In reviewing the website U.S. Money Reserve it is interesting to note that there has probably never been a more opportune time to invest in and purchase gold. It is not even an issue of if one should invest in gold anymore, but rather an issue of how much to invest and how quickly to invest in this very important storage of value medium. The ability to store and preserve wealth is indeed one of the most critical elements of gold and precious metal investing.

Federal Reserve: Hardly Reserved

In a world where the Federal Reserve has gone literally haywire, by the unconstrained printing of money with the net effect being unfettered runaway inflation. This has a direct and measurable effect on the value of money. The more the Federal Reserve prints money the less that your money is worth, it is really that simple.

In responding appropriately any investor must find protective measures to insulate their wealth from this reckless kind of policy. U.S. Money Reserve is nicely organized and is easy to navigate when buying precious metals online. The real time ticker at the top of the page offers up to the minute gold and silver prices, this is convenient with all the recent fluctuations in gold and silver prices.

Buy the Dips: Value Investing

While these fluctuations may be a little unsettling, In truth, one would be well advised to just continue to buy on the dips in price. The reason for this is basic and simple. It is understood knowledge that the price of both gold and silver has be artificially and intentionally manipulated and held at a far lower price than normal market conditions would support. This is being done in large part to mask the fact that the US dollar is rapidly decreasing in value.

In other words, if gold were allowed to rise to its true market value it would in effect reveal the true worth of the dollar. This is being prevented from happening because it would then threaten the status of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. This is relevant to the precious metal investor because having this knowledge and understanding it makes the decision to regularly invest in gold and silver a rather easy one.

True Market Value

Once the artificial manipulation of precious metals ends, and it will as a law of economics, then the true market value of gold and silver will be reveled. This value will likely be many multiples of the current market value of precious metals. Further analysis of this issue shows that to an even greater degree, silver is more rare and valuable than gold.

All that Glistens: Silver

The historic gold/silver ratio shows that silver is perhaps one of the best investments one can possibly make today. Silver is unique in that it has real and tangible industrial uses. U.S. Money Reserve is a perfect site to track and monitor the change in precious metals prices. What makes it even better is that the site makes it easy to make a gold or silver purchase.

Surival Is the Name of the Game

In the coming days, there will likely be a substantially big paradigm shift in terms of money, finance and the global economy. This shift is unavoidable and will happen according to economic law and laws of the universe in general. A faulty and nonfunctional system will always eventually cease to exist, and equilibrium will eventually return. As a wise investor, looking ahead into the future, gold and silver are not an investment strategy, but rather a survival strategy.

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So, if you are writing about coffee makers, you also have to include other phrases like coffee spoon or coffee beans, if it’s Google’s intentions to stop keyword stuffing like that, then I’m afraid most sites are ‘stuffed’ (to use a colloquial UK slang meaning borked).

I think the only thing that Google is really concerned about is the searcher, and like the focus on the link (in PageRank) or the click (in Adsense), Google is looking for the USER/READER/SEARCHER and will use whatever algos ‘seem to pull that out’.

The problem is that an algo is no substitute for the fickleness of human nature, the cacophony and inconsistencies of human wants/needs/desires… and while Google may get close at times in mimicking reality (perhaps at an individual level), they will only mimic reality not capture its entirety.

We only have two defences against this onslaught of quasi-AI algo-fakery: our brand and our relationship with our readers. By building our relationship with readers and stating, clarifying and publicising our BRAND, we can & will be able to beat Google’s algo-nonsense.

So build a brand INTO your website and go find your audience, wherever it is. Google’s search engine is fast becoming a very dangerous place to be, as each of us waste our precious hours wondering what we did wrong each & every time the Panda strikes.

The only thing we did wrong: we spent too much time chasing Google and we failed to satisfy our customers properly. That’s it. That’s all.

So get out there, read the A&R and make your readers HAPPY. Make them delighted. Make them want to come back. Make them NEED to come back. And may Google get ‘stuffed’ instead.

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1. Ubuntu 1
2. Google
3. Microsoft
4. Apple

Prices seem all over the place at the moment, as do service standards. Free.

The best free service in terms of space vs. pricing is Microsoft. If you have an account with Microsoft already, you can claim 25GB and go from there. However, there is currently an upper limit, and IT ONLY WORKS ON Windows 7! So if you are like me in anyway, and still managing half a dozen xp systems… well, look elsewhere! But it easily the most affordable at $25 pa for 75GB! That’s less than $2.10 per month! Affordable, limited and only on Win7+.

Google offers the biggest spaces of all the services, though prices are noticeably sharper than Microsoft. But the idea of the service is pretty good, if you DON’T use Google Docs. If you do, then all your Google Docs are available in a rather silly Google Doc format. You can download them in your chosen format, but then you can’t edit them In Google Docs, either. So integration between Docs/Drive and your PC is poor. Notch one point to Microsoft on that! Large space, broader support, and funky formats.

Apple is similar to Microsoft, in that if you use XP, you’re pretty much out of luck. It’s also the most expensive of the four I’m looking at, and if you’re not part of the Apple-verse, it’s rather pointless. The only plus is the iTunes Match service that I can see. I don’t think at the moment, Apple have much chance to become the CLOUD. And they’re flipflops on mobile-me aren’t very encouraging at all. Limited, expensive, but visually attractive.

Ubuntu One is a very interesting alternative to the big three: it’s already multi-platform – 2 OSes at least, as 2 mobile platforms (all the big ones). It seems to be everything Icloud isn’t: supported on many platforms, affordable, and there are options for music streaming, too. I have installed this (along with the others (except Apple, which I removed) but haven’t tested it much yet. The only odd thing is that there are two (two APPS!) in the iTunes store… Weird. Multi-platform, affordable, but unproven.

So I guess that leaves me Dropbox. It’s still more expensive than some of the others, but it’s already available, the technology is already tested, mature and stable. It’s available on multiple platforms (PC and mobi), and Web. You can’t view documents in Dropbox as such, so it’s not a competitor to either Microsoft or Google in that sense (wonder why Google didn’t buy them!). Overall, reliable, affordable (almost), but gets expensive quickly.

So which one are you going to try?

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The site has a truly unique approach that let’s customers choose a plan according to their needs and budget. The products offered have won awards, and the site itself is run by a prestigious and qualified staff in the field. When I first arrived to the site, I was greeted by immediately eye-catching graphics and words. I enjoyed that I knew what I was getting into the moment I clicked on the site’s link.

Product Offerings x3

The goal of Reputation.com is to help individuals to maintain and protect their online presence, which is something that is much more possible online than offline. The site offers a selection of products that come for an annual fee.

The site offers a product called “Reputation defender” whose chief features are the ability to fix results on Google, hide undesirable links, and make you visible online. This service seems like a great deal, because we all know how unforgivable the internet is.

Another product, “my reputation,” seems to act as more of a monitoring service than a fixing one. This seems like a good service especially for people who are just starting their business or online presence.

The third product, “my privacy,” seems like a good service for anyone, even if they aren’t working on an online presence. People would be surprised at the amount of their personal information can be learned from a quick Google search. This tool can help you decide what you want people to see.

Payment Options

I personally think that it might be better to have monthly payment options too. I didn’t see an option for a trial period, but that could be helpful too. Despite this, I believe there are plenty of people out there who would be willing to invest in these services right away. The nice thing is that customers can choose from a simpler or plan or a more advanced plan to fit their budget.

Site Overview: Staff, Styling, Signs

From reading the management page, it appears that your business would be in good hands with Reputation.com. They offer a large, experienced staff who are qualified and dedicated to helping your reputation.

I found the site to be professional, stylish, and easily navigable. It was easy to find the information I was looking for, and it is all arranged neatly. It was a breath of fresh air seeing a site with great information as well as a great design.

One thing that I would take out is the little pop up window that keeps coming up asking you to register. I realize that this is pretty common with these types of websites, but I still think that people who have interest will register of their own free will.

And in the end

Overall, the site was a great experience that offers a unique and useful product. I would definitely recommend checking out this website to anyone interested in buying reputation management services, whether for personal branding, professional or business-related reputational management.

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Why? Simply, viruses can be gotten easy on most PCs these days (Macs, too!), and many kinds of malware can infect PCs. I reckon that’s important to:

• keep backups of your documents (off system);
• get and use uptodate AV software to protect (Microsoft now has a free anti-virus download);
• and maintain vigilance on especially new sites that you haven’t frequented.

It used to be that the main vector for contracting viruses/malware was via attachments, but if you use Google or any other webmail, you can pretty much nix that vector by NOT downloading attachments to your PC.

So now things have shifted: Drive-by Downloads seem increasingly common esp. on unpatched computer systems; malware hides in regular software, and IM (SPIM) in your messenger services all are increasingly common. Also, you may find that you get caught out by Spook (Facebook Spam). As cyber security improves, you can bet your bottom dollar that thieves, criminals, and spies will try anything new to rob us of our cash, our data, and even our identity.

Joining a Gym, or Leaving?

It seems really obvious that joining a gym and then not going every day isn’t really a financially sound practice, but I got so used to belonging to the gym that I basically stopped thinking about physical activity anywhere else.

It’s sort of like the dishwasher breaking and panicking that there are no clean dishes without remembering that you can hand wash dishes by hand. I just stopped thinking about physical exercise outside of the gym.

This article definitely broke it down into actual money I can save. So before terminating my gym membership which is actually cheaper than the $125 fee mentioned in the article, it costs $80 a month so it’s actually less than three dollars a day, I figured I’d try exercising outside of the gym, just to make sure.

Walking: The first thing that’s weird about walking rather than going to the gym is that there’s no machine telling me how fast I’m going or how long I’ve been at it or whether my heart rate has reached some optimal level. All that stuff is easy to readjust to for a few days just by committing to an amount of time you’re going to walk.

Taking a Walk, (c) 2012 TaipeiCityGuide.com, on Flickr, used with permission.

The second thing that took some adjustment was creating a walking route. For some reason it’s easier for me if I have a planned route. So I started with the whole around the block thing which didn’t take up the 45 minutes I know I should be spending walking. The simple solution for me was walking to some nature trails that are about three blocks away from my home.

The third thing I discovered is that I’d come to rely on the TV at the gym. Suddenly I was looking at my surroundings instead of watching TV. Trying to pick up some speed is a sure cure for the TV withdrawal. Paying attention to the ground also takes more focus than moving on a gym machine so I’m missing the TV less.

But I’m not an all-weather walker yet. If it’s raining, I’m not out there. Maybe I will at some point, but it hasn’t happened yet. When I start getting annoyed with myself on days I don’t go outside because of the weather, I think about the days I didn’t go to the gym either! Those were not a few, I can tell you!

Doing some exercises inside can fill the gap but I haven’t incorporated a great routine into my bad weather workouts yet. Also I found out my gym needs thirty days notice for me to terminate so if you’re thinking of doing this, you might want to find out the kind of notice your gym requires. And watch for any penalties that you may get, those contract clauses can come back to bite you!

Lunch Time

As far as the eating smart and saving money advice in the article, I liked the idea of purchasing gourmet meals from the grocery store. Still, I have to admit I like going out for dinner sometimes. There are some pretty reasonable places to eat in my area so instead of going to the most expensive places I can go to one of the less expensive places.

But if food variety is the issue for you, those gourmet meals in the food store sound like a great alternative to try. I do like the portion control (and calorie control) of pre-made meals which kind of force you to stop over-consuming, just make sure you don’t buy the double packs, or extra large servings. So I’m sure I’ll be trying them at some point.

Get a Life Cycle/Bicycle?

And you’ll notice I didn’t talk about the life cycle or bicycle. I’ll be damned if I actually know what a life cycle is! I did ride a couple of ‘special’ bikes at the gym, but I couldn’t remember if that was what they were called. And for bicycling, I’ve never been good at that, … I always get a sore ‘behind’ much quicker than my patience running out. So I’m not sure I’ll be trying either of those out any time soon!

Make Sensible Decisions

Sounds obvious, but there are times where we are spending money and we may actually be impairing our health. So look at your spending, check out the AceCashExpress Blog for some helpful financial advice.

Did you like this blog review? Are you financially and physically in shape in 2012? Or have you already broken your 2012 Resolutions? Share!

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Henry David Thoreau

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Your own business.

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Hey, my first gig on FIVERR.com … never used it before!

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#1:Goals@PCB

1. Phase II-Assess content-103pgs;links/images;T2/3. (Assessment almost finished)
2. Phase III-backlinks+ezinearticles+directories.
3. Aim: 200 vpd. 1/2 way in Sept?
4. 10592pg/98 uv in Sept.

#2:TCG = 35pgs+33 vpd.

To add real content pages on the keywords that bring traffic. Esp. basic facts. Increase to about 60 pages before deciding.

#3:Goals@SST = 65pgs+45 vpd (now 10/10)

To add 30 more pages to bring content upto about 100 pages. Then let settle for a while.

Phase II: clarify and reorganise major content; work on backlinks and directories (not permanent?)

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A screenshot from Google, showing the Moon Festival Image! Nice one, Google! And Happy Moon Festival!

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Site #1: PCB

Traffic is growing now, in some ways dramatically. In crude stats terms:

Pages: we have now 101 pages of content on the site vs. about 75 pages in May. So content has accelerated. We’re now taking a break from content, but for a good reason.

Traffic is now approaching about 9~10K pageviews a month. In fairness, Analytics reports numbers much lower than this, but they also show month-on-month growth. And Analytics is quite restrictive in how it counts visitors.

Also, I added Adsense in May and that generated a minimal amount. This month looks like it means that the website paid for its hosting this month, the first to do so.

The challenge very much is to increase backlinks: through more Ezine Articles, some of which are doing well; directory submissions, I’ve already had some help; and tidying up the content/structure/images. There’s quite a lot to do even though I’m not adding any content.

My frustrations revolve around the Dreamhost Server which has been acting up all month. I’m still not sure what caused the dramatic jumps in server activity, but I’ve split up some sites, blocked a lot of Chinese spiders on several sites, and am now looking at what went wrong.

It seems that with using my server as a kind of hotimage linking for some of my other sites, and an adserver that it may be too much for the server to handle along with thousands of requests from Sogou, Baidu, etc.

Site #2: SST and Site #3: TCG

Site #2 is now back on. I’ve started adding a page a week to this site, more later on what’s going on with it. Site #3 is also up, though at the moment, I’m just lightly repurposing and redirecting content from my blogs to this site. Still, it bodes well.

Both of the other sites are showing similar levels of traffic to PCB in the early days, though I’m not sure how big any of them will be. So I’m focusing on just adding one page a week until I have a better time arrangement in the new year!

It may be that in 2011, both InvestorBlogger and Obblogatory Blogs will cease new posts, I’m undecided about this at the moment, but I’m increasingly skeptical that blogging content is hanging around longer than a few weeks.

Anyway, more soon, I hope.

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So, if you click a link or post and end up there, don’t be worried! Just finish the story and come on back! Or stay there if you wish!

It’s not well designed yet, but we’re working to bring it upto speed, and get a semi-decent site functioning for 2011.

Kenneth

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Thought you’d like to see this. We rented some deckchairs and enjoyed the sun in the later part of the afternoon! It was quite sybaritic, just sitting there in the sun, enjoying an ice cream cone with family and friends!…more.

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In short, when people know you’re travelling … it’s an open invitation to trouble while you’re away. So we are trying to exercise a little caution about this by not publicising our trip any more.

Lack of ‘freshness’ or ‘it just happened’ Twitter like updates are a small price to pay for this … but I’d rather come back to a house that’s intact to one that’s been sold on Craigslist or Robbed by those using geolocation tools on Facebook (Facebook Places!).

So there!

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I’ve just announced some new goals: "Phase II- improve content/structure and Increase links – very slow! Phase III – build out the site to [b]100 pages and 200 visitors per day[/b]! The new goals! At 65 pages, I’m 2/3rds done. +1 more + 1 rewrite."

So where are we?

Well, after finishing the initial build-out of the site, traffic blossomed to 80 visitors a day or so. But with no revenue, there is still some way to go.

On entering Phase II, I revised and revamped much of the Tier 2 content, including the most frequently visited pages to include additional elements. I’m hoping that visitors will stay a little longer, search for more articles, read related stuff, and eventually click away with my Most Wanted Response.

There are still many pages to be revised (at least 30), and occasionally I found one or two pages that doesn’t have Analytics code, meaning that I’ve not been tracking my visitors properly! There are also 3 pages that need extensive re-writing, too.

So I’m choosing my priorities: finish the rewrites – 3 to go, redesign the top pages – I think I got most of them, find more inbound/outbound links – slow!, get included in a couple of decent directories, and get the content to 80 pages. I’m finding now that some of my Tier 2 pages may need to be redone, giving me extra material that I can move to Tier 3.

Also, with the extra rewriting, I may be able to start my EzineArticle marketing campaign which would bring extra traffic, PR, and visitors. Revenue efforts have started with several programs including Adsense, CommissionJunction and PopShops. But results are very mixed. Only Adsense is generating something. Early days so I’m not worried. I will only have two ad boxes for the time being…

With no subscribers to my newsletter, I’m placing this in a Phase III goal. Phase III isn’t clearly thoughout yet. But it could be a couple of months before I get there.

I also have a second site that is still on the drawing board. I tried to buy another site and repurpose the content as a kickstart, but the price was a little ‘expensive’ for what there was. I will just spider the site and rewrite the content myself in my own voice! So much to do. Not enough time.

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First, and foremost: think like a buyer.

If you are buying a site, what would you want to know? What would you need to know if the site you are looking at is for sale? Of course: content (what content do you have?), traffic (how much? what kind?), links (where? how many?), monetization included (if any? how much? what kind?), what else is INCLUDED in the sale. What is excluded, if anything.

Examples, make sure that the site you are selling has the rights to transfer photographs, esp. royalty free photos may not be transferable (it depends).

Also, if you are using specific accounts with the sale, such as a merchant’s account, advertising account (adwords), etc.

Second, is it a viable niche?

I do think sellers need to go a little further than just these basics, to make a successful sale you need to show that you have a viable niche. Why? Because you want to make the case that your site has a lot of interest in its niche, if you are to be able to sell the domain.

share with us, your potential buyers, exactly what value your site has to your audience, or an audience, at any rate. It’s easy for us to check out the niche values (remember your brainstormit tools, …) to determine whether a niche is winnable or not (AG day #2).

Third, answer your email/contacts.

So many threads feature the same problem: contacts that are never answered; emails that go missing. People frustrated because they want to contact you but can’t reach you.

Using email: set up a filter (in Google) to stop email going to the wrong place. Use a keyword from your original ad to help your filter work properly.

Using contact forms: check the forms database to make sure your replies are all received. I think that not all contacts made via SBI contact forms get through for whatever reason. So check your DB.

Fourth, site valuation

No, it’s not a science. Unfortunately. But nor is it a mystical art either. It may not be objectively possible to value what your site is worth. Be aware that, when you sell your site, buyers may have price points in mind, such as multiples of monthly earnings, traffic levels, amount of content, domain name valuation, etc..

You should really try to explain to your possible purchasers why you think your site is not just worth the asking price, but actually represents a good deal for them: suggestions – you could say you’ve developed a target mailing list, you’ve got a great domain name, you’ve got a unique E-Book, great list of keywords in the BrainstormIt Tool, … .whatever.
Also, there is no theoretical maximum to the price a site is worth. BUT there is an actual minimum price: the value of a site subscription * (x months)/12 where x = the number of full months to site renewal date. This minimum price is also affected by the pricing of the full subscriptions (typically $299 pa).

Don’t make your buyer work TOO hard!

Remember the harder you make your buyer work to buy the site, the less likely you will be able to sell the site because they may find it not worth it or too difficult to pursue. Worse, by the time you do get in touch with them to answer their question, they’ve already purchased another site.
Over the past few months, I’ve participated on the "Have you heard forums…" and regretted not purchasing TWO sites in particular during that time because I didn’t understand what I was looking at or was too late to see the posts… these sales can go F-A-S-T.

But more often I’ve noted sites that were being sold here that didn’t include basic information, or didn’t follow guidelines, or were blatantly copied, or were blank sites (on two occasions), or that didn’t include decent contact information, or were selling SBI accounts (and weren’t permitted to)… or didn’t answer questions quickly (or at all)…

On some occasions, I’ve tried to help by asking pertinent questions from the OP to explain what they thought they were selling, etc, this being a discussion forum and all that… Unfortunately, when I ask or point out these flaws one by one, I seem to get called out on asking them. Whatever. In at least one or two cases, where I’ve seen a wonderful site for sale, I’ve actually written to ask the person to reconsider selling what was a great money making and fulfilling site.

I hope this post helps people to sell their sites more effectively, that buyers will get better disclosure upfront, and that people won’t have to repeatedly ask for the basics.

Caveat emptor, Caveat venditor.

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The Basics

It took quite a while to digest the material from the SiteBuildIt program from the purchase date, and that’s not a surprise, really. I didn’t start building the site until I was comfortable with the initial steps of the program, and had completed my basic keyword research.

The Action Guide in SBI is crucial to the whole learning process, and you can read much of it yourself, though it may not always make much sense if you don’t have access to the tools mentioned! But it’s a thorough treatment of the basics of business building, and one that many new members skim through as they race to Chapter 6.

It’s in the first few chapters that I wrestled with the choice of my site concept:  blogging, coffee, or Taiwan. In reality, I could have chosen all three of them, and (if I have time) I may well pursue the others, the numbers all turned out to be really good.

So in the first three months, I decided that my concept had legs, and was in some demand using the numbers provided by the BrainstormIt Tool. Then I worked on the keywords choice, and came up with a basic siteplan that really helped propel me to answer the question: Can I make money with the concept?

Can I make money with the concept?

Actually, the question is really a lot different from the typical  yes or no questions you might expect. Even lower keyword demands may be profitable if you have the right skill set, and so it was actually not such an obvious to answer.

But I did identify several methods by which I might generate some revenue: Display Ads, Affiliate programs, and Display Links, of which I anticipated that I might make more money from Display Ads at first, but that Affiliate products may be better and more profitable long term.

False Starts

So I went ahead, all eager and registered my first domain; started work on the Look & Feel of the site, and wrote my first articles. Unfortunately, I discovered that I had registered a name with hyphens that had an active unhyphenated variant on the same subject.

It took a while to come to the painful decision to start over, but I’m 100% glad that I did. I did lose a little traffic, and some money but I felt that removing the sword of Damocles was the responsible thing to do.

In January, I refounded the site, diverted all traffic from the original domain, and redid the entire site. It also coincided with some technical problems at SBI that needed fixing, but within about four days, I redid the entire site, and it started building from there. I only had about 25 pages at that point, most of which was policies and boring stuff, totally not related to the subject I chose.

Where now?

It takes a while to build content that is worth reading, but the biggest and most important tactic is finding the keywords for articles that you need to write. You need to find keywords that have sufficient demand and limited supply for you to have any chance at having realistic traffic levels.

I actually spent quite a while trawling sites with traffic issues, and was confident enough with my choices to realize that it was perhaps the MOST important choice you could make.

Choosing a word with sufficient demand and limited supply really is matching a product in demand with a market! But it’s amazing how often website owners fall down on this basic step by selecting keywords that had outsize competition, and limited traffic. In other words, the owners are going to have an invisible placement because there’s just too much choice in the market place.

Commercial Intent?

The second issue is one that I also failed to grasp properly for my first few websites: commercial intent. In other words, my good buddy Steve who’s developing his business niche very nicely now wrote:

"Commercial Intent – Are people buying in that niche (check Big G’s keyword tool to see if people are spending on Adwords). Search your keywords and read the Adwords and see how others are monetising the niche." – personal email.

But having some tools to assess commercial intent really REALLY helps a lot! I found my education sites really weren’t what people were spending money on, at least with the keywords I chose. I guess checking people’s wallets to see what they really do vs. what they say they do is paramount!

Knowing that people are looking for things to BUY really made a lot of sense, instead of chasing customers with things to sell that they didn’t particularly need, had no interest in, or didn’t trust you enough to buy through you.

10% of $1 is not much: 1% of a million is a lot!

The third issue that I’m now facing is choice of market: I opted to choose a market with a lot more demand, but in doing so, I may have chosen a much smaller pie to get a share of than I could otherwise have chosen.

However, I have resolved to build out the site as much as I can, co-opt the more lucrative keywords and try to take a chunk out of the larger market. I’m not sure that I will be successful, but I have already set myself several long term goals with the site:

I would like to get 7500~10000 page views a month at the end of phase IV. I hope that I will have about 10c per unique visitor meaning that I should earn about US$350~500 potentially. At that point, I guess I may have a site with about 200 pages or so of detailed, relevant coffee related materials.

So where are we now? I mean, NOW!

Phase I: the goal was to create 51 pages including 35 pages of content, get to about 20 uniques per day, and have a good set of keywords with potential.

In fact, I reached that goal around March 22nd, though I have yet to tidy up a few articles properly. Traffic has been building well, so far.

Phase II: this phase is just an interim phase. But I figure it’s pretty important to the site’s overall success: I want to improve the content of my existing pages ( I don’t necessarily mean rewriting the content, though it’s possible). I want to:

• Improve the meta information, esp. the choice of secondary keywords, and change the meta description to something much more engaging. I’ve already changed four pages, and partly changed a fifth.
• Improve the on-page features to create a page where readers will linger a little longer to watch a video; look at pictures; read a related article or search for an additional article to read. The pages on the top of my sidebar already meet most of those criteria.
• Build out the backlinks to the site by carefully selecting directories, websites, blogs, article directories, and other relevant locations so that I can get some decent in-pointing links. I will also expand some outpointing links to other sites, but I’m very picky about those.
• Beginning Monetization: I’ve already selected three or four candidates for monetizing the site, including Adsense,  Infolinks, and Popshops which I will experiment with. The most crucial in the short term is demonstrating that it is POSSIBLE to make money with the niche I have chosen. To that end, I’ve added Adsense to about 10 pages that are the most visited T2/T3 pages or that are linked from the sidebar.

Even in Phase II, I’ll be adding some new content occasionally but it will be some time before I complete Phase II properly … I still have over 40 pages that need revised, and I only have a little time each day to do the entire project, so it’s going to take some time!

Phase III, IV, and further…

Once in Phase III, I’ll be expanding the content to over 100 pages, and I hope to have that completed by the anniversary of the site on December 21st, 2010. I’ll also be expanding C2 options, soliciting more aggressively for submissions, and so on. I’m hoping that by that point, I’ll be earning $50.00 per month for at least the second month, but I’m not confident about monetizing the site properly yet.

Phase III is much clearer than Phase IV at the moment, so I’m going to worry about Phase IV only when I’m nearing completion of Phase III! This site on SBI is the most ambitious project I have ever undertaken, but with good competition out there, I feel I could really achieve something superb, rewarding, and remunerative in the long run.

Wish me luck.

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The owners then assume that the product is faulty, and redesign or reorganize the whole business, striving to create the final edition. Guess what? When starting out, often good enough is good enough because in managing any business/website, just making a real start is enough to start the ball rolling.

So if you are stuck in your business plans, perhaps you need to take a concrete action to building a REAL business before you spend too much time tinkering on your products or services. Once you’re up and rolling, you’ll get far more feedback and input than you’ll ever be able to manage!

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