Online Business And Web Hosting Outages

What failover measures does your hosting provider offer? Although I have only a few sites drawing a small amount of dollars a day I was still worried the other day when my websites were unreachable and Google noticed right away and removed all stats associated to my web sites.

Although I will start to become less dependent on search engine traffic and diversify to social markets I don't want any red flags going off for any reason with the search engines. Keeping consitant and growing my online business portfolio is hard enough without having to worry about website downtime. Visitors who get a "page cannot be displayed" error from one of your URL's may be turned off by what you have to offer; heck, they won't get to see it.

Can You Start An Internet Business With No Money?

Many people are enticed by businesses they can start with little or no money. Is it possible to start an Internet Business with no money?

Yes.

I did it, but I'll be the first but not the last to tell you that I would have saved a bunch of time and heartache if I'd had some cash to hire someone who knows how to achieve and launch successful marketing/sales campaigns.

In other words, If I could have paid someone to do all the tedious/grunt work I'd be further along in my Internet Marketing than I am now. Oh, well.

Don't get me wrong, I've learned a lot about marketing strategy, some of what it takes to be successful at Google Adwords, Email marketing, list building, keyword research and article marketing.

There are some other tid bits I've picked up along my year and two month Internet marketing experience but it's late and I can't remember everything at the moment.

One important fact that I've learned is that optimizing your website is a compilation of factors that work together to build website popularity in your market. Some people think if they generate tons of backlinks they will start receiving enormous amounts of traffic.

Quality Backlinks are great to have but are not the overall determining factor in website optimization. The most important skills for an aspiring Internet entrepreneur to have would be:

1. determination
2. perseverance
3. drive
4. pride
5. organization
6. analytical skills

With these 6 skills the rest will fall into place like devoting a substantial amount of time to your business. Learning from and moving past failure. Taking challenges head on. Ensuring you are offering your market something of value. Keeping everything related to your business organized such as files, folders, etc. Last but not least knowing how to determine where there are opportunities for improvement and capital gain in the long and short run.

Let this marinate and I'll talk to you soon,
Will C.

Internet Home Based Business Success

I've been using search engines to determine what the top Internet home business websites are talking about. Particularly those websites that are in the top 1-10 in the search engine ranking for the phrase "Work at home business, Internet home based business and the like".

What I've found is that most are discussing the same thing which happens to be what types of at home business opportunities are available.

• Data entry
• Paid Surveys
• Affiliate Marketing
• Google Adwords
• Google Adsence
• Online Auctions
• MLM
• Internet Marketing

Most of these business opportunities are great depending on your current lifestyle and how much time you have to devote to thoroughly researching the opportunity. One thing to consider is that there are plenty of scams out there. Like brick and mortar businesses some online business opportunities run well and some do not, some are out right scams and others may only have a deficiency in their service, support or the information they provide. Either way where you start your research is the most important job in the process.

Learning how Websites market their business and how they get visitors to do what they want.

"How they get visitors to do what they want" simply means: if you are selling something how do you attract people to purchase your product?

Search Engine Optimization has changed. Google, Yahoo, MSN and others continue to tailor there Search Engines to ensure websites have useful and relevant content.

History supports the fact that webmasters could once create a website based on a highly searched keyword or phrase, use that phrase multiple times in the site content (keyword density) and their site would get top ranking in Search Engines.

For instance, if you typed in the word "travel abroad" in Google the top site may have a bunch of useless content but you notice that "travel abroad" appears multiple times throughout the page. Now you may not find any useful info on said website but there may be a Google link to another site with "travel abroad" info that you click on...

Stop... When you click on that link, the company that owns that site gets charged an advertising fee from Google and the creator of the "garbage content" site gets a portion of the fee the "great content" site paid Google (Paid Per Click). Unfortunately Google has started to frown on "garbage content" sites by deindexing them (not listing them in their search engine results).

Much of what is behind a site getting deindexed is automated there is know one sitting down manually monitoring website content.

Search engines us an algorithm: a process programmed to perform functions based off the data it collects. The algorithm uses bots or sometimes called crawlers, web crawlers or web bots to retrieve internet data. This algorithm stores data on:

• backlinks to your website
• determines the quality of those backlinks (are the sites relevant to one another)
• Is the content relevant to the keywords (synonymic terms)
• how often your content appears in other places on the web [slightly different from backlinks but related]

This type of algorithm uses the above and other information to determine how it will rank your website.

As a result most people capitalize on this by getting quality backlinks, using synonymic terms related to their keywords and getting articles posted to numerous article directories.

In order to not get frowned upon by search engine bots you need to follow their rules and create "great content websites". Keep in mind, you need to do your due diligence to ensure your creating a site based off highly searched key phrases, themed content, low keyword density, and ensure your links to pages within your site are set up correctly.

I say "Low Keyword Density [4-10%]" is best; webmasters are starting to see that high keyword density to be a contributing factor in getting websites deindexed and/or pushed far down in rankings.




Regards,

K.M.

Balance Your Internet Business And Family

Balancing work, family, school, and personal endeavors’ has always been a struggle for me. It all started when I was in the Military many years ago and decided to start taking college courses. I realized I couldn't hang out everyday after work, party and still get my school work done. As a result, I wrote down what was most important to me, prioritized them and used those things to schedule my days, weeks, etc. Granted I still had to work around the "Call of duty" but for the most part this worked for me.

After having my first child, getting married, divorced, getting out of the Military, getting married again, having more children, furthering my education, and working a full time job my hair fell out! Just kidding, I would have lost my hair anyway (Bald Men are still sexy right?) :-).

I still stuck to writing down what was important to me and scheduling my routine around that. I took courses online which allowed me to be at home with my family. Everything I planned involved my family first and if I wanted to hang out I made sure I already had at least one family outing that week or one planned later that day.

I regularly communicate my dreams and aspirations with my wife and ask about hers. Now that I'm finished with my B.S. in eCommerce I've started researching online businesses and sharing my findings with others. My wife really isn't into this (online businesses, computers, technology) but I still keep her abreast and she is slowly but surely coming to realize the internet isn't going away. Many online entrepreneurs have exclaimed that once their online business started generating a nice profit they worked far less and made/make far more money than they ever dreamed possible.

My wife is a Registered Nurse and works two days a week which allows her to be at home with our 1 year old son and take our 5 year old daughter to and from school (so she is two days a week away from being a housewife).

I am so excited about online businesses like Internet/affiliate Marketing, PPC, PPL, PPS, etc. Right now I'm concentrating on SEO and networking with like minded individuals. I still work a 9-5 M-F. When I first got interested in the online business community I didn't know how to manage my online time, 9-5 and family.

I'm a Computer/Network Systems Technician. In the past, I'd occasionaly be able to do some research at work and what I didn't finish I'd try to finish at home. There were several days I came home, kissed my wife, asked about her day, ate dinner, played with the kids and jumped online till 1am. The next day I was burnt out. I realized not only did I have to write down a priority list for my family I had to do one for my online endeavors too.

Now I write down what I need to get accomplished online. From that information I write down the recourses I want/need to accomplish the tasks. From that I write down what day(s) I will start each task. From that I write down approximately how long each task will take.

Does this always work? NO! Does it work most of the time and give me a reference of what I need to do or have done? YES! Some may refer to it as Project Management for your life.




K.M.

Thinking Of Starting An Internet Business?

If your thinking of starting an online Home Based Business you need to change the way you think about making a profit online. When starting your online Home Based Business it is good to think about what you want to offer and the people you want to offer it to. Once you have gotten the aforementioned on paper take a step back. Get your mind in Web Site Promotion mode and start thinking about how will you let people know you exist.

I get forward emails or “chain letters” all the time and in the past I would delete them. Instead of deleting chain letters I will make a small reply to everyone (with something relevant to the email) and use the signature as an opportunity to advertise my online link. For instance, "Get Free Internet Marketing Info”at YourWebSite.com is perfect and not to obnoxious. When thinking of website advertising or Internet Marketing you want to use as much fre.e advertising as possible. Sometimes fre.e advertising means that you will need to use some of your time versus money. When starting your online Home Based Business be sure to stay informed about what is going on in your industry.

Subscribe to and read as many blogs and forums as you have time to reply to. Also, be sure to make relevant comments to blogs and forums with a link back to your website. This may be obvious but, concentrate on posting to forum topics and blogs that are relevant to your website so that those interested may want to visit your site. In most cases you don't have to reinvent the wheel to make money online; however you do want to stand out from your competition. Think about what value you can offer visitors to your website. For instance, I’ve noticed that people sign up to Newsletters first when they are genuinely interested and second, when they get a bonus. I will talk about the aforesaid in another blog.

Changing the way you think about an online Home Based Business is one of the most important parts of your business plan and it should be at the top of your list of things to do. Remember there are many online business models but the models that involve your own website need promotion and advertising.



Regards,

K.M.