traffic

Approaching 14k Members

chrishambly — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 05:58:04 -0400

Just a quick note while it is on my mind.

Eaon Pritchard pointed out a link on twitter today called Goodness And Happiness where Neil Perkin quotes, Eaon and also Dave Winer on the concept of "The way to make money on the internet is to send them away".

Neil writes well, though to be honest probably over-complicating something really basic, perhaps it's verbose for his target audience, could be, or perhaps I'm just simple.

Anyway I wanted to reinforce the idea that, yes, if you create an abundance on content with an abundance of links you will in fact create what is known as The Internet...

It is fairly basic conceptually, the Internet thrives on links, it thrives on generating content, content is king, always has been, likely always will.

As a case study I've managed Audiocourses.com since 2000 and guess what? ... that's what I've always manufactured, a portal, a rich node of information, a useful place for people to come and collect information, bounce off, engage with content.. that's why the site has 14,000 members.

That's not the only place I do it, take a look MBPublishing FREE press releases distribution service, oh and what about this one too The Phone Cam. I have more but no need to rub it in too much, the numbers are thousands not millions, but they are very niche subjects.

So Neil is correct, but come on, it's nothing new, and Dave was also lagging there too by lots of years. If the marketing lads think this is conceptually new they got shit loads of catching up to do.

Yes, generate tons of content daily, and push links out all the time, create the Internet.. no rocket science involved, webs are webs, Offline models have no relativity.

10 Things That Will Aid Your Web Business

chrishambly — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 12:43:00 -0400

These are my 140 characters or less web bizz tips for the week, that I first post on Twitter, then blog here.

Let me know if you want something expanded by leaving a comment.

1. A prospect needs to sense credibility before making a buying decision, credibility is built up overtime, no short cut.

2. Build mechanisms to bring prospects back. Newsletters and free courses work well, so do forums and other interactive social elements.

3. Use persuasive copy which reinforces the user benefits, not how great you or product is. How will your product benefit a persons life?

4. Get a dedicated IP, forget shared hosting. Make sure your ISP gives you an IP address which is not appearing on blacklists or such.

5. Build own email lists, social media sites are good but you need your OWN, with your own privacy policy in place, own your data.

6. Check your site load speed, if it is less that ultra rapid you will be loosing surfers period.

7. Have more text than pretty pictures, search engines can't understand pretty pictures, but they love text, like a hungry pac man.

8. Actively seek out in-bound links, make it part of your weekly routine, ensure the target keyword phrase is in the anchor text.

9. Don't waste your time with time wasters, are you here to work or fuck about?

10. Publish content daily ensuring that the url, title and H1 are the keywords you are targeting.

Stay tuned for more tips, you can always subscribe to my feed with your email address, put it in the wee box on the right.

Debt Settlement Ads

chrishambly — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 11:59:37 -0500

Facebook advertisements are not so bad, in fact I find they are generally really subtle and unimposing, they just become part of the daily stream of my social graph updates.

I’ve experimented myself with a few ads recently for a project, and I found the demographic data Facebook provides pretty comprehensive for targeting just the kind of people you desire.

As an example I am currently targeting “liberal, moderate, and conservative men between 18 and 65 years old who are single, in a relationship, engaged, or married in the United States who like music production.” I’m not sure why I chose conservative men, as I look at it, in fact I should change that to cover perhaps more liberal minded folk and definitely include women too, however you get the point, the demographic is pretty neat, and my experiment is done.

I like the ads because I can pay for them on a per click basis and of course they are targeting people INTERESTED in what I’m selling.

I’ve used google adwords for literally years, since they were released actually in 2003, and as that system is also targeting contextually it makes for good conversions. However, I would say that google adwords probably would have more redundancy due to not all traffic landing on an ad placement zones to be totally pre-qualified.

I’m working with a new client now also to help them understand how they can use some of these technologies, the client works in the texas debt settlement and I spotted a competitor’s ad in my stream today, see below.

Pretty unobtrusive yet handy info if you are interested eh?

How do YOU feel about the ads in your Facebook Social Graph?

Search Engine Optimisation

chrishambly — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 09:14:13 -0400

Having been involved with the web, in a business sense, since the mid 90s I’ve found that it has been essential to practise search engine optimisation (SEO) in every aspect of my online work from forums, blogs, articles and links, you name it, my head is in SEO.

If you are reliant on the internet for your traffic it makes crystal clear sense that you ought to optimise all of your content for the search engines, to provide them tasty food that will keep them coming back for more, time and time again.

Ignoring appropriate SEO is akin to taking cash and setting fire to it, if your site is not optimised to rank very well you are simply throwing away prospects and essentially income, from whatever means that may be, affiliate links, google adsense or product up-selling.

I’m also fully aware of the power of “word-of-mouth” or new/social media communities and I am an advocate for that approach 100%, but the secret really is in a blended approach, you can have a large community all digging your content for you with various tools, but that community is infinitesimally small to the power of ranking on the first page of google within a competitive niche, period.

The other thing many people working exclusively in social or new media don't always get is that their own tight-knit community of "diggers" are often not the prospects, not the customers, so hence no income generation!

I have operated for a variety of clients over the years helping them to optimise for their niche market, tweaking code and content here and there and creating a variety of campaigns and methods for organic growth of back-links (essential activity), of course social media now helps immensely with the later IF the rel="nofollow" tag is omitted.

I am available for SEO and Social Media contracts, just inquire and we can have a chat about what you want to achieve.

I’ll gently challenge you and leave you with the tools to empower yourself too.