then all the better because this will certainly add to your revenue. If your site has minimal traffic then start promoting your site using the different methods that I have already mentioned from previous posts. The Ebay brand is well-known so really is not hard to promote.

Maybe you and I may never make the 5, 6 or 7 figures in a month as an ebay affiliate but any extra profit is always good. It's funny though being that I was an ebay seller (and still am) for many years, here venturing out and coming full-circle back to ebay. As they say... go where the money is.

First if you are not a ebay member click here to join. It's free and who knows maybe you might even find some good deals. In order to use tools like the Editor's Kit, you have to be a member of ebay. Then review and join ebay's affiliate program and start on the road to making more money.

No-Cost Traffic Generating Tip # 2

One of the best ways to get traffic and move up the page rank with search engines is with back links. Back links are incoming links to a website or web page and are also called inbound links, incoming links, inlinks and inward links. The number of backlinks indicates how popular or important the web site or page is. Search engines often use the the number of backlinks to determine a site's search engine page ranking.

Obviously the more you have the better but not just any link as should be relevant to the content of your site. You can certainly pay for links with sites like Text-Link Ads but that is not going to guarantee a significant increase in traffic nor those visitors are going to purchase your items or use your service...so it could be money wasted.

Using the tool backlinkfinder I entered google.com, which came up with 362,959,137 backlinks and a PR 10. Might take awhile to achieve numbers like that and just a tiny fraction of that is more than enough.

Notice I just gave a link to backlinkfinder...see how easy it is.

Here are some no-cost ideas to get back links:

1. If you have a number of sites, link similar ones to each other. That way the ones that do have more traffic can bring some to the other ones. In either case this is a way to keep your visitors around longer. You can do this is by putting text ad links on each site to promote the others.

2. Visit similar topic sites and see if they may want to exchange links. Of course ones with high traffic & page ranks most likely would not agree without a price so I wouldn't target those.

3. Use forums but certainly follow their rules as to what links they allow.

4. Use sites like Yahoo Answers. Answer questions about topics that you are familiar with and reference your site with a link.

5. Start a blog and exchange links with other bloggers. You can start by visiting like-minded bloggers, read one of their topics of interest put your comment in with a link to your site. Also review or mention other sites and link to them. They may inturn reciprocate. List your blog in a few of the blog directories.

6. Write articles about topics relevant to your site(s) and submit to free article directories.

Any of these ideas should easily help start a good link building strategy.

Here's A Quick Way To Get Your Sites Indexed

Sometimes it can take forever to get a new site indexed by the search engines. In looking for ways to get them indexed faster, I came across this great tool that can help. Blue Hat Seo developed QU.I.T. Quick Indexing Tool which can get your site indexed from 24 hours to a few days. That's alot better than waiting a few weeks or longer. I recently submitted a few of my new sites using this tool and will update as to how long they took.

Update 03/08: So far 1 of the sites has been indexed and took close to 72 hours. Awaiting the results on the other ones.

Update 03/10: The other 2 sites took a little over 5 days to get indexed.

Overall I recommend this tool as is faster than submitting the standard way.

How to get up to $200 Google Adwords Credit

If you haven't used pay-per-click through google adwords, here is a strategic way to get a pre-built fully customizable website that you can make money from plus receive up to $200 Google Adwords credit.

Wild West Domains offers Pro Reseller and Basic Reseller plans where you receive as a bonus for joining a google adwords credit. The credit works out to be worth more than the price you pay for any one of these two plans. For example, the Pro reseller plan credit is worth $40 more and the Basic reseller plan $20 more. It means you already are ahead and can use your ad campaign to earn money promoting the store, any of your sites or affiliate programs. After receiving your credit, you can immediately get started by opening a Google Adwords account. The price of the plan you pay is for one year so gives plenty of time to promote your store and can be renewed at your option. I myself joined and used my adwords campaign to promote a couple of my sites (one of them gets a great click-through rate) plus affiliate programs. The money I earned already paid for my plan...all due to the Google credit. And there's no obligation to spend more once you have used up your credit. Click here to get more information about the Pro Reseller and Basic Reseller plans and what a pre-built store looks like.

I believe this to be a cost-effective method that can easily turn into a no-cost method. I have been successful because I used my credit carefully by always analyzing and fine-tuning my ad campaign. Except one night when I was doing a search to see what keywords are getting a lot of hits and noticed that Antonella Barba was number 1 due to the American Idol scandal. When I googled her name, noticed there was no advertisers and wondered why. So for the heck of it, I thought I'd put the keywords into my campaign overnight since it was cheap enough to try to see what the results would be. Well since I was the only advertiser in the number 1 spot, those keywords got considerable impressions and hits that by morning I had to quickly remove them before it blew my whole campaign budget out the window.

In conclusion, when looking for keywords for your pay-per-click campaign search for ones that are very specific to what you are promoting, which are in demand, low in price and not a lot of advertisers that you get lost in the shuffle with. Afterall you are looking for your target market to purchase your products, not to find ways to pay more.

No-Cost Traffic Generating Tip # 1

The #1 no-cost source of traffic is through search engines. It takes time and effort to generate traffic from search engines but once in place, can provide free targeted traffic for years. Since it's all about keywords, it's important to create content based on the theme of your site and adding pages helps even more .

If you have parked your domain names with a domain parking service rather than built your own site or used a content-service like WhyPark, then you are at a disadvantage because search engines don't index parked sites...so don't expect them to count you in anytime soon.

These are the main search engines that really all you need to submit to:
Google
Yahoo
MSN

Submit to them on a bi-monthly or monthly basis as they do take time indexing your site. If you submit too frequently they may consider it as spam and ignore you altogether.

Others like AltaVista and Ask will find you once you are listed.

The DMOZ directory is great to be in but not easy to get into. Is best to sparingly submit to them in order to be successfully listed.

Also get Alexa to crawl your site to get included in traffic rankings.

Not sure about which keywords to use for your site, the overture keyword tool is helpful in evaluating your site's content to find appropriate keywords as well as the demand.

Search those keywords on google or yahoo to get an idea of the amount of search results. If there is a high supply, then it will be difficult to get a good ranking.

The best keywords are ones that are low in supply and high in demand.

Remember visitors who use a search engine to find your site, used specific keywords and therefore are highly targeted to purchase your products or use your service.

Earners Blog made $800 in one day from Yahoo Answers

I recently came across Earners Blog and was impressed with the many moneymaking ideas & tips offered. One in particular stood out, it was that he made $800 in one day answering questions in Yahoo. Well that quickly grabbed my attention because who wouldn't want to make $100 a day let alone $800 a day by answering some questions promoting affiliate programs. The only thing is Yahoo Answers TOS states that you cannot place commercial links or spam so there is a risk in getting your account closed directing a link to an affiliate ad. Even though, people are still doing it. I thought I'd give it a try but on a different perspective: a no-cost way to generate traffic to some of my WhyPark sites. If you answer a question and give a reference to a site (your own) containing articles that's related to the subject, then certainly you are not breaking any rules. This may not even earn you $50 a day but gives you backlinks and residual traffic in the long-term. The question you answer will specifically relate to the topic of your site therefore providing targeted traffic which potentially may purchase from one of your affiliate ads or increase your adsense revenue.

Since answering some questions in Yahoo, I already have increased additional traffic to my sites for free. Goal accomplished in my neverending quest to find no-cost ways to generate traffic and have Earners Blog to thank for this great idea.

WhyPark Features: Ease of Use & other Benefits

Since majority of my domain names were new, not indexed with search engines nor had any traffic, I was basically starting from scratch. Standard domain parking was not the route to go for me since search engines don't index parked sites and to promote parked pages with only ads is not going to generate the right traffic to earn enough income. It may work out best for domain names that already have traffic to begin with but when you think about it, if your domain name is already generating traffic why sharing the revenue with a domain parking company and not being able to add any ad network or affiliate program to increase the income. I guess the answer to that question would be "because I don't have the time to develop a site and just want some passive income". Well then WhyPark would be the solution since is easy to set-up a content-rich website that search engines can index where adsense and affiliate programs can be included, for 100% of the profits.

I moved many of my domain names to WhyPark and happy with that decision. First of all, I like that I can go to the home page, log-in and immediately am brought to Domain Manager which shows all my domain names alphabetically listed and numbered. And horizontally across each domain name are links that can be clicked on to customize, edit, change layout, etc. By immediately seeing my domain names & site titles, I can review which may need editing and be reminded of any that I may have overlooked. Clicking on the domain name brings up a new window so can easily view and edit at the same time. Now when you are in a hurry with a few minutes to spare or just want to make a minor change, the easy access and easy exit is appreciated.

There are also a couple sections giving suggestions on how to promote & earn revenue for your sites. Obviously they want you to succeed so you will recommend to others and in turn be rewarded...which is an added benefit.

Next I will be reviewing no-cost ways to generate traffic to WhyPark sites.

WhyPark Features: Easy Set-Up

As mentioned in my previous post that WhyPark is a great alternative to standard domain parking. I have been using this service to host many of my sites and will be providing further details of some of the features & benefits to help anyone evaluate if this may be the right hosting service for your domain names.

What I was impressed most with was the ease in setting up the sites and quickly going online within minutes. That is a benefit if you are in a rush and would like to adjust or add features at a later time.

Basically there is a one page form that you can easily enter information to get a content-rich website (the ones marked with * is enough to fill out to get going):

1. Set your domain nameservers to WhyPark* - will depend on your registrar as to how long it will take to transfer over, from a few minutes to 48 hours
2. Domain Name*
3. Site Name* - appears on top of your page in your page titles
4. Site Category* - a pull down menu to pick the best category your site fits into
5. Enter up to 20 Keywords* - add keywords or phrases to match content on your site plus you can click on Research Your Keywords for further help
6. Top Ad Code - where you paste your codes provided from Google Adsense or any other ad network which will appear at top of each page
7. Bottom Ad Code - copy & paste ad code provided from Google Adsense or any other ad network which will appear on bottom of each page
8. Meta Description - enter a keyword-rich description to be used as the start of your meta description tag
9. Is this site for sale - if you indicate yes, an interested buyer clicking on the link will be shown a contact form which will be emailed to your email address on record
10. Google Sitemap verification - enter the full meta tag verification code supplied by Google to index and get detailed reports on the visibility of your pages
11. Stats Code - you can enter stats code from free website statistics services like Google Analytics, StatCounter, OneStatFree
12. Submit - click to go live

If you've made any errors or require changes can be edited at anytime.

Hope this information has been helpful and comments are welcomed. If you decide to use WhyPark then please click here.

An Alternative To Domain Parking

If you've got a whole bunch of domain names just sitting parked at your registrar earning minimum to non-existent revenue while you await to develop into websites or eventually sell, then consider free hosting with a WhyPark account.

Traditional domain parking provides no value to search engines or visitors as there is no content to follow or read. So more likely a rapid exit for both. With WhyPark, you choose the keywords relevant to your domain name and you get a content-rich website with articles that are updated regularly. Visitors will read the articles and return, while search engines will follow, index and rank the keyword-rich content.

You may be asking what these sites look like. Then click on the links below to some of the ones I have hosted under WhyPark:
www.petshealthtips.com
www.realestatebigbucks.com
www.urcreditrepair.com

I am certainly far from being a technical programming whiz and, if you're like me then you will find the ease in setting each site up. And if you are more advanced then you can customize even further.

For a one-time fee of $99.95 per 100 domain names hosted includes a content-rich website with no further costs. At a $1 a domain and 100% ad revenue...you certainly can't lose. And on top you can even earn $45 for every referral. You get pages of keyword-targeted content, can customize to suit, add Google adsense, Yahoo! Publisher Network, Adbrite, affiliate programs and more. You receive a 100 credits which can be used at your convenience. Even if you don't have a 100 domain names at once, you can add on as you go.

Click here for more info. Time to brush the dust off your domain names and start generating revenue & traffic today!

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