Do you have a website but can’t get it to rank in Google?
Without traffic your website is wasted, but I bet when you had your site designed they didn’t tell you that designing a website is the easy bit.
Getting a website to rank well is hard, and as the internet matures it is going to get harder still. What you need is someone who will review your site and work with you to implement the changes required to make sure that the search engines love your site; someone who understands the requirements of your business and gets the job done.
I’ve been a member of Dan Raine’s Immediate Edge since September 2007, which I’ve found to be an invaluable resource of cutting edge internet marketing techniques. While in the early days the info was a bit uneven in coming, these days there are regular articles covering a variety of topics.
However, what has been missing until now has been a 30 Day Challenge style process to follow from identifying and testing a niche and building a business around it that earns you enough to quit your day job.
Until now…
Dan has just launched the Edge Blueprint, which aims to do exactly that. I haven’t seen exactly what is included yet, but you can get access at the moment for free.
Vodafone 3G dongles are a wonderful invention, allowing me to run my businesses from pretty much wherever I like armed only with a laptop. Just as well because in August, which is one of my busiest months of the year, I spend 4 to 5 weeks on the coast.
In the old days I used to make do with internet cafes, but these days I don’t need to leave the comfort of my holiday apartment.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, since our existing Vodafone dongle is permanently loaned out I needed a new one to test Vodafone’s service in an area. Visiting the website of Vodafone Spain I went through the order process but was surprised to find I wasn’t asked for credit card details – or any other payment method either.
E-commerce without payment????
Needless to say, I was extremely sceptical that I’d actually receive the goods so pleasantly surprised when I had a delivery a few days later. The curious thing was that I was expected to pay the delivery man.
Are people in Spain really so suspicious of online fraud that they won’t enter their credit card details on a website, even when it is as large and well known as Vodafone? Perhaps.
But, what is to stop me ordering Vodafone dongles for all my neighbours? And why didn’t they make it clear on the website that payment would be made at the time of delivery? Perhaps they did tell me. But not clearly.
Sir Clive Sinclair famously stated that you could run a nuclear power
station with a ZX-81, but I don’t know whether that was with the 16K RAM
pack or not. It came with an impressive 1K of memory (yes really) and many
people in the UK got their first taste of computing after buying one.
Depending on the niche you’re in and how much money you have available for promotion, chances are that at some point you’ve come across the Yahoo Directory.
While in the good ol’ days of internet marketing it used to be free, most websites are required to pay an annual fee to be considered these days. Pay your $299, submit your site and wait for a few days to see if it’s accepted or not. If it is a quality site then you’ll have no problem with this. This is what Yahoo says:
With Yahoo! Directory Submit, your request to be listed in the Directory will be reviewed and the Yahoo! editorial team will respond to you within 7 business days, for a review fee of only $299 ($600 for adult sites). If your listing is accepted into the Directory, there will be a $299 recurring annual fee in subsequent years…
I don’t know how effective from an SEO point of view the link is from Yahoo these days, but for a site with good potential it is something I do for my main sites. However, notice they say that you’ll be charged $299 each year? Well, it isn’t true. If you fail to pay they don’t remove you from the directory.
So here’s what you do. You make sure your site has great content, looks good and is easy to navigate. Add a privacy policy, content and all those other things you know you should do. Pay $299 for the review and wait a few days – if you don’t get in, put things right within a week and re-submit.
Next year – cancel the payment and you’ll still remain in the directory.
I started a case study on the Thirty Day Challenge method on November 12th and so now one month on decided to look at the results.
I knew it was a profitable niche as I already sell the product I’m promoting, but I wanted to knock a competitor’s double listing off the the first page of Google and take the #1 position for myself if possible.
I was half tempted to sell it on Flippa, but since it is earning money with no effort I may as well keep it – for now at least.
So far the site ranks at #6 and stats for the first month are:
So, all in all, quite a success – yes, I know that you can’t live of $30/month but as a 6 hour project costing the price of a new domain it isn’t bad. And if/when it takes the #1 spot monthly earnings should be around $500/month from this tiny niche. And it will go on earning month after month after month…
* I’m not sure that I really believe this figure, but I can’t find how to get the report I want on the ShareASale website.
