Much of the idiocy is played out in the newspapers (esp. the English press) which are lackeys for whichever political party they support. China Post is largely blue/KMT party; while Taipei Times is green/DPP focused.

So if you are interested in getting news from many sources, check out the link or click on the image to read the latest news. It’s a good read, and you should find the variety of resources interesting and stimulating!

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If you are interested in the property market, you will find that the prices in Taiwan are relatively cheaper than almost any other developed area in this part of the Far East. It’s astonishing. It’s also astonishing that apartment quality is even now still lacking by comparison with counterparts in HongKong and Singapore.

Oh, and by the way, it’s totally 100% legal for foreigners to purchase land in Taiwan, esp. for business or residences. There are land restrictions on other types of land, though. So don’t let any ill-informed person (aka Taiwan Realtors) tell you otherwise.

I’d suggest that you wager with them: offer to get a legal opinion written in Chinese by a local lawyer stating the situation. The loser pays for the legal cost of getting the letter. See if they bite.

Do pay attention to the facts and figures on the left and right of the main page. It’s easy to overlook, but you would regret that. There’s tons of great numbers in there. Of course, any number quoted here or anywhere is only a guideline. Only familiarity with the local (and I mean superlocal) market will enable you to figure out where the values lie.

If you have any serious doubts about your first domain name choice, you should DEFINITELY move earlier. I’m moving about 20 pages and it’s a real hassle. But can you imagine moving 200 pages or more?

Ok here are the tips…

1. Allow plenty of time to reset the pages, since you have to do it all manually. It’s quicker than the original setup, but will still present the occasional problem.
2. Use as few blocks as possible will speed things up no end.
3. Always make sure you have backed up all your data, including a backup of your site (as last seen on the old URL), YOUR MKL, mail, etc. as the entire domain is wiped. COMPLETELY.
4. Using the backup of your first site will help you speedily recreate the entire site.
5. If you want to redirect your old domain, then you will need an extra NameParkIt purchased so that the old domain can be pointed there.
6. If you are within the first month of your original domain setup, traffic from Google will be negligible so disruption won’t really be a problem.
7. Don’t forget to tell Google Via Webmasters Tools that your domain is now changed.
8. Don’t forget to check the links when you’re done. Sometimes links may still be pointing to the old domain.
9. If possible, do page 301 redirects (I may explore that option).

Overall, the nameparkit ($10) and domain change cost ($50) are pretty reasonable considering what needs to be done. And you get a new domain for the primary ($10 saved) and 25 new keyword searches.

Of course, if you lost any unused keyword searches, that’s pretty sad.

In the end, I figured it was all worth it as I’ll be able to snag a hyphenated and unhyphenated domain and point them to my site.

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Today’s post looks at whether your site is mobile ready, and how to do it. The mobile web is beginning the growth phase and could be even bigger a phenomenon than the current web, as the number of mobile units out in the market, many of which are mobile internet ready, is huge!

The results are pretty good, too, if you take a look.

Of course, this is fortuitous because it means I can figure out if people are actually seeing the sign in our target area and visiting our site from the URL or not. But the risk is if you are on the street, and you want to check the details before you call, and your site isn’t mobile you’ll likely discourage the visitors because of what they might see.

What do they see when they get there? Well, before they would have seen a busy site in mini-view with lots of places to click, and not suited to the mobile experience at all. But I installed one plugin called Wordpress Mobile which …

WordPress Mobile Edition

A mobile/phone/PDA friendly interface for your blog with progressive enhancement for advanced mobile browsers.

This is a combination theme and browser checker that delivers a mobile view if one of the user agents matches the list of mobile browsers. With so many mobiles out there, the list of browsers is quite diverse, but the user experience is great.

Once you install the Wordpress Mobile Edition, and activate it, it’s pretty smooth. You can test your site at Ready.Mobi to see if it is compatible.

The stats are meaningless without taking a screenshot of the site in mobile view, but that’s a little tricky! Any suggestions how to get a pc to view a mobi.site? Are you a mobi developer? Do you have a mobile site? Do you have a regular site and are you getting it ready for the mobile world?

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Would you like to own this ‘thing of beauty’? Isn’t it amazing? Wonder what the gasoline bill is?

After all, how you get about town is as important as getting about town! Right?

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For many companies and individuals worldwide, 2009 was a difficult year. I am surprised that even now my online income has only decreased a little in 2009 vs. 2008. Most of the income came as the result of advertising to my small network of blogs, some from my broker, a little from personal interest.

The grand total for adding up my extra income (not salary) was in fact, $5,386.51. Like always, this is the gross figure, not including expenses, and taxes. My only disappointment is that at this time, I am just not in a position to earn enough on a monthly basis to justify setting up a company or paying myself a decent salary.

I’m slowly getting to my target of $1500 per month, but without additional income streams, it’s difficult to get the most out of my existing streams.

Plans for 2010.

So, in 2010, I’m building a couple of new sites with SBI, to enhance my income stream. It’s my first real experiment with affiliate marketing despite dipping my toes twice this year already with EeeBlogger and TESOLTeachers, neither of which did much business other than pay for their own domains.

I’ve done some rough figures and for my first SBI site, I think it should be able to pay for itself in about 12-18 months because I’m going into a more saturated market, even though my keywords have less competition. One of the reasons, I suspect, is that the payouts are a little less, so profits are likely to be less.

However, if I can even reach levels seen on this site or my other main site, that’d be a blessing! Why? I love creating content, but creating static quality content is a whole new field for me. I think, for the time being, I will ease up on the regular blogging to concentrate on creating real niche sites. 2010 should be really interesting!

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Nowadays, I use…

Google Docs – for straightforward document creation and sharing. I especially like the spreadsheets options, and the fact I can share stuff easily. I use the standard version AND the hosted version with a domain or two of mine.

USB Key or Flash Drives – I use a lot of apps for the USB key, courtesy of PortableApps. There is stuff for most needs there, including Productivity, Internet, Media, and more. Most of the stuff is open source, and even after so many years, there is no sign that Microsoft has created any portable applications at all. Why would they?

EverNote – I’ve experimented a great deal with EverNote, and I really like the features for note creation, and sharing. I also managed to install the software (from inside the main App) on a keyring and use it without any problems. I think the transfer portions even for the paid version are awfully scrooge like, esp. in these days of 10mb of images (and that’s small).

WordPress – I created a couple of private blogs to host the development of my new sites (the Coffee One and another one to come soon). I find it combined with LiveWriter a great way to write notes, posts, stubs, notes, store research, upload photos I want to use, etc.. If anything, I am finding it much more useful overall than EverNote as it makes everything easily accessible.

To create a private blog, simply install one of the Member plugins that restricts access, turn off the publicity, close the registrations, and voila! One secure, private area.

Flickr – Although I don’t post ALL my photos on Flickr, I find it really easy to share the stuff I want, and to post it to my blog or wherever. It’s not free for unlimited usage. But at $24.95pa, it’s a real steal.

Skydrive – I have 25GB of space from MS courtesy of the LiveSpaces Program. I’ve tried to use it but I find the whole idea of uploading a bunch of stuff from a browser pretty clunky, esp. since I’d like to use it for serious cloud storage (not backup!). But the system isn’t fully mature as copying and pasting files or folders doesn’t really work.

So, I am now using DropBox to help with this. It pretty much works as SkyDrive should. The free space is smaller, but you can upgrade to 100GB of space.

Having your own hosting is also part and parcel of this Cloud computing era, and I run a number of sites that reflect my differing interests. No need to brag here about them all, but it definitely helps with the FTP applications, hosting on your personal domains, and much more.;

Lastly, I spend a lot of time listening to Internet Radio in different formats, esp. I like the Radio?Sure software and XMplayer, both of which work as USB apps or can be installed regularly! (In fact, if you use these a lot, simply copy them to your desktop, run them – all faves saved – and delete them when done.

And, I’ll let you into a secret: I’m beginning to like NOT having to install apps and reboot XP (yes, it still happens) each time I want to use them. I can just copy the folder, and it works! It’s a little slower than running an installed app, but it’s a huge timesaver if you’re testing software.

Now, if I could only figure out how to make money in the cloud… then I could travel the world! Anyone?

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Frederick the Great (1712-1786).

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Why is it different? Well, it’s different because it’s my first site to focus on the SBI site building ideas, so it’s going to be a fully featured site with approx. 100 pages about Coffee Beans and making Great Coffee.

I haven’t set traffic or financial targets because it’s too early to really see what will happen.

The whole SBI process has been quite an opener in terms of the required keyword research and detailed article writing. I’ve also taken the unusual step of buying a lot of photographs and touching them up for the site. I’m hoping to mix my own photos in with the commercial ones.

There’s really not much else to say about the site, but I am working hard on refining the Look and feel of the site by adding lots more images to the site. I’ve still to revise two more articles, then I’ll be adding upto 35 more articles over the coming weeks to finalize stage one.

Traffic levels are still low, as I redesign and rewrite the site… but I’m hoping that traffic reaches 300 unique visitors within about three months. Do check it out and let me know what you think of the site!

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This is our new banner which we have hung up on the local wall near our school to attract attention. It’s quite colorful. I wish I could say that I designed it all, but I nearly did. With a little help from Microsoft, Istockphotos, and myself, we managed to come up with a design that was fairly attractive.

Of course, I hadn’t realized that Publisher wouldn’t create larger publications, so we had to go the vector graphics route to get the scale! But it turned out quite nicely. The most expensive part of the whole process turned out to be hiring the truck to help put it up as you’ll see in the next photo.

Don’t underestimate the benefits of offline advertising. While we spend similar amounts of money doing online advertising, we find that even where we are in one of the more wired countries on earth, traditional advertising methods do seem to get you noticed faster.

Kenneth

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Could this be the one I buy?

I’ve rated the means in two ways.

By Income over the year

• <$ = less than ten dollars
• $ = ten to fifty dollars
• $$ = fifty to two hundred dollars
• $$$ = two hundred ~ five hundred dollars
• $$$$ = five hundred dollars ~ one thousand.
• >$$$$ = more than a thousand dollars in 2009

and also by effectiveness. In other words,

1. was I paid promptly (one star);
2. is it regular income (one star);
3. easy to implement/maintain (one star);
4. prospects for future income (one star);
5. and no hassle factor (one star).

These are aggregate numbers and I make no apologies if I get them wrong! But I’ve done quite well in the past six months and in the first six months. I will likely post an income report for the 2H in a few weeks once the final figures are in.

There is no particular order to these sources of income, rather I posted them as I thought of them. It’s worth noting that things vary:

1. Izea and Payperpost Properties

Payperpost was initially a very good way to earn money online but in the past year just became a waste of space. Socialspark never had any potential for me at all. I barely made payout, then quit because it was so hard to find opps. For me, the death knell of Izea was the increased use of regional segmentation which ruled me out, not because of my audience (largely US) but because I was based in Asia. The final convulsion was their ‘experimental’ changes at the beginning of 2009. I was very thankful though because I met some great bloggers, discovered some good opportunities and learned how to blog. For that, plus earning nearly $2000 with PPP, I will always be thankful.

2. Entrecard, Adsense,

Entrecard, both as a means to attract traffic and earn money, wobbled seriously several times in 2009, such that many bloggers left the system, and removed the widget. I was sorry because it did bring me some good traffic, but it just became too troublesome with the rules changing every week, as well as the feature set.

Adsense also produced relatively little, as I removed the ad boxes from almost all of my sites. I was being smart-priced by the Adsense system, which I thought was unfair. In my opinion, it’s best to cut losers early, and go with the winners, so I started using my private ad sales to generate income.

3. Amazon vs. Clickbank

Amazon worked much better than Clickbank, though commissions were quite low. I never did break into the 6% range. But I’m increasingly interested in Amazon as a possible source of income, because of its leverage and familiarity to users. On the other hand, the niches I picked for Clickbank just did not work. I ended up being my only purchaser! Even Amazon did better than CB on the niche site I started.

4. The Big Winners

The big winners for me in 2009 have been Text-Link-Ads on several sites in my network, Intellilinks on several sites, PayU2blog on one site, and my own private ad sales on several sites. Each of these has chalked up quite a bit of cash, even though IntelliLinks came on the scene quite late.

And 2010, well, who knows? Literally, I expect the big winners will start off 2010 strongly, but I’m already planning for the next phase as I move away from blogging to running standalone sites. I’m using SBI (as some of you may already know), because of its keyword research tools.

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In Consumerism Commentary for December 24, 2009.

How will a pulp result?

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What’s the risk?

But interest rates are now beginning to creep up slowly in various parts of the world. Central banks are fighting a very difficult balancing act right now: between deflationary recession and inflationary demand, because the usual tools to fight inflation have been relaxed so much. The risk is: if the double-dip is avoided, that rates will rise dramatically from current levels back to historical averages at least to stem the inflationary commodity price spikes.

Get Ready for Higher Rates

For first time buyers, this will mean: increased payments in their mortgage payments. I am enjoying the benefits of the extra 10-20% reduction in my own payments, but am quite sanguine that early next year we’ll see some upward increments in the rates. First time buyers will need to prepare themselves for the return to higher mortgage rates at some point in the next 12 months. What can a first time buyer do?

Fixed Rate Mortgage

Consider locking in rates with a fixed-rate mortgage loan. Why? Simply because the fixed rate mortage will keep payments at the same level for the life of the mortgage. With both mortgage rates and inflation likely to rise in the longer term, the payments will become relatively cheaper over time.

The additional benefit is that, if you know you are going to live in the same house for a long time, you will probably see a rise in nominal house value and cheaper relative mortage payments (because inflation will mean higher pay rises and costs).

And rates right now, albeit higher than Adjustable Rate Mortgages, are quite attractive. One site is featuring rates from 4.75% for 30 years and 4.25% for 15 year fixed rate mortgages (of course, a number of assumptions are made including your credit scores, profession, locality, etc.) so you may find rates more expensive than these numbers.

Increase Your Down Payment

First, figure out how much of the downpayment they can afford to make for their house purchase. The more the better your initial rate will be, and the less you will have to pay in additional rates when rises do come. I wouldn’t recommend any 100% mortages EVER, because of the increased risk that you might face. Try to pay out an initial 10% or even 20% of your house price on purchase, and don’t be tempted to fold additional niceties into the loan amount.

If you have been saving for a few years during the heat of the boom years, you will by now have saved a reasonably large amount. If you haven’t, don’t worry. There is still plenty of time to save money as these lowered prices are going to be with us for some time, at least until the recovery is well underway (in 2011?). So get started saving.

Make Regular Additional Payments

Making regular additional payments against your principal will, depending on your type of agreement and the TOS, mean that your interest payments will go down longer term. It also means that the term to repayment will shorten, and should help save a bundle of cash over the longer term. It’s like being given a surprise payment as the returns on each lump sum payment are pretty attractive. And certainly much more attractive than sticking the money in the bank at 1% pa.

Buy Desirable Property

Overall, I’d be looking to be desirable property, if I were living in the US and househunting. Why? Because it’s all too easy in a down market to only look at the sticker price, but to protect your house value, you will need a keen eye to see the potential purchase in terms of its market position today, and tomorrow. So don’t go looking in the bargain basement section of the real estate market. Those items are usually priced like that FOR A REASON.

Avoid Home Equity Loans

Once you buy your property, avoid taking out additional home equity loans on the house, especially if your initial downpayment was low. It will add to your overall payments each month and rates are much higher than regular mortgages. If you must renovate some or all of your house, try to do it from sources of funds (savings) that don’t put your own equity in the house at risk.

Disclaimer: InvestorBlogger is a homeowner, but doesn’t claim any professional knowledge as such of property markets or lending. Do your own research before you make any decisions.This post is sponsored.

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Consumers Bite Back

So what do borrowers do facing such uncertainty? They rein in spending, cut expenses and start saving like mad. And we can all clearly see the effects of this, as retail expenditure falls off a cliff, bank balances rise and expensive services get cut, like premium services on cable, mobile phone, etc..

Unemployment in the US is hovering around 10% so job security is a primary concern for many working people. Those with jobs would rather save more money now than spend, spend, borrow and spend, so the employed are increasingly boosting their savings rate to multi-year highs. With unemployment likely to remain high for the foreseeable future, this bodes well for savings rates and workers’ bank accounts and it coincides with a period of lower interest rates.

Banks: Protecting their interests

The banks have acted in their own best guardians in many situations by raising rates on unsecured loan items such as credit cards, personal loans, etc. as they are facing an onslaught of credit defaults and increasingly interventionist laws from governments worldwide that seek to curtail their excessive profiteering. However, many consumers are experiencing surging credit card rates to as high as 30% pa for their debts, increased levels of minimum payments, and restricted credit lines, or even credit card terminations.

The consequence of this for the economy in the short term is only bad: higher default rates on loans, less leveraged spending on consumer items, less reinvestment by companies, and tightened budgets in both governments and corporations. And banks on the one hand are stashing the extra cash to bolster their banking reserves rather than lend, and on the other cite reduced demand for loan products and services. But governments keep calling for more lending, yet banks only lend to those who don’t need it. Ironic, but true. After all…

It’s The Economics That Matter

Why? The inflationary subsidies, tax breaks and bailouts have all served to add stimulus to the economy, preventing the situation getting far worse. Recently, for example, in Taiwan, the economic indicators started flashing green again, after extensive periods of both overheating (until 2007) and recession (2007-2009). So in many markets, there are initial signs of recovery as some exporting economies move out of recession and bond rates are indicating upward pressure, too. But…

Where now, consumers?

Many economists are predicting a double-dip recession in 2010. This may happen, and things may worsen again in the short term as the stimulus measures are withdrawn, run out of funds (new car credits) or expire their terms. Even if that doesn’t happen, I don’t think consumers are going to start spending any time soon. They are scared of the future, and the prospect of a double-dip may only force consumers to redouble their efforts at controlling their spending.

In short, going into 2010, there is still a lack of confidence in the recovery; and recent upturns in the stock market are likely to be short-lived. I do not think we will retest bargain basement pricing as in early 2009, but for those with patience, guts, and cash, there will be good opportunities to purchase both stocks and real estate in the coming 12 months.

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I logged into one of my blogs today to see that Wordpress 2.9 is already out! I’ve updated a couple of my sites already, and I’m noticing several improvements, including a slightly snappier speed on some actions.

But the biggest news is the addition of a trash bin so when you go to delete your posts, they’re archived in the trash should you wish to recover them at some point. This is a very handy feature as I’m sure most bloggers recall having to scour feeds, Google and a bunch of other places looking for posts that were accidentally deleted. (see image for details under Trash).

There are a number of other usability improvements, too. So check in your blog to get the new release. of course, it will break some things, so you may want to hold off updating until 2.9.1. I jumped in early with some of my blogs, and will phase it in across my network of blogs as this month progresses!

Brief Notes: On December 18th, 2009, WordPress Version 2.9, named for Carmen McRae, was released to the public. For more information on this enhancement and bug-fix release, read the Development Blog and see the Changelog for 2.9.

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I have worked hard and have done pretty well in my site I believe, traffic is building to around 150 visitors per day. … But I am currently deeply involved in a book writing project for (way off my wedding site subject). It will take most of my time and thoughts, and I honestly don’t have the motivation or focus for wedding writing at this point. If my site was earning me a good living, I may reconsider, though it would still need updating often.

I am not sure how far off I am from truly monetizing. Sometimes I think I need to just add a few things to potentially earn more. I’ve had some earnings with Adsense, but nothing high enough for my bank account to see. I’m not sure how much extra work is involved to truly see income come in, but right now all I’m doing is paying out — with the added time and effort of my other important project I’m doing.

Any advice out there? Any thoughts on who or how to sell my site to, if I do and how to figure in the price of it?

Thanks, D.

Ok. Now time for my reply.

Just one question: what happens when the book is done? Will you regret selling your site or not?

I took a quick look at your site (sorry no URL!), and I’m seriously impressed by the design, the organization and time you took to create the site. And with your traffic levels, it should be relatively easy to add a few products (think: Amazon, Clickbank books, Advertising links, …) to pay for your site, at least.

Since you have such traffic levels in your niche, it seems best to pause the content creation, look at increasing income (should be achievable!) and let the site run on auto-pilot for a while. I would make a lot of suggestions about creating money streams for your site:

• sell e-books (yours or others)
• sell advertising (not just Adsense – a lousy pittance, imho)
• sell affiliate products like shoes, dresses, etc. for the bride and groom… just a couple of affiliate companies will be a good place to start.

In fact, it’s perfect: it will take a couple of weeks or a month to know what sells and what doesn’t. So every month, just check the stats; tweak, add or drop the stuff you need to. And forget about it, till next month.

If after 3 months, you still haven’t sold any additional items, then reconsider (but I’m guessing you’ll find it enough to warrant simple tweaking).

It would, IMHO, be a real shame to come so far with your site, and fall at the final hurdle… just because something else comes up that needs your attention.

Many SBI-ers report the same problem: and run their site on auto-pilot for 3-6 months without any serious impact. In fact, it improved their search engine rankings just having the extra time.

So I would suggest: reconsider before someone else makes an offer, and you find yourself without all your hard work, and a few dollars in the bank only.

Kenneth

My additional thoughts: too often, we start something with a lot of gusto, but just as we are nearing the finishing line, we fall down in the middle of the track. And we get up, our pride injured and walk off the track (or are carried off to save our ego). But in building a website like this, there is no finishing line order. Picking yourself up, and completing this race will simply mean that you have achieved something considerable. So, go ahead … monetize the site. See what you can do on that front. Then let it rest.

What would you do in this situation?

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This tip is one I found out by accident myself. Try it the next time you want to book a hotel or discount holiday or similar…

This is what Wikipedia says: “Google Wave is designed as a new Internet communications platform. It is written in Java using OpenJDK and its web interface uses the Google Web Toolkit. Google Wave works like previous messaging systems such as email and Usenet, but instead of sending a message along with its entire thread of previous messages, or requiring all responses to be stored in each user’s inbox for context, message documents (referred to as waves) that contain complete threads of multimedia messages (blips) are perpetually stored on a central server. Waves are shared with collaborators who can be added to or removed from the wave at any point during a wave’s existence.” Wikipedia.

I’ve been trying it out for a couple of weeks, and and am still feeling my way around the system. However, if you are interested in trying it out, you need an invitation since the system is still in ‘private beta’.

Good news: I have about 15 to give away. All you have to do is just sign up for my feed via email. And I’ll speed the invite on its way to you.

Waving you a happy day!

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Our Carnivals in 2010 will be published whenever there are 20 submissions that have been approved.

All submissions must be in accordance with the guidelines for our policy. To submit you will need to complete the following page: All sections must be filled out properly.

 

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Over the years I’ve had my fair share of web site purchases. Some were good, and some were bad. Search any website forum or auction site and you are sure to find a handful of web sites that wet your appetite. Buying an established web site is a great way to expand your business outside of continually adding more ad campaigns, and can continue to generate revenue over a long period of time. Before you place that bid and jump into buying an established website, you should ask yourself a few questions. Just because it looks like a good deal, it might not be right for you.

While most of the rest of the discussion on the website is fairly mundane, I did think of a few comments that I would like to share with you about somethings that seem to be overlooked. So here goes:

If someone claims that "I cannot offer income statements, nor any guarantees of income", the only way that you can make sense of the value of the site is by assuming that the site makes no income, all.

Now, the siteowner may protest this, but then the siteowner would have to make clear what revenue the site actually generated, in doing so. A siteowner can’t simultaneously or reasonably claim a site has income but refuse to reveal how much. (Well, s/he can… but… it makes no difference).

The only way as a potential purchaser is to assume that, in the absence of any information to the contrary (assertions do not count), the site generates no revenue at all.

Then ask yourself: is the site actually worth the $3,900 it is being sold for.

Check the stats; check the google Index; check the traffic; check … and then assess for yourself, is the site worth what is being asked, in terms of what is being sold or included in the site.

Then ask yourself: do you have the knowledge or skill or relationships to build the site into a viable business that can generate reliable income?

Once you’ve done all that, then it’s time to set a price. Of course, … you may decide the site is only worth $390 or $39,000… but realize that what you are buying is the potential for you to build upon the current work.

BTW, don’t forget to check the site’s keywords in BrainstormIt, especially the primary ones on the main page. You’ll get a good idea about the actual viability of the niche. One thing I’ve noted in the sites on sale is that often the keyword selection is weak… so do your research! For those of you with SBI membership, you can login to the fuller discussion here.

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Taiwan’s cabbage-patch kings hold the keys to growth under the region’s tallest buildingA woman plants vegetables in a business district in Taipei, Taiwan(Maurice Tsai/Bloomberg/Getty Images)The consensus opinion holds that a plot of land measuring 50m by 25m in the heart of Taipei’s financial district will be worth about $150 million

• Taiwan’s cabbage-patch kings hold the keys to growth under the region’s tallest building – Times Online

This story is well worth reading. I know the patch of land quite well, and it’s one of several you can see dotted around the capital city. I had NO idea the land was worth this much, though. But the farmers may well understand the value, the trouble is – they love their job, it’s been part of their life for decades, so it may be hard for them to visualize another way of life, even with all the money that the land is worth. Recommend reading the story.

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I’m working on this post over the next few hours, but I’m publishing it now so you can stop in and see how the article’s going.

It’s tough: Tough Questions

For the first time since I started running my websites, I’ve actually been much more focused on finding and examining keywords with the BrainstormIt Tools that SBI provides: this helps tremendously in selecting a niche that has potential for you, eliminating some of the failures that are inherent by pursuing niches that are overly popular or seriously underperforming.

The tools also provide help with selecting ways to narrow down, and expand your niche by building out the keywords properly. So for my niche, I’ve now got a potentially good niche with several hundred related keywords.

The toughest questions were the ones that took the longest to solve, and ones which were awfully similar to those posed by a writing course I took years ago, that asked me to examine my experience, talents and interests to determine where I could start. That was the hardest part, and despite my blogging interests I decided not to follow that niche at this time due to overwhelming demand.

The BluePrint

SBI makes a huge fuss about choosing your site concept keywords and then building out what they call a blueprint, based on choosing essential keywords and using the higher demand keywords with lower existing values to drive traffic. So it took me nearly three attempts to come up with a set of blueprints that are halfway reasonable. Of course, I still wonder if I’m biting off more than I can reasonably chew.

Why do I like SBI?

1. It’s slow, it’s methodical and thorough.. There is also an overabundance of materials that make initial problems by overwhelming those who (like me) tend not to put enough time into the program. But, once you gain familiarity  with the materials, you should just follow their simple Action Guide. Take a look at how SBI recommends putting the site together. The videos are pretty good, though many references are made to tools and results only available within the program.

2. It should make the daily grind of producing content less of a drain. In fact, that’s the one reason I hate blogging because of the pressure to write SOMETHING, ANYTHING, just words. There are a lot of other issues with blogging that I hadn’t realized until I read some of Ken Evoy’s words. He actually quotes Google: "Blogs usually have high Bounce Rates no matter what since normal visitor behavior is to read the newest post and then leave."

Why do I not like SBI?

Because you can’t just start writing, it takes time to work through the program, and so quick results are almost impossible. In fact, quick results are positively discouraged in favour of the tortoise approach.

Overall, I think Steve summed it up best in saying: "So structured and methodical (looks like a lot of tough content writing – I guess you are going for a big authority site with this though)." And that’s an approach that will need me to focus much more on developing both a writing style and meaningful content … that’s going to mean ‘research’.

So, it’s a hard slog; but as a result, I’m not able to post as much on InvestorBlogger (my apologies) though I will drop back on a weekly basis to update you on my challenge, including statistics… and whatever else I have time for. So if you want to stay uptodate with posts on InvestorBlogger, the best way is to subscribe to our site however you like, and you’ll get fresh content as and when it becomes available (even by email!)

Disclaimer: I’ve been using SBI for about three months on and off, am an active affiliate for their program, and highly recommend it if you are interested in developing a self-sustainable business.

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So today I complained to Google. If I don’t see an improvement in ads, I will just simply block all Adsense Ads when I’m browsing. I’ll be using a simple blocking program to do that on Firefox called AdBlock plus. I don’t support ad blocking in general, but when I find the ads distasteful and inappropriate… Google leaves me little other choice. I did try to reset the cookie preferences but it made almost no difference. I’m still seeing the ads.

Google, isn’t it time you set an ad optout form on each ad so users can click which ads they NEVER want to see again?

Some samples:

  and

and the worst offender, in my opinion….

This really annoys me … does it bother you? As someone who is over weight, it’s not helpful to get these kind of images reminding me of the fact! Nor is it helpful to have that candybar wrapper on my desk from last night… (thanks, Rittersport!).

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