The case of the Jealous Webmaster

Hey folks,

some of you may have seen some abusive comments left for me on various forums, including many of my own (well, about a half dozen out of 20+, so not a huge amount) and some of you may be wondering why!

Well, it boils down to one thing, jealousy…

…. its a sad indictment on the world today that people can not handle others successes.  I myself run a medium sized web design agency, and have many profitable websites.  When I provided HOSTING to a forum which took a huge chunk of traffic from some spotty 14 year old american kids forum on the same subject, that person decided to start a hate campaign against ME across the internet!

Well, I am happy to say that I am more mature, and a bigger person than he is so it really does not bother me. Heck, if I was to cry every time someone called me a name I would be stuck in the third grade, which unfortunately seems to be where this guy IS stuck.

Anyway,  my lawyer has about 20 examples now of whats been said, and he is contacing the local police in the county that the perpetrator lives, so hopefully a visit from the authorities will abate the idiot!

off for a coffee!

MM

Im Giving away FREE DOMAINS !!!

Hi Folks,

To celebrate the launch of my new webmasters forum, I am giving away free domain names at www.createadotcom.com!

Thats right, they are totally free and all you need to do to secure your own .com for nothing is make some posts in our new forums and discuss things with other webmasters.

If you are interested in getting a new .com for nothing, or even if you dont need one please support us by check out the new webmasters forum, which is the first one on the internet with a heavy slant towards web2.0!

CHECK OUT THE WEBMASTER 2.0 FORUM NOW AND START EARNING YOUR NEW DOMAIN NAME! 

Thanks for reading and I look forward to chatting with you at the new forums!

Buenas Noches!

Banned from DP - for reporting my OWN misplaced thread!

I’m generally not one to complain when I get told off, after all, if someone has call to tell you off its generally because you did something wrong.  Mind you, since I was in my early twenties I guess other people have been hard pressed to find much wrong, such being the life I lead.

Im an active member on about a dozen webmaster forums, but the one that I enjoy the most is digital point. To me its mixture of heavy traffic, great discussions and active marketplace are just the right mixture of components necessary  to make a great forum.

That is why I have been dismayed to find out this evening that I have been banned from digital point, for reporting mis-placed threads that I have created!

If you get banned for reporting your own mistakes, then surely people are less likely to do so…..

Anyway, firstly I must give you a history of my infractions that I have received.  Firstly, I was infracted and you can argue rightly so, for bumping a thread in the general promotion category.  That accounted for 5 points, as I got fined one point for “creating the thread in an inappropriate section” and 4 more for “bumping” said thread.   oooooops.

Secondly, I placed a thread where I was selling a facebook app in the BST -> SITES section, now I would have thought that this would be the best place to put a facebook app, and I did give it some consideration before I posted it, but came to the conclusion that this would be the right place.  I must have come to the wrong conclusion as I was again infracted for  “creating the thread in an inappropriate section”.  This time, I tried unsuccessfully to argue my case, as I justifiably I still feel, did no wrong.  Guess what, I got infracted twice more for arguing about it!

This brought my total infractions level up to a whopping 9 without really having done too much wrong.  To be fair, Im not contesting the first “block” of infractions I got, frankly I cant complain and I learnt my lesson.  The second lot I still wholeheartedly disagree with, but hey, I was willing to overlook them as well and get on with my life.

So today, with two browser windows open, one pointing at BST->freebies and the other pointing at BST->Content, I started two threads.  BOTH threads were for content related sales, BUT the sales value for both amounts were under $5 and at digital point they operate a policy that all transactions advertised at $5 or less should go into the freebies section.

I mistakenly posted BOTH threads into the wrong area.  Ooooops again.  BUT I naively perhaps thought that it wouldnt be a big deal, after all I had noticed that they were in the wrong place so I myself reported both threads, left a nice little message saying along the lines of “sorry mods I posted this in the wrong section, my bad for causing bother, please move”, AND THEN even took the step of warning a new MOD aaron_nimocks (I think thats his username, he is the first of the MODs alphabetically) by PM to let him know what I had done.

To Aarons credit, within minutes I got a response back saying that he was on a super slow connection so he couldnt do it then and there, but if I had indeed posted a warning on the threads report function (which I had) then it would be sorted out.

Case closed, problem solved, or at least so I thought.  About 5 minutes later while answering a PM I pressed “send” and got redirected to a big “Your Banned!!” screen.  I appear to be banned until March the 11th at 13.05 server time, as this is 90 days after my first “block” of infractions disappears.

I guess everyone that ever gets banned feels hard done by, but after reviewing the reasons for my infractions, and especially in the light of the fact that I myself reported my misplaced threads AND pro-actively contacted a MOD to help me sort it out, well, lets just say I am dismayed at the behavior of the DP MOD crew, I feel a little bit of common sense should have been used in this case, as I vehemently feel that tonights infractions were unwarranted.

To cap it all off, yesterday I posted a new sale thread in the BST->content section for a facebook app, and a senior member commented that I had posted in the wrong place, and that site sales would have been a better candidate to post in!  Looks like Im not the only one who thinks that way.

So, the question is what to do now?  “take it like a man” and wait two weeks to serve my unjust sentance? Well, unless any of the MODs are big enough to step up and recognise that a mistake has been made, then I guess thats all I can do……

Google Says “Jump”… are you still asking how high?

So, its time for our obligatory google dance again.  The

latest update to the TBPR ranks has been going on for the last few days, and while most sites seem to have completed their move one wonders if it will be another “double whammy” update like we had in November. (for the short of memory folks there were two updates in a week, the first being affectionately known as the google slap…..)

Like most other professional webmasters I followed it with some interest, after all it does govern how much links will be worth/are going to cost for the next 3 months, so even if you place no credence in the toolbar PR then it still affects you, directly or indirectly as links are the only true currency of the webmaster these days.

What happened to my sites?  Well, surprisingly little.

Sites that have stagnated have remained PR3/PR4, sites that have gained links (and in one case from 3,000 to 40,000 links) have not changed.  Sites that have lost links have also not changed.

Infact, out of 130+ active sites on my books at the moment, the only changes I saw were a handful of PRn/a changing to PR Zero.  All that linkbuilding, seo work, and assorted efforts, and not a single change to my sites?  There is something whiffy afoot.

It has been said for some time now that google are working on ways of removing themselves from this link economy, which to be fair they created by valuing off site seo practices at about 95% of a websites overall strength.  So whats happening? Well, a lot of playing about needs to be done to get a true picture as to what is going on but a fair guess would be that the algorithm’s that google use to calculate what constitutes a link has changed significantly. Also one wonders whether they have started weighting some links higher than others based on age, total page yield per site/IP, total content per site, and so on.  Some of my bigger sites with tens of thousands of pages indexed have noticeably increased in the SERPs over the last week, whereas some very noticeable smaller sites have slipped.  Perhaps its a sign of things to come, perhaps on the other hand we are just going to get another index update later in the week.  Hopefully it will be another big fat google slap that will upset all the other link buying webmasters!!

Anyway, Im off to enjoy my nice cool calimocho,

MM

SEO is nothing without substance

I have been mulling over something over the last few days. I have been contracted to do some SEO work which was nicely paid, but I turned it down.

I didnt turn it down because it was too much of a challenge, or because the client demanded too much, I have managed to do more for most of my customers in the past and the competition in the niche wasnt too high, so why did I turn it down?

The customers product simply had no substance to it. I in many ways come from the old school of marketing. Start with a good product, demonstrate that there is a market for said product, identify the market correctly that you wish to target, THEN set about spreading the word to the potential clients. If the product has no substance it simply wont achieve sales that would render any SEO work useless. Now I could have just taken the money and produced the results, so why didnt I?

Well, that particular client might do a five figure sum on this product, but I dont want to be part of this failure story. If the client heeds my advice and redesigns the core of the product it could do well, and then I would be interested in working with it, but not as it stands. No SEO or SEM (or any other client looking for marketing advice) is going to want to lose money in the long run. If I am part of this current debacle, I bet that customer would not be a repeat user of my services. If he chooses to go ahead with another SEO’er and my predictions turn out to be true, w ell in 6 months, or in two years, that customer might come back to me with a better idea. And that one I will be interested in working on!

Its all down to an ethical approach to marketing I guess. If you have serious doubts as to whether a product will ever turn a profit, is it correct to work on the marketing of it? In my opinion no it is not. Perhaps 5 years ago when I had to look for work it would have been a different story, but for now, those projects are simply not worth the phone call in 3 months when the customer says that funds have dried up and he is broke/gone out of business.

SEO is like any other marketing exercise, if its not a good idea or has no substance, dont bother. Its up to you as an expert in marketing to identify products that just wont work, and do yourself a favour, DONT work on them!

Anyway, its off for my calimocho again,

MM

Blogging has made the World a Village

Being from a small village in a remote part of the world (originally that is, before I moved to sunny Spain) taught me a few things in life.

It gave me the perspective that one only truly gets by being from a place where everyone leaves their doors unlocked when they go out, and everyone knows each others name. I have also now spent 25 years in a truly cosmopolitan society where one would never leave ones door unlocked, so I understand the flip side of the equation as well.

The recent world events including the tragic death of Benazir Bhutto, have brought to my attention the way that the whole world is to some extent developing a more “village” attitute, being brought together by online forums, social networking sites, and to a massive extent blogs!

My ramblings in the last post about the news brought in about 150 more readers than normal for one of my posts, all from google having searched relevant terms (a few even left comments) - and this does go to show that the whole interaction thing inside us really isnt dead, its just misplaced!

There was a time when everybody knew their neighbours, and now it seems more likely that you have friends online, by facebook or myspace, but haven’t a clue who your neighbours actually are. I suppose its just a sign of the times and a progression to the globalisation that runs our international economies today - its just extended now to also include our private lives as well!

Is this a good or bad thing? Well, thats totally down to personal perspective, however purely on a darwinistic viewpoint surely over development of online social groups at the detriment to developing “real” social skills is very dangerous - this is the first generation of humans in history that can realistically have a full social network and never really meet anybody.

I wonder what that will do for peoples social skills over the next 50 years?

$272,000 in one year. How I did it.

Hey folks,

I’m just finalizing a sale of one of my projects that has not only made the bulk of my revenues in 2007, but has also just netted me a decent amount of coin in selling it. Hopefully it will earn me even more in the next 12 months.

While I’m not going to go into great detail here (legal reasons) I can tell you that the site is a gaming related site, and provides gambling services (outside the USA of course).

Anybody can make this kind of money, but guess what people, you HAVE TO WORK FOR IT!  My success never came overnight. It came after 6 months of research in the market, 6 months of cold calling affiliates, 6 months of creating ideas - realising they were rubbish and creating more ideas, and that was just THIS PROJECT - never mind the years of prior experience!!

Finally it all comes into place. If it doesn’t come into place then just move on, go back to your day job (or don’t leave it), internet marketing isnt for everyone.

If I could be as bold as to instill a few messages in my post, the values that I feel benefit an internet marketer MOST are:

1) be persistent. If something doesn’t work for you first time, refine your idea and try again.
2) be original. How many ebook sites are there out their? Millions, thats how many. What makes yours special? if you cant answer that then your not doing it right!
3) invest in your ideas. This can be done in a few ways, if you have the money to outsource dont be afraid to use it, if you don’t, invest in LEARNING the skills you need. When I started out ifI needed something done in photoshop, I learnt photoshop. If I needed some PHP coding, I learnt PHP. Just deal with it!
4) NEVER, EVER GIVE UP - unless you ignored points 1,2 & 3 above. If you did ignore them, well, feel free to ignore point 4 as well. You would be best off just going back to whatever it was you did before.

One other tip that I have is to invest in the future. The last 3 major projects I built, I have sold on, but kept a fraction of the company. At first this seemed insane as I literally took $30,000 less than I needed to on the first one, but that $30k has been paid back to me in the last 3 years, and guess what, I will still earn out of it in 2008. This new project that Im just selling up now, well - I’m keeping 20% of it and the new buyers have the ability to market it way beyond my budget, so hopefully that 20% will be worth another $50k next Christmas.

Anyway, the moral of the story I guess is to never give in. If I have managed it I’m sure you can too!

Onwards and upwards with the NEXT project!

Building Communities on the Internet

The internet is a valuable tool - and if you filter out all the porn and spam that are at every corner, the new fad for social networking is in my opinion perhaps the most important social development since, well, the internet itself.

In days gone by (alright, 95-96 so not that long ago) the internet was seen as a great tool for social interaction. I remember 12 years ago selling an old lady a laptop and internet connection to keep in touch with her granddaughters in the USA, who had the old compuserve numbered email addresses. That was my first real introduction into the power of “connecting people” as nokia like to put it. The internet was set to join people together, to create huge online communities of like minded thinkers, to connect you more and more to the people you love, and even meet new ones. It just didnt really work out though.

I mean sure, there are lots of forums and there always have been. Forums are indispensable sites to discuss mutually interesting topics, but they were never intended to be peculiar to a group of friends. This is where Facebook, Bebo and others have really come into their own over the last year or two. I know your thinking that Ive forgotten to mention MySpace, but in all honesty I dont rate (and never have done) their community. Its merely an extension on what geocities were doing 10 years ago, while encouraging you to stick to a certain format. What MySpace never did was connect you in an online environement to the people around you - which is what the success of Facebook is down to. Its not random people on another continent, its your very own friends and family, albeit quite possibly on another continent!

Whats the future going to hold? Well, this new craze I am glad to say is surely here to stay. A great indicator to this is the fact that Ning has over 150,000 social networks on it, and Facebook is the 8th most popular website in the world at the time of writing. This is what the internet was always meant for, but along the way we got sidetracked with all the porn!

Long live Social Networking, Long live The ‘Net - Vive La Revolucion!

anyways, my calimocho is getting warm. Off to enjoy a tipple and my favourite TV show,

Buenas Tardes Muchachos,

MM

The Value of Websites #2

So. Another day another dollar.  The time has come to look at increasing my portfolio of sites after a bit of a clear out over the last few weeks and Im looking round at what sites are worth buying.

Its not an easy search, thats certainly true - there seem to be a huge amount of sites that are up for sale but have no history, revenue, traffic or even a good angle, yet the owners seem to think that they are worth a fortune - life just isnt like that Im afraid you charlatans from shanghai or you conmen from columbia.

What must a site have to be a good candidate to be bought?  Well,  firstly traffic never hurts, but its not entirely necessary.  PR isnt really a defining factor either.  Pages indexed in google is probably my favourite one,  and I suppose a half decent alexa rank doesnt hurt either, but as mentioned above its not in any way necessary.  Monetization is normally a no-no,  ie. if its already monitized generally the outgoing webmaster wants too much money for it.  So whats the perfect profile of a site im looking for?  Well,  i’d say:  PR2 or PR3,  5,000+ pages indexed in google,  yet poor SEO.   Basically what Im looking for is a forum built with an old phpBB or VBulletin without any seo mods,  with thousands of users built up over years,  but not many actives.  Ideally I wouldnt mind buying 5 or 6 such sites, but for the kind of money that they go for on DP or webmasterworld,  not SP….

If anyone knows of any then addresses on the bank of a postcard to the usual address please.

Another thing that I find myself musing over is the lack of creative websites in the poker industry these days. Its at least 3 years since Ive seen a truly creative idea.  I do have one or two but more on them in a few months once Ive assembled a team together

anyway,  back off to trawl the forums. and have my calimocho.

buenas tardes muchachos

MM

The Wizards of “Dm”Oz

This ones definately for the soapbox section !

Dmoz - or the “open directory project” as its also known albeit less well known have this paragraph at the start of their about us section:

Since 1998, the Open Directory Project has been the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a passionate, global community of volunteer editors. 

Any SEO’er worth his salt is aware that this is just tosh, of the highest order.  A good case in point is an acquiantance of mine who has recently managed to get a new site a PR7 in record time (less than 10 weeks) for a client.  Dmoz plays a part in this story (along with a few thousand dollars worth of links) - in that the site uses its Dmoz listing to assert a certain authority with google,  and you might be wondering just how the site has got listed in such a short time (I certainly did,  I’ve got about 10 sites that have been waiting from 3 months to three years for a listing).

The answer is simple, the SEO’er in question bought the link, through personal knowledge of the editor of the niche in question. How is this fair? Well it isnt… How can this be stopped? Well it cant.

Where does this lead us? Well surely DMOZ cant possibly claim any authority when things like this are going on. Furthermore, Google should stop regarding it with ANY advantage to any other reputable directory.

Anyway,  rant over.

Im off for a calimocho.

Buenas Tardes Muchachos
MM.