Nilands Blog

I have been doing link exchange and building my directory for a little over two weeks now. It has been a learning curve for me. I ended up buying PHP Link Directory version 4 software to do my Niland’s Place Campers Directory. I tried out a boot leg copy of version 3.4 on my home Linux server (I set up a second computer behind another router with my main computer) to see what it was like. I know your not supposed to use a bootleg but I like to try before I buy if I can. If you want to know how to do this you will have to find out else were. Anyway I liked it and it was only $30 so I bought it. People could argue that a script should be free, but I don’t have the knowledge to write such a robust script myself.

The directory is working out to be a great tool to develop back links to my site, even if it is only to http://directory.nilandsplace.com. Since this is a Sub-domain of nilandsplace.com it is all the same for Alexa. I am also the number one advertiser in my directory. If it gains traffic I will be able to sell advertisements on it. I already have the google AdSense working on it. The big deal is I have gone from over 800,000 down to 515,000 position from number one in just two weeks. I am hoping to break 100,000 before spring arrives.

Let me make one thing clear. It has been alot of work and hours at the computer just to get a few back links, but the activity to my domain has been good. I keep a Alexa widget on my Firefox that shows my activity and I have had a spike last week. I had a spike last summer but unknown to me my credit card API was missing a couple of numbers so I missed out on a few high dollar sales. Now I buy something off my website to make sure it works.

I have recently got alot of emails offering SEO services, but I have to decline and do it myself as I can not afford it yet. In retrospect spending money on pay per click advertising was not a good choice. I am still sceptical about what they do to earn the money, but maybe that would give me some trade secrets. And how do you know who to choose? I had some Discover card SEO company I was paying $59 a month but they never could tell me what they did for the money. I got an interesting email from richard.dunwood@webclinicmailer.co.uk, he had checked into my website before contacting my and told me what he could improve. Maybe if I had the money I would hire this guy as this SEO is alot of work and I am sure I am missing something in my efforts that I don’t know about. For now he will just have to be happy I plugged his email. Tell him nilandsplace.com sent you maybe he will give me a discount.  He at least let me no my pages were not being indexed by google so I need to figure this out. all I know about this is what I read some were the my pages need to be static and I need an XML site map. The this is PHP is not static as it puts together a web page according to input. Maybe I can figure out the xml thing? I don’[t think I will put any SEO companies out of business and time soon. Follow along and I will let you know what I learn. Next project get a “Sitemap.xml” submitted to Google, Yahoo and Bing, then I will get back to the back links as I don’t think I will be done with this any time soon.

James the admin guy

For the past week I have been up late filling out forms, submitting links and sending emails. The sale of Camping gear has dropped tremendously this December. I sure hope it wasn’t something I did wrong? Not too many people do winter camping is what I figure. So camping gear is not on the Christmas list. I have however got more interest from international customers were they are having their summer. This has prompted me to seek out my own search engine optimisation. I have been very busy requesting reciprocal links to my website http://directory.nilandspalce.com/camping/. The directory is something new I came up with as a plan to capture more attention from search engines and people browsing. There is no money to be made with it yet, but if I succeed in making it popular I could sell some advertisements. My blog effort has worked out better than I expected it to. I am using a link to webconfs.com they call a back link builder. the address is http://www.webconfs.com/backlink-builder.php. So far it has worked well for finding other sites to do the back Links as long a I use the right keyword or phrase. I have sent out hundreds of emails and filled in just as may forms. But my real point is I just getting started on this project so it should prove interesting how it all turns out. After a week of this I am understanding why many SEO companies are making money. It hard too figure out what will work in business with out learning from someone else. When I was running My bioengineering company I had to ask others in business how to do things. It seems you have to dig around on the Internet to find useful tips and how to’s.  A month ago I had no idea what an article submission was and how it can work for you. I really started the reciprocal link stuff after getting request from other website owners and realised I had done nothing about it. I would really like to here what others are doing about their SEO. How will it all turn out?

James the admin guy

Portions of this article is By Ivana Katz in Writing. http://www.sitepronews.com/category/articles/writing/. this is the abridged version of his article with my own slant on the topic.

“Having worked with a large number of small business owners, one common mistake I see over and over again is the obscene amounts of money they throw away on advertising. Many of them believe the more money they spend, the more business it will bring.”

WRONG!!! WRONG!!! WRONG!!!

I know I tried it and there was no profit from it. I also in the beginning gave $59 a month to Discover SEO with nothing to show for it

“The main reason traditional marketing doesn’t work is the small business owner doesn’t really know much about marketing,” trusting the salesman, you give your money away as they promise the traffic will come rolling in.

“Writing articles is an excellent way for you to get free publicity. Getting an article published is free and some publications even pay for your contributions.The publicity you receive by having your article published” …”website can be worth thousands of dollars in equivalent advertising space. Well written articles yield better results than advertisements and earn you respect from customers, who see you as an expert in your field.”

“An article is a short piece of information that aims to educate and inform people about something, which they may be interested in. They are usually between 500 and 3,500 words long”…

I have been busy doing this, but I find most places so far are a minimum of 250 words. You can usually find a clever what to put your website URL in the article, and all the better. At a minimum if you can’t do the URL you can at least do some name dropping. The way I went about it is to use webconfs.com’s back link builder. Do your key word and hundreds of sites get listed. The word count on this article is 343 so I am going to publish it else were, and boost my website at http://shop. nilandsplace.com/camp/index.php, How is that for slipping it in?

eBay has been a curse and a fortune. I maintain a website and an eBay store. While it certainly brings in some mush needed income, the time spent on it has kept me from taking the time to find out why my on-line store is not doing as well. Over the pass two days I have sent hundreds of emails asking for a link exchange. I have open a directory about camping as of two days ago. It is my own form of SEO and back links. Currently I have 19 back links if you don’t include eBay, were I have hundreds. As far as I know I am within eBay policy as the have brought me from poor compliance to good compliance in the last couple of days. eBay can run there website any way they see fit, but I have no complaints. The idea of the directory was ill conceived as a way to get a higher rating with the major four search engines. I say ill conceived as I soon discovered it is a lot of work to maintain a directory. I now understand it can have a life of it’s own, and grow to new values. I am happy to do the work as I think it can do something good. I feel one must always find a way to better ones self and give something back.

More every day the INTERNET is the accepted form of information. Them that did not, do. And it is really up to the search engines to make this a possibility. My message seems to be if you want the results, you need to put in the time.

So I want to let you know you can watch this thing grow or die: http://directory.nilandsplace.com. I don’t use the www address so make sure to leave it out. At this point I am only interested in camping material so please don’t ask for a link back if you have nothing to offer on this subject. You can however write your favorite story about camping and plug your website there.

We have had to institute “CAPTCHA” on this blog as some spam’ers never give up. Sorry if this is a pain in the ass, but we had to to it.

Selling proscription medication over the INTERNET is not only illegal, but it is not wise to use such services, Gambling can be a social ill so we think you have better things to do on the Internet (go to Vegas or Reno and have real fun). Porn my be the number one thing on the Internet, but we do not allow it, especially when it promotes exploitation in any form.

Tell us about your happy camper or “I will never do it again” story and I will promote it with your website address intact.

All most forgot! Check out these two links: http://www.webconfs.com/backlink-builder.php from Webconfs.com. It prompted me to start the directory. Also a really cool tool, Backlink Checker from iwebtools at http://www.iwebtool.com/backlink_checker/ to see how you rate.

I have been at the computer very steady of late, My wife is going to kill me when she finds out I have gone through a carton of cigarettes in one week. Next week I am going to share something I am very proud of (it will totally be blowing my own smoke), but many enjoy Detroit art.

It is Christmas, so I don’t give a rat’s ass if it politically correct. Merry Christmas and happy New year, may both find you in health.

James the ADMIN guy

I signed up for this 1on40 to get more results, but my process may have got me in trouble. I have multiple email accounts and can create them at wish via my website host. I thought since they have never got me to number one I would apply many times. I discovered they go by emails to prevent signing up more than once. This last time my have backfired on me as suddenly my rating has slipped some 300,000 plus points in 5 days according to Alexa. I hope I am not heading to Google hell (supplemental results) because I used them to improve my standing. I have heard about some SEO companies getting you banned. I hope it is not happening to me. I closed my last client account I did with 1on40 to see if this helps. 10n40 has had a year to get me to # uno, but have not yet. Now I am looking for a way of checking with Google about this, but I can’t even contact them to fix my e-mailbox. I am sure Google is not going to share their algorithms they use to search. If they did I could start my own Google type search website. This Makes me wonder about SEO companies claiming to get you a higher standing for the search page. Are they Google insiders? So how do they know? I have only glanced over Google published info, so I may need to spend some time reading to figure it out. Testing with a web-based analyser I found from SEO Chat ™, I have allot of keyword work to do. Maybe all the SEO’s do is get you to clean up and organise your website? Maybe it is information you can buy somewhere or just learn from the search engines? I need to find out! This dose not mean I want every SEO company contacting me! But I would like to here from clients of these companies. I have more time than money as it is juxtaposed (they always seam like the are Inversely proportional, the more money the less time), so I am doing my own optimisation starting with key words.

Some have been asking were I get my info? I do a great amount of reading on line.  I try not to copy someone else’s information, but try to write it out in my own words. So there may be similarities. Most of it is what I am thinking about and roles out of my head.

Some want to know if I can supply references? NO, this would imply that my blog is more than an opinion. I do no warrant anything on this blog for legal reasons.

Today I am going to keep it short. Since I can’t find a SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)I can afford, I have found some links to help. One I like is misspelled word generator , Keyword Typo Generator, It includes many words you might get by hitting the wrong key. I do this all the time, thank God for spell checkers in my Firefox. Here is a link were I found a bunch of tools to use, SEO Chat ™. I like what I have found so far (Keyword Typo Generator and META Analyzer), but I need to do more to tell if it is good as I hope it will be.

Note about publishing: I actually read everything posted, Including comments, so please be patient while I trudge on through each one. Please don’t repost comments as I approve each and every one, so you might not see them right away. I have allot of content to cover. I have as of today a 178 pages of comments to get through. I am looking for some people I can trust to make administrators to help out. If you want to do this email me at blogers@nilandsplace.com. Thanks

Thanks James

Just one different word searching for suppliers made an incredible difference. I was searching for wholesalers but changed my search to distributor and got more B2B (Business to Business) listing than before. Two of them I got today from this search were drop shippers. If you don’t know about drop shipping you should research it as you have the advantage of not carrying inventory. A down side of it is you are not in control of shipping. You can’t include a coupon to spur your next sale or flyer in the box showing featured items. Eventually I want to do some importing so I am investing in a building for storage. If you want to find places to import from try Trade Key.

I am delighted with all the new user registrations. I need to set some ground rules. I know everybody wants to create inbound links for there website. I am going to allow this as long as you give me something on topic. Give me something I can use and I will not delete is because the post also contains something about your website or products. I am getting so much posts and new registrations I am having a hard time keeping up. So what I am going to do is read titles and determine if they should be read and later published. So make sure your Title is on subject for this blog if you don’t want it deleted. The subject matter for this website is about  Entrepreneurs and there adventures, Trying to sell something, Things (good or bad) learned about promoting a website, etc. I think you get the idea. Other than just this blog I have useful information for Entrepreneurs at my website http://nilandsplace.com. I am building links there for some good stuff.

Thanks James Niland
administrator

Any “wholesale” company that charges a membership fee is most likely a scam. If they are a drop shipper, it could be they are actually not the source, but are using another drop shipper to ship to your clients. That’s a recipe for customer service disaster! You will end up with bad feedback from slow shipping/damaged items/poor quality items. Also you need to make sure the keep stock inventory to cover your sales.

If you have a business license and a tax ID number, you will be able to find companies to wholesale to you. Without these, you are most likely only going to find fake wholesale scams. Even if the price seems really good to you, its very likely not actually wholesale–and that means you won’t be able to compete with the companies actually buying wholesale.

Drop shippers charge you a premium for shipping the item out for you. It might seem like easy money, but you won’t be able to compete with the companies buying wholesale and shipping themselves. You will end up spending hundreds of dollars listing items that other people are selling for half the price you can offer.

We I am happy to report in the last two months my website rating has gone down from 1 million to under 500,000 according to Alexa. For those that do not know the smaller the number the better your rating. In example Google is rated 1 and eBay stays around 20. Some of the improvement might be from resubmitting my websites to the search engines. Don’t do this more than once a month or you could get banned. Could also be to the hidden link at my eBay store. The link is hidden to keep in line with eBay policy, but the search engines can see it. It could also be the I am building Name brand recognition having my eBay store the same name as my website Niland’s Place Campsite. Maybe it has been my resubmitting my websites to 1on40.com. I found you need new email addresses for each submission. My next move will be to fund some shopping comparison engines. Most of them want a $50 deposit to get you started. I am hoping since they have gained popularity by my research that this will be a better way to go then the pay/click. The Pay per click did not work to well for me and was a complete wast of money. The way pay/click is you have to invest lots of money to end up on the first page as you are competing against large companies that have a large advertising budget, something I don’t have.

Also I am very happy with the many registration on my website. I haven’t had time to read them and get them published yet, but I will, so keep them coming even if they are off subject and just a plug. If nothing else you can pick up copy on how to plug your product. I find writing good copy, for me is a challenge, but I am getting better at it.

I have (with some help) written a small PHP program, exit survey asking why people who have registered at my website did not purchase. You can see the survey at this link: http://nilandsplace.com/ExitSurvey/ExitSurvey2.php. I have not figured out how to implement it so when someone exits the site it pops up. I welcome any ideas. Please do not fill it out as I have been emailing it to customers and I am using it. This would throw my results off.

Thanks for reading Jim