Time Greater Than Money

TGTtv – New Thriver In Town!

2010-03-10T01:58:17Z

Just got a new toy and decided to make a video to test it out and update you on my escapades. Enjoy!

TGTtv – Making Moves Edition

2010-03-07T04:38:15Z

Things have been very hectic lately but it has all been for the better. With new clients comes me having to read adjust my posting schedule and make some upgrades to my computer. Check out this episode of TGTtv and as always comments are appreciated!

Learn to Leverage SEO and Pay Per Click

2010-03-05T00:03:12Z

I continually tell people that although you may have the best designed site in the world, if you cannot find it then it serves no purpose. So many designers build pages without taking into account SEO and I am beginning to realize this will not change for a while. Whether you are in the states looking for SEO experts or overseas trying to find search engine optimisation UK, you will be able to find experienced individuals that can increase the ROI on your site by implementing tested SEO practices.

Once you have the SEO taken care of, there are still many other ways to direct traffic to your site. Aside from social media marketing which you should already be doing, pay per click advertising is another way to generate targeted traffic to your site.

The only down side about pay per click advertising such as Google Adwords is if you are not experienced in it, you will most likely lose money first before you begin to see results. So again, if you do not have expendable cash to play with in Adwords, finding somebody who has prior knowledge and proven results would definitely be in your best interest. Trust me, you will save more money in the long run by going this route as opposed to the trial and error game within Adwords.

These are just some things to keep in mind when looking for ways to generate more traffic to your page. If you do not have the time to learn the craft, let the pro’s take the job for you. Make it their job to get the traffic to your site and your job to convert that traffic. What ways do you find work best for you to get those precious eyes to your page?

Choosing Your Focal Point For Selling Advertising

2010-03-03T20:51:31Z

Recently I have been running into some issues with selling banner advertisements on my lower traffic sites. For me text links have been much easier to sell but also do not cost as much as banners do. So what I have found that works for me to get those banners sold is this.

I mentioned before in a post here that decent traffic, page rank, and alexa rank are what you need to sell links/banners. Well on one of my sites, I have decent Alexa and page rankings but with it being such a small niche community traffic was steady but low. Low on the scale of 150-200 UV/day. So instead of focusing on the traffic I focused on my TOS (time on site) numbers and brought that to light for my potential sponsors.

I included my traffic numbers as well but blended it in towards the top and included a large photo of my Google Analytics graph to draw there eyes to wear I wanted them to be. Below is the post that I used to advertise with:

PR 1 blog site

Alexa: 564,670

Traffic: 150+ UV/daily
The site is home to a small but constantly growing niche community. Average time on site is 2:35 while weekends show increase in time on site to roughly 4 minutes. My readers come to my site to spend time to learn and stay to do so. They spend time on my site looking around so your ads will be seen in the above the fold location.

The prices are:
$4/month ($10/3 month, $20/6 month, $40/year) for 125×125

$8/month ($20/3 month, $40/6 month, $80/year) for 728×90

No other ads will be rotated and ads will be above the fold. 125×125 banners will be on top of the left sidebar and leaderboard will be directly above the content box.
PM for the URL. Thanks and I look forward to hearing from you!

Time On Site Snapshot Below:

So what I want to get across is you will need some traffic, but if you have other areas that you site is great in such as time on site, geographic location of your traffic, %of new visitors, etc then you can bring the focus to them and sell those spots out.

You will have to get creative and each site will probably have different selling points. I sold one 125×125 simply because I had US traffic specifically with the majority coming from New York and California. This particular sponsor wanted to advertise to that market and I got the sale.

Hostgator Support is the Real Deal!

2010-03-02T19:59:13Z

I apologize for the lack of updates these past few days. I am in the process of transferring the hosting accounts on my sites and have been on the phone with customer support to ensure the process goes as streamline as possible.

The process is about 90% complete; I am just having trouble with the sub-domain attached to the Stricklymvc2 account.

The site itself has been successfully transferred as well as the email accounts, yet support is having issues locating the appropriate files for the forum causing it to hold up the process. What I feared most about doing this was the downtime that it would have for each site but thankfully it was kept to a minimum (expect for the forum which is still down).

I cannot be any more please with the support Hostgator has offered in this entire process. They have been very patient and helpful with me calling them numerous times throughout the day and night. Without them, this would have never gotten done and knowing I have a team like them behind my hosting puts my mind at ease.

Bear with me by giving me a bit more time; then things will be back to normal. Once I finish getting my hosting situated on my sites I will be back at full speed.

Finally Recovered From My Weekend

2010-02-24T20:34:38Z

I mentioned in the video blog on Saturday about the weekend I had planned and boy was it one for the ages. There were so many different things that went down of note but I will only touch on a few on them to give you an idea of how it was. It started out by me picking my sands (line brothers) up from the air port and immediatly heading over to the Coors brewry to take the plant tour and get some free drinks:)

It took us about 35 minutes to get there and we skipped the entire tour to go straight to the free samples haha. They gave us three 10 oz beers of our chose which set us on the right track for the weekend. After that we came back to my house for them to drop off their luggage and get settle in. Once settle, we headed downtown to grab some food and find something to get into.

Seafood was on everybody’s mind so we picked a very nice seafood restaurant downtown and dined there for the evening. It was a rather expensive restaurant but we figured we are on vacation so price was not really an issue and we went forward on having a good time. I went ahead and ordered the grilled salmon with rice pilaf, had a glass of wine with the food, and a glass of Blandon’s whiskey after the meal. I am not normally a wine drinker but if it compliments the food them I am always game. Once the food was finished we headed to Tilted Kilt across the street for a few more drinks before heading home.

Saturday came and we were up bright and early to try and beat the traffic headed to the ski resort. Although we were up early, we still ended up being stuck in traffic and it took almost two hours to get to the resort. After we arrived it was much warmer than I anticipated and was a beautiful day for skiing. We signed up for the beginner ski lessons since it would be much cheaper this way and 2 out of the 3 people in my party had never been skiing before (myself included).

Yet after hearing that the ski lesson would be 2.5 hours my friends decided to go off on their own after the first 5 minutes of the lesson while I stayed for its entirety. I tore my ACL once already and was not trying to get injured doing something foolish. The lesson turned out to be very useful and I learned alot. I did not fall one time during the lesson and only ended up falling twice the entire day.

But one of the two times I fell, I fell HARD! The slope became VERY steep out of nowhere and I picked up a large amount of speed in a short amount of time. I soon lost control and realize that the only way to stop would be to take a dive, but at the speed I was going that was even difficult. I hit the ground, my ski’s broke off, poles flew in the opposite direction, and I slid at least 30 feet on my back down the mountain. I was so thankful that I was still alive after that and went back to an easier trail lol.

After fending off the blizzard that blew in as we were leaving we headed back home to rest up for the game on Sunday. We took the train there to avoid paying to park and got to the game right in time for tipoff. Although we had very good seats that were 6 rows from the floor, we only sat in them about 30% of the time. The majority of the time we were either at the bar or out talking to women. Oddly enough, my friend Keith found somebody from Purdue at the game that he had class with. Small world. But the games was great and I actually got a number from one of the Celtics cheerleaders haha. Great success!

All in all the weekend was great, somewhat painful but great! I included a few of the many pictures we took below.

TGTtv-Ski Vacation

2010-02-19T05:27:49Z

Today marks the first day that I tackle the sport of skiing. Because of that I had to post-date this video to give me time to hit the slopes and still have a video up for Saturday. I have a pretty full weekend planned because I have some guest coming out to visit, but I still made time to get this post up. It is not too long at all but I do talk about what is going on this weekend so check it out.

Classic DDR Session

2010-02-19T04:29:48Z

This is an oldie but a goodie! Last year two of my friends and myself took a trip to the Purdue Union to place some Dance Dance Revolution (DDR). While I was on the machine, Jeff decided to whip out his camera phone and record me playing. We did not realize till after watching it that my other friend to the liberty to dance along to himself without knowing he was being recorded. Needless to say the video from the phone made it to youtube.

Not only did it make it to youtube, but then a old neighborhood friend that went to IU found the video and created a mashup with other dancing scenes from throughout the web. The finished product can be found below and from 2:22-2:38 is yours truly then if your direct your eyes to the bottom left of me you will see my friend V expressing himself through dance as well haha. Enjoy!

20 Wordpress Sites That Use Thesis Theme

2010-02-19T04:11:26Z

Today I felt like showing you a video that showcases some beautifully designed Thesis sites. The video covers a number of sites and is put to music with eye catching effects. It goes to show that although they all use the same theme, you can get many different looks to make your site stand out from the pack. Check it out!

No Faxing Cash Advance Loans

2010-02-19T04:35:52Z

If you are running out of cash and needs to pay the bills immediately, no faxing payday loans may come in a handy for your urgent money needs.

Most lending companies in the market today are promoting this kind of loan facility in order to protect the private information coming from customers from easy access by the public. In the past, most lending companies require the submission of identification requirement thru fax which most of the time allows for private information to be learned by certain individuals who don’t need to get this information at any rate. Because of this, lending companies are omitting the process of sending information thru fax machines, enabling personal information to be kept safe from unauthorized users.

Because of the innovation posed by no faxing cash advance loans, individuals who engage in this activity are assured that their personal information will not land in the wrong hands. The confidentiality given by these transactions allows peace of mind for loan applicants and provides for handiness in loan applications. The good thing about having to eliminate the need for the fax machine in entering into these kinds of transaction is that it allows for a faster processing of payday loans to suite your urgent needs for cash.

No faxing payday loans are actually designed for the fast processing of loan approvals for cash advance loans. Because of this, loan applications for payday loans will never be the same again in the sense that the processing of these loans can be instant. Because the fax machine no longer becomes necessary in this kind of loan facility, loan approvals are faster and the proceeds of payday loans are immediately credited into the client’s accounts in a matter of several hours thus providing the fastest solutions for your immediate transactions be it a bill that needs to be paid at once, or an emergency that needs to be taken into consideration immediately.

The customer sensitivity offered by the no faxing payday loans is being employed by most lending companies. Most of the companies engaged in this kind of transaction promises that personal information coming from clients will be saved accurately and will never be divulged in any way. Safety measures when it comes to information storage are also being employed by these companies for the protection of client’s personal information.

For most individuals, this feature of no fax cash advance loans makes the big difference. It is a big advantage because it not only allows for fast processing of loans, it also allow secrecy on the client’s side in that they no longer have to worry about personal information passing from one side to the other. No faxing payday loans not only allow individuals the secrecy of their personal information, it also provides for the timely processing of loan applications to suite the untimely needs of individuals under extreme pressure from unexpected payments. Not only does it allow a dose of sensitivity to client’s needs, it allows greater satisfaction to client’s especially for those who want to keep their private informations private.