What About Work-at-Home Dads?

Hey, what about us work-at-home dads!

Sitesell have just added a new "Master's Course" to their stable of excellent, business-building guides. Titled WAHM-IT - the WAHM part standing for Work At Home Moms (or Mums, for those of us on the other side of the globe) - it's a guide to building a successful home-based business, case studies included, using Site Build It.

Written by a group of SBI users who also happen to be stay-at-home moms it's a great effort, and like all the other SBI Masters Courses it's completely free. But what about us dads? There are plenty of dads out there just like me who are working from home, juggling family committments while attempting to contribute to family income with an online business. Perhaps it should be titled WAHP-IT - Work At Home Parents?

Anyway, for all you WAHPs out there, if your dream is to build a business AND enjoy all the benefits of working from home, this course is a good read.

AdSense Secrets Update

Just finished reading the updated version (V 3.0) of Joel Comm's What Google Never Told You About Making Money With AdSense. If you read the previous version and were wondering if the update was worth purchasing, the answer is YES. Go get it!

I thought I knew everything about AdSense, but in fact I wasn't even close. For example, did you know that:

• If you run AdSense on multiple sites, how your ads perform on one site can affect your earnings across all your sites?
• There is special code you can add to your site which tells Adsense what sections of your pages to examine to help determine which ads to display, and which to ignore?

This is a very comprehensive guide with lots of useful info to digest. I previously recommended a book called The Definitive Guide to Google AdSense by William Charlwood. Joel's book is way better. Also included are AdSense case studies, AdSense Buddy software and membership to Joel's Adsense Detective.

Joel makes up to $1,000 a day on AdSense, and that's not from a huge network of sites.

If you publish a content site or blog then Adsense is undoubtedly THE best way to "monitize" your content.

Reciprocal Linking is Dead - Or is it?

I seem to be reading all the time that reciprocal linking is dead - in newsletters, forum posts etc. How did the writer come to this conclusion? Usually, it's because they read it somewhere else, therefore it must be true. What's missing, however, is any sort of statistical proof.

When Google did their recent major update, nicknamed "Jagger", many sites saw fluctuations in their rankings. Some were pushed from page 1 rankings to the nether regions of 400+. I know, stevepronger.com was one of them. Those who held the view that reciprocal linking was ineffective loudly proclaimed that Jagger was all about Google penalizing sites with reciprocal links. I've never held this view. Reciprocal linking has been practiced by webmasters long before Google even came onto the scene. And of course once Jagger ran its course all my rankings returned, just like they did 12 months earlier after the so-called "Florida" update.

The problem is, reciprocal linking has been abused to the point where most webmasters don't know how to use it in an effective, appropriate manner. If you have been amassing as many links as you can, from any site prepared to exchange with you, then you probably won't be seeing positive results.

You see my friends, the issue is not reciprocation. The issue is relevancy. It makes sense that Google would analyze the page that links to you to determine if it is relevant and appropriate. Is there a tangible relationship between this page and your site? Is there a common theme on that page? Is it a high PageRank (PageRank is Google's measure of value)? How many other outbound links are on that page?

Let's say your site is about home improvement tips. Which of these pages do you think Google would place more value on with a link to your site:

Link Page Example 1

Site Theme: Home Improvement Product Catalog
Page title: Home Improvement Resources
Heading: Our Recommended Home Improvement Resources
Outbound links: around 30, all to home improvement related sites
meta tags: all contain references to home improvement
Clicks away from home page: 1
PageRank: 3

Link Page Example 2

Site Theme: Pharmacy
Page title: Links
Heading: none
Outbound links: 160 (yours is the only link to a home improvement site)
Meta tags: no mention of home improvement
Clicks away from home page: 4
PageRank: 0 (possibly not even indexed)

It's really not that hard to think like a search engine. Obviously it would consider the first example to be appropriate and relevant, while the second example would be seen as an attempt to game them. And if you were linking to the site in the first example using the same criteria, why would a search engine discount or even penalize your link simply on the grounds of reciprocation? Makes no sense to me. That's why I've never seen anyone back up their claim of "reciprocal linking is dead" with any solid, statistical data. It just doesn't exist.

Bottom line? Reciprocal linking is still effective if done properly and as part of an overall link strategy which includes directory listings, article syndication etc. Choose your link partners carefully and thoughtfully and you'll never run foul of the search engines. You'll also be providing a valuable resourse for your visitors.

Reciprocal linking is not dead. Inappropriate, non-relevant linking is.

Driving Website Traffic with Article Writing

Review: Article Writing and Marketing with Christopher Knight

One of the most common questions I am asked by clients is "How do I get more traffic to my website?" There are two things you absolutely must be doing - adding lots of keyword-rich content to your site and building links to your site which will attract humans as well as the search engines. And one of the best ways of building those links is by writing articles and submitting them to article directories where they are syndicated for use by other webmasters.

Now, this may sound complicated but it's really quite simple. By writing articles you are establishing yourself as an expert in your field, and the resource box which webmasters must include when they use your article will provide a link back to your site both for visitors and search engines to follow. It's a well documented fact that search engines like to see links from topically related sites. Although search engines use many factors to determine how to rank your website on a particular term, the links to your site are a crucial one.

I've used article writing to promote my site as well as client sites. There can be no doubt that it is effective. However it wasn't until I read Chris Knight's Article Writing and Marketing I realized I was making mistakes and not using article marketing to it's ultimate effectiveness.

Chris is the man responsible for ezinearticles.com, one of the better article directories, and has more experience with article marketing than just about anyone. You will learn plenty from this guide (it consists of audio files as well as printed material). I know I did. I suggest you burn the audio files to a CD and play them in your car or lounge room.

My only criticism is that Chris talks a little fast, but all in all Article Writing and Marketing is a good, solid usable product. A worthwhile purchase. Recommended.

Review: Blogging to the Bank

Blogging to the Bank is a new e-book written by self-confessed "shy college dropout" Rob Benwell. Rob has done rather well using blogs to promote various affiliate programs and generate income using AdSense.

Let me start by saying that after reading Blogging to the Bank I asked for a refund. I was very disappointed with this publication. Maybe Rob should have stuck at college a little longer because the spelling and grammar are rather poor. I can excuse such things when the info provided is of high value but unfortunately that just wasn't the case.

Blogging to the Bank starts by explaining how to make a blog using his service provider of choice, blogger.com. I guess you have to start at the basics but there is nothing here that you wouldn't learn by simply going to blogger.com and following their instructions for creating a blog. Rob then goes on to explain how to add Adsense or affiliate program code to your blog template. This was ok, but if you're an experienced affiliate marketer you won't learn anything new here.

Rob then explains some "ethical" ways of getting backlinks to your blogs i.e. directories and article submissions. Nothing wrong there, but again, nothing new if you've done this before. But it was the "advanced" strategies that really turned me off this book. Rob warns that some may consider these tactics "unethical" yet he sees no problem with them himself. Hmmmm. Now we see how he really achieves success with his blogs... blog spam. Also known as "splogs".

Basically, he uses software to automatically create "thousands" of blogs which serve no other purpose than to create backlinks to his main blogs, which themselves are thin on useful content. No doubt this has desired effect of giving his sites a boost in the search engine rankings. But the question is, for how long? The search engines are of course on to splogs and shutting them down as quickly as they are being created. Maybe MSN and Yahoo aren't as quick as Google to take action but it's really just a matter of time. Is this any way to build a long term, sustainable business? I think not.

Rob seems to acknowledge this himself. In his update which accompanied the book is this statement: "Blogger has been locking blogs and deleting some. I have even had some locked myself that I was using to create back links." He then goes on to explain various strategies to combat this such as recreating blogs which have been deleted.

Basically, if you follow the advice contained in Blogging to the Bank you are creating a business model based on a house of cards and could tumble at any time. If you want to be working against the search engines and clogging the Internet with thousands of useless pages then maybe Blogging to the Bank is for you. Yes, you'll probably make some money. But I'd do it quick. Your money making days are numbered.

Cheers

Steve