Just Another Spiderweblog

Robert has a brand net spiderweb blog for us to look at today. If you don't know what a spiderweb blog is then read his blog and find out.

http://rgtrueman.ws/blog/

To Your Success,
Susan

Tags: featured site

If It Was Only That Easy

Every year more and more people come to the internet and try to start an online business. They come from all over the world. They come with all types of educational backgrounds. Some are financially well off but most are not. Many of them speak English but many of them don't. Some are children while others are working adults. Others are unemployed or retired. The only thing they all share is the dream of making money online.

Unfortunately the dream of making money online will stay a dream and will not become a reality for most.

You see, almost everyone who tries to start an online business believes the myth that anyone can do it. They believe that all you need is the desire, some positive thinking and a web site. And if it were really that easy we'd all be rich.

The truth is you need a lot more than desire, positive thinking and a web site to have a successful online business. You need to understand that an online business is in fact a business. And because it's a business you need to treat it like one. You must plan, set goals, do research, make hard decisions, work some long hours, learn new things and avoid being scammed.

In addition, you also need to understand that an online business is an internet marketing business. In other words, if you have an online business you're selling something. Whether it's an opportunity, product or service... whether it's yours or someone else's... or whether you've put adsense type ads on a content site ... you're in the marketing business. And since you're in the marketing business you must learn how to market or have the money to hire someone to do it for you.

Another myth believed by most starting an online business is that it's the least expensive and easiest way to have a business. And while it may be the least expensive it's not always the easiest. To have a successful online business you must know about and be comfortable with 3 three things...

• your opportunity, product or service


• your computer and the necessary tools of internet marketing


• how to market

If you don't know about these things you must be willing to learn. Even if you intend to hire someone to do many of the tasks required for an online business, you must know something about what they're doing in order to judge whether they've done a good job.

Another reason so many fail at having a successful online business isn't a myth. It is true that there are many ways to make money online. There are thousands of legitimate opportunities on the internet. Unfortunately, not every legitimate opportunity or business model will work for everyone. You have to find the right one for you.

And not every online opportunity is legitimate. Just like in the physical world there are some online who are out to take advantage of you. They make empty promises, take your time and money and then disappear. And because it's not easy to tell which opportunities are real and which are not almost everyone with an online business will be scammed at least once.

So while I wish I could say that having a successful online business was as easy as having the desire to make money, having positive thoughts and having a web site. The truth is it's not. You must do many of the things required for a brick and mortar business. And you must learn to do many things that are unique to internet marketing.

Whether you have an online business or not please leave a comment and let us know if you agree with what I've said.

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. Because of all the hype used to promote online business opportunities I've created a free report that tells you about the 10 most commonly used statements and what those statements really mean. You can get a free copy here.

Tags: online business, internet marketing business, online business myth

Google Pagerank and SEM

One of most confusing things to learn about search engine marketing is that Google pagerank and how well a page ranks for a search term are not the same thing.

The fact is, having a high pagerank does not ensure your site will get a good listing in a Google search. You can see what I mean by doing a search at http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/pagerank-search/ and then having the results displayed by "Relevance" and then again by "Pagerank."

Why the different results? Because the pagerank of a page is primarily determined by the number of links and the pagerank of the links pointing to it. How well a page ranks in the search engine results is a more complicated algorithm because it includes "the number of times a term appears on a page and examines dozens of aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it)." Copied from Google Technology

Now if you're trying to get your web page a good placement for 1 or more search terms so you can get some free search engine traffic you need to add 1 more seo term to your vocabulary.

"Latent Semantic Indexing" - used by Google and other search engines to help determine the relevance of a site's content to the search term.

And rather than try to explain this complicated method of determining relevance here's a short video that will give you an idea of how it works.

Having good content, using good search terms (keywords), using relevant words and terms and Google pagerank are all important when you're doing sem.

To Your Success,
Susan

If you found this tip useful please let me know by leaving a comment.

Tags: google pagerank, page rank, sem, seo, search engine marketing, lsi, latent semantic indexing, search engine traffic, search engine placement

June 2008

Ann says she's new to building a web site and would appreciate getting some tips on how to improve it. Let's take a look at what's she got so far at http://www.500adaypossible.com/ and give her a hand.

FriendsWhoCare subscribers can have their constructive comments along with a link to their site added to this blog entry by submitting your comments here. (You must log in). If your not a FriendsWhoCare subscriber you may add your comments by using the comment link below.

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Review Comments

Hi Susan

Your review site this week has quite a few things that should or could be changed tomake it more user friendly, both in aesthetic terms regarding the way it looks, andin general SALES terms as well.

First thing that jars is the MENU on the top left of the home site, because the arrowsare too big and the text font too small. These should be relatively easy to correct, asthe site is written in CSS mode.

Second thing is the overall presentation which will take the visitor AWAY just aboutevery time they click on a link. That could well put people off, as it then becomes adirectory rather than a web site which will do what it says on the tin, SHOW US HOWTO MAKE $500 A DAY.

Still on that tack, the SUBMIT MY SITE banner needs some attention, because thetext below it should be central, and in fact the banner sometimes comes up on thefar left of the page. (That's on IE7)

Final thought.....have you ever bought something from Amazon.com by clickinga link on somebody's web site instead of logging in to your own account? Didn'tthink so. Best of luck to her, especially as she took the trouble to ask for ourcomments to help her make it an even better site.

Peace and love
Syd Burke
http://adfactory.gti7.com/?4709

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My Comments -

With the url of 500adaypossible and a page title of $500 A Day Possible most visitors will expect to see some information about how to make $500 a day and will be confused by what they see on your main page. Since I think you're promoting the easymoneyathome site as the way to make $500 a day you should provide some useful information about the program or programs you are promoting. I did a search to see if there were others promoting this program to find you some examples. Unfortunately I found a lot of "junk" pages and "404 Error" pages. 1 affiliate has a video listed on many of the video sites and quite a few "junk" blogs however they did have 1 blog that does show you how to provide content for at least 1 of the money making offers at easymoneyathome - http://internetmoneymakingtools.blogspot.com/2007_05_28_archive.html

In the event you are trying to make a directory site of ways to make money and things internet marketers use in their business, you need to state that and give some content also. I doubt that those who find your site on their own will click your menu since most aren't looking for those things. You need to give your site visitors a reason to want to find out about those items.

You have also mixed font sizes and types on your main page. While mixing these things can be good for visual effect, yours are mixed for your banners. While most won't stick around for a page full of banner ads, the spacing, font size and type should be consistent so they'll look good. Also, while your header is the same on all your pages, the size of your header changes on some of them and the font size of your site title on the header could be larger.

As a beginner to site design and building I think you've gotten some of the basics. So rather that start over I'd suggest you provide some content about your main program on your main page and use text ads rather than banner ads for some of the other programs. I'd also suggest you remove your search since it always takes people to a Google search unless you're getting ppc money for clicks on their ads. If you are getting paid for the ads on those Google searches then I suggest you move the search to 1 of your columns and ad a lead in question or statement like "Learn more about."

Having your signup form on your main page is good but again you must give the visitor a reason to sign up. If you're sending additional information about your main affiliate program you could add statements in your content about how they can get additional information about how to make $500 a day by signing up. If you're sending information about internet marketing topics as your newsletter page states then you should state that as the lead in on your main page also. It doesn't have to be in the same format as on the newsletter page but as content on how to learn about some of the things online marketers must know.

The main thing to remember, Ann, is that web users are looking for useful information in the form of words. So if you're selling something, an idea, an affiliate program, a product, etc. you must write useful content that gives them a reason to want to join, buy or learn more.

Tags: site review