Well, there have been hot discussions about whether by having these Plugins on your site you are actually “draining” your own site of “link juice”, because every link from commentators going out might take away a little bit of authority (link juice) from you, and therefore hurt your PageRank in Google. Nobody seems to be really sure whether these plugins do actually hurt your own site or not. That’s why so many bloggers are very hesitant about installing them. Also, there is the issue about possible spam comments – people are scared that these plugins might invite the spammers to leave tons of inappropriate comments for you to deal with.

Guess what – a couple of days ago my mind was put to rest about the whole issue. Because, to be honest, I wasn’t quite so sure myself whether these plugins were good for my blog or not. Want to know what I discovered?

For the last 6+ months my blog has been a PR2. A few days ago Google did an update of PR’s, and my site went up to a PR3! I think that speaks for itself. I have had so many comments over the last few months, and all of them are DoFollow and have links pointing back to the commentators site, and what happened? My blog went UP in PageRank!

This has proven to me that by having these plugins installed and by actively encouraging others to interact with me on my blog I have added value to it, and somebody else seems to be thinking the same . As for the spam comments – yes, I do get more than before, but I have Akismet installed and it’s been protecting me pretty well. Also, I still do approve all comments myself, so there is no problem there.

So, to me it is clear – if you give, you surely shall receive! Now I hope that this post will inspire some of you to do the same…

Every day, day after day, I sat down frustratedly and tried to write. Didn’t know where to start or what to write. Delayed and delayed the launch of my site. Constantly had the feeling I need to do this, I need to finish it, I need to write. I can tell you, it is an awful feeling, and maybe you can relate to it.

So after a couple of weeks of trying to write, I finally decided to do this step towards my “last resort” – outsourcing my content writing. See, I knew what else I wanted on my site, I had the titles for my pages, knew what kinds of ads I wanted. It was just the 300+ words per page I needed to get on paper. I had never outsourced before, so I was a bit apprehensive. But I had heard in the past about Elance and that this was probably the best place to outsource my writing, so I signed up with them and posted my first project.

Within hours I had several writers on Elance bidding on my project. Basically, you post what exactly you want done and your budget range, and the professional writers on Elance can put bids in to say “I will do it for X amount…”. All you have to do is have a look at all of them and pick the one that suits your needs best!

Have a look at their previous feedback – it should be close to or more than 95% positive. Also check out some of their customer reviews, that will tell you a lot about the work they have done previously. It is also wise to check out whether they had repeat customers in the past, and how many. Repeat customers mean that they did a good job for other people before who decided to use them again. You should also make sure that they have included one or several samples of their previous work in their proposal for you to read. This will give you a better insight into what to expect.

The whole process for me was super easy and very pleasant. Within a week I had my 12 content pages written, including meta descriptions and proper keyword density, and I am very happy with the result. And the best thing was that after having assigned the project to a professional writer I felt that a lot of my valuable time had been freed up for me to do other pressing things instead having to worry for hours over creating content. For example, I could go off without feeling guilty and start studying for my bookkeeping again!

You want to know about the pricing? I know that cost is a huge factor for many of us. I paid $83 for 12 content pages (that’s less than $7 per page) on something that would have taken me several weeks to complete, and it meant that I could concentrate my valuable time on other equally important things.  To me that is more than a fair price. I even had an offer that was lower than that, but I decided to go with the slightly higher price as I had the feeling I would get more for my money in this instant. But this is totally up to you.

I for once am super happy to finally have taken the step to outsource my writing, because I suck at it and the prospect of having to produce good quality articles always made me feel under pressure. I truly feel that I have conquered one of the last big hurdles that might have been holding me back from real success, and I am very glad I found the courage to start outsourcing! If you are struggling with it like I do, it is something I would urge you to think about…. if you can somehow afford it, it is truly worth it!

…Once I have my new website live, I will add it to “My other websites” in my sidebar to the right so you can check it out.

Let's Build!

It has gone awfully quite around here lately…. I have been busy with other things! To be more specific, I came across a couple of posts on two of my favorite blogs, PeterLee’s Work From Home Business Blog and Paul’s Money Making Schemes Blog which sort of ripped the blinds of my eyes regarding something I have pretty much known all along.  And that is – building niche websites is the way to go!

See, the first big thing I learned when starting out with making money on the Internet was how to build my own first niche website. I had it up and running about half a year after I started looking into earning money from home. It’s my site about Beach Theme Home Decor. It’s pretty much a static site, I have 9 pages up (plus a site map and a resources page), and each of the pages has been optimized for one keyword phrase. I was working on this site for a couple of months, did link exchanges with other sites, and submitted it to directories using Directory Maximizer. I wrote a few Squidoo lenses on different beach themes, a few articles and submitted them to Ezine articles, and that’s about it.

As I built the site on a WordPress platform, I created “pages” instead of posts, and I have a little blog running in the background where I post whenever there is anything interesting I have to say about the beach or related themes. Which I do about once a month.

Because I did my initial keyword research right and I optimized each page separately for one keyword, this site is on page #1 or 2 of Google for a few of my keywords. About 90% of all the traffic I get is from the Search Engines. That’s pretty cool! And with this traffic my website is making me between $100 and $250/month in revenue ($100 is on really bad months – not very often). That’s when you combine Google Adsense, Amazon and ebay affiliate earnings.

So to me, this is working. And I have seen this beforehand, I just got sidetracked into trying other things, to make more money sooner. Guess what, it hasn’t happened! So when I read the posts on PeterLee’s and Paul’s blogs about building niche sites, I came back full circle and went “YES – that’s exactly what I should concentrate on!!!! Because I can SEE that it works!”.

What I find extremely attractive about building niche sites is this:

1. no need to constantly update or post new things – it’s not a blog! It’s enough to change something little once in a while, that’s it.
2. you do the work once, and then can have recurring income for years to come. True, each site might not bring in much by itself, but over time the site building process can be repeated in your own time, and that means your income will slowly build up over time.
3. you don’t have to build monster sites, or maintain a newsletter or email list – you just have your site up and let it do the work.

See, I hate to have to constantly think about “What am I going to write next” – it stresses me out (I hope you will appreciate my honesty here). I do not like writing. It might sound ok once it’s on paper, but it sure as hell costs me a lot of thoughts, time and sweat to get it on paper. It takes me a LOOOOOOOG time, and that’s something I really don’t have enough of. Same with list building. Fair enough, I believe that all the big gurus are making their big bucks by building huge lists and by marketing to them via email. That’s great. Just – I can’t (don’t want to) do it. It’s even more stress for me – something else to think about and write!!!!

So I have decided to get back to what I can do and like doing, and that’s building niche websites, one at a time, and get them up and running properly, and start making some more money! And I am going to use niches with REAL things to buy, just like my beach decor site.

So here is how I have equipped myself now and what I have done so far to get the job done as professionally as possible, with the least amount of time:

1. 

   Micro Nice Finder

   I got myself MicroNicheFinder, a great keyword research tool. It has been recommended via several sources, and I actually had it sitting on my computer for about a year, unused (!), but I have decided to put it to good use now. Micro Niche Finder really takes a lot of time out of keyword research and comes with some great features. It will also tell you whether you should go for a keyword phrase or whether it will be fruitless and you might be wasting your precious time because of the competition! That’s extremely valuable.

2. I got myself XSitePro 2. This is a fantastic web design software even somebody like me can use to create great looking professional websites in a very short time (I always take a bit longer, but that’s because I am stuck with the content, not the design ) Sure, you could do the same with a WordPress blog – like I have done before-, but I want to do this on a professional level now, and XSitePro 2 still gives you more options than a WordPress blog.  I have also read several times that Google really likes sites that have been created by the software, which is always a plus!
3. I have registered a new domain name (I’m not telling!) and have started building my next site. At the moment I am stuck at – writing content (who’d have guessed ) ! BTW, if you want to register a new domain, check out these Domain Coupon Codes – I registered my new domain for 2 years which would have cost me $21 but with the domain coupon codes it only cost me $14, and I think that’s cool!

So, this is what I am up to right now, and why it has been a bit quiet around here. As I mentioned before, some of my favorite fellow successful bloggers have started doing the same, and they know what they are doing. And I have seen the success you can have with niche sites first hand (mind you, mine is a very little fish!), so for me that’s the way to go from now on.

You should think about it – seriously. It works. Might not be bringing in millions for a while, but you can build yourself a nice and steady income in a fair amount of time.

I wonder why? Building email lists and marketing to the subscribers is one of the most effective ways of earning money online (the money is in the list, remember!), and nobody wants some free info on it? How strange!

(Here I have to throw in that you might think – well, Petra has never talked about list building on her blog, what would she know??? – Well, whilst I am right now only at the very beginning of  my list building efforts after joining Alex Jeffrey’s Coaching, there is one message out there in the IM world that rings loud and clear, and you will be hearing it over and over again, and that is to build a list because the money is in the list. And those people are right. Whilst you can make a decent amount from other affiliate marketing, if you have a closer look you will see that literally all of the really successful Internet Marketers owe their success to having huge email lists which they market to.)

Alex Jeffreys, one of these aforementioned “List Building Gurus”, is giving away some really great information in his report “Listbuilding with Alex”, how come nobody seems interested? Now I can only think of a few things:

1. Either that nearly everybody who visits my blog has got a copy of the book already
2. People who visit my blog are Listbuilding experts themselves (….? Yeah right!)
3. You are all scared to leave your email address for fear to get swamped with emails after.

Well, let me assure you on No.3 that I haven’t even got any follow up emails set up yet, as – if I am completely honest – this is one of my personal “FEAR FACTORS” in listbuilding that seems to hold me back from progressing in this field – I am scared of having to send out emails to my list on an ongoing basis. Don’t worry, I will tackle it in my own time (like everything else), but for the time being you could just grab the book without being hassled by me for a while!!!

So I would really be interested to hear from you why you don’t seem to think it worth getting a free ebook from a great Internet Marketer. Seriously,  please leave me a comment below as to why you don’t go for free information when you can get it. Might it be that you are sick of the OTO’s (One Time Offers) that appear so often after you sign up for the free stuff? That you don’t trust yourself not to spend money on it? Or is it something else?

Let me know! I am looking forward to this!

(And, by the way, if you think you might like the book about building lists, just go and grab it now! )

HubSpot’s Website Grader is

“… a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective.”

You can simply enter your websites address and your email address, and the Website Grader will generate a detailed report on the effectiveness of your website’s SEO. The report is clearly structured and you can see straight away where you might be able to improve your site’s ranking, and how. HubSpot’s website grader looks for example at On-page SEO, off-page SEO, your blog in the Blogosphere, in the Social MediaSphere, etc. I found it really enlightening to have a read through the results, and I can start to work on my blog’s shortcomings now!

Here you can read the summary the website grader came up with for petra-weiss.com (I am actually very happy with that result – even though I don’t really know how I got there! )

“…… A website grade of 95.5/100 for www.petra-weiss.com means that of the hundreds of thousands of websites that have previously been evaluated, our algorithm has calculated that this site scores higher than 95.5% of them in terms of its marketing effectiveness. The algorithm uses a proprietary blend of over 50 different variables, including search engine data, website structure, approximate traffic, site performance, and others.

The website www.petra-weiss.com ranks 70,984 of the 1,589,001 websites that have been ranked so far….”

So I suggest you head on over there sooner rather than later and get your site ranked… – it will probably surprise you what you have been missing out on regarding optimizing your site!

Seeing that it can be of tremendous value for us bloggers and website owners,  Hubspot’s Website Grader is definitely worth to join the ranks of best free website tools!

The Naked Truth

This is a post that has been a long time coming. I think. I just didn’t know that it had to come out already!

I am having a hard time finding good and valuable information which I want to share here with you, information which hasn’t already been said on countless other blogs of  much more advanced Internet Marketers than me. Internet Marketers that are having success online. That can write and captivate their audience. Simply people that are much more believable than “old me”.

See, I started looking into “making money online” in September 2007 – just about 2 years ago. At that time I had literally no idea what I was doing and had no computer-/website-/blog-technical knowledge whatsoever. Hell, I had never even heard about the term “Affiliate Marketing” or “Blog”. I had to learn everything from scratch. I fell for literally countless scams, make money online, survey and data entry schemes and overpriced “learn how to make money online” programs.

I learned, had set-backs, paid more money, and spent hours, days, months trying to work out how to earn some cash on the Net because everywhere I was told it was so EASY! The breakthrough always was around the corner.I neglected our home business (ice cream franchise), my children, my friends. I neglected my health and sanity because I stayed up every night till 12 or 1am, absorbing the masses of information thrown at me and trying to make sense of it.

I didn’t give up. I was (still am!) passionate about Internet and Affiliate marketing, and my 2 year efforts have paid off just enough to keep me going. Just…

The Naked Truth #1:

It can take a loooooooooong time before you see any (mentionable) results.

***After 2 years of spending every spare minute online to make some money I am earning between $100 and $250 a month from my online “ventures”. Whooopedoo!

There are many different ideas out there on how you can make money online. One thing I have come to believe (and what the “good guru’s” will let you know, too) is that if you want to be successful online, you need to have a website or blog. I mean, you are on the Web, how do you think you are going to make money if not from a website/blog??? Problem is, you need to find something to blog (or build a website) about that is going to make you money, and then keep researching and updating your creation and drive traffic to it to make it work.

It is also widely believed (in successful bloggers and IM’s circles) that if helps a lot if you have your own personal “Internet marketing blog” where you blog about your journey and successes to riches on the way. Kind of like I have here   It’s just, – when you start out, you don’t really know what you are doing. You can’t give great tips to anybody. You are a nobody!!! There are so many others out there with lots more experience and success, how can you compete? So go and rack your brains on what great tips you want to give everybody who happens to stop by your blog and be interested in what you have to say. Sounds harsh? Well, it’s supposed to! That’s how I feel quite often when I am supposed to update my blog here. Sure, I have learned a lot, but it doesn’t seem important enough or “new” enough (I squeal with laughter now – new??) to insult anybody with it. But giving up? NO WAY!

See, there is something you can do to make yourself heard just a little, and to add actual value to your community of readers: Don’t try to be a professional, don’t try to “teach”, but just tell it like it is from your perspective, what you have learned and how it has affected you. Be genuine and be yourself. There will be others out there who still have to get where you are now and who will value what you have to say.

The Naked Truth #2:

You will need a blog or website to make it online. You will have to keep updating it. Do the research. Learn. Write posts. Generate traffic. It’s all hard yakka. It takes a lot of time. No “easy money” here. At least not for most of us for the first few years.

***I am in a constant state of pressure as I keep thinking “what should I post about next”. Spending valuable time researching topics. Trying to create backlinks to my blogs by commenting on other blogs, being active in forums, writing articles, creating squidoo lenses…

Let’s face it, most of us start off by doing it part-time, in our spare time, at night after a full days work. We’ve got all these ideas and expectations, and then we become disappointed if any form of success takes too long. Well, here is my advice: – Suck it up, and keep going! And if you lose your drive or interest, or it becomes all too hard for you, then it might be time to say Good-Bye to the dream of making it big online. Because

The Naked Truth #3:

To be successful here you need stamina, and you need to be driven and passionate. You need to be ready to sacrifice your free time. Internet Marketing needs to become your favorite hobby.If you don’t think you can do it – don’t.

We are also tempted to try different systems, whatever we come across that sounds viable should be tested as we might be missing the program that might actually deliver us the easy online riches we desire. It’s every Affiliate and Internet Marketers biggest downfall – the variety and bombardment of opportunities and information online. We stop focusing on what we have to do and jump from this to that and back and forth, ultimately achieving nothing. So here it is, the

The Naked Truth #4:

To make it in Internet /Affiliate Marketing you need to be organized, disciplined and have a clear focus on what you need to do next, and what your steps are to achieve your goal. Nobody else will get you organized or make sure you stay on track. It’s up to you, and you alone! Remember: You are trying to be your own boss here, so you have to live up to it!

***I am far from focused, organized or disciplined, otherwise I would already be earning a lot more than a measly $100 – $250 a month, believe me! The amount I am earning is a direct result of how focused, organized and disciplined I have applied myself to my home business so far. I might spend countless hours on the computer fooling myself, but I am not being productive.

If focus and discipline are one of your downfalls, too, there is a fantastic video you should watch, created by no other than Eben Pagan. I am not telling you that it is magically going to solve your problems for you, but it will give you insights in what you can do to help you along with being more focused and productive. I think I will have to watch it a few more times! Improve your productivity dramatically

Are you turned off yet? Don’t be – what I want to do with this post is to let you know that Affiliate Marketing is no road to “easy money”. I don’t want anybody to go on and think that you can make money easily through Affiliate Marketing. So don’t quit your day job over it just yet! It takes time, it takes effort, it takes discipline and much more. Am I disillusioned? You bet! Am I ready to give up? NO WAY!!!!!

The fun only starts now….

1. Affiliate Marketing is FUN!
2. Affiliate Marketing will make you money, once everything falls into place. Just DON’T GIVE UP!
   
3. Affiliate Marketing is a journey of discovery and learning, and personal development.
4. As we learn, we will get better at it, which will lead to success!
   

I personally love Affiliate Marketing, for me it has been a roller coaster ride all the way. Up and down, and around, and the amount I have learned about Affiliate and Internet marketing, and about building websites and other technical things, is amazing. I know I am not there yet, but I can see different things working. It might take a long long time to get to where I want to be, but I will not give up and I know I will get there eventually. It is all a matter of sticking with it, and being aware what Affiliate Marketing can or can’t do, and what is involved to make it work. We shouldn’t be scared or put off or disappointed, instead we should look at what we have achieved so far, and how we can improve on it. Keep learning, keep exploring, and if something works, great, build up on it! Keep going!

Phew, I have exhausted myself writing this post! But I had to get it off my chest. Affiliate Marketing is a great way of making money online, but you need to be aware that it’s not going to be overnight. It requires a lot of hard work and dedication, and then some more. But if you stick with it, you will reap the rewards eventually. I know I will!

Off to have a coffee
now, tada!

So, I hope you are sitting down:

1. I am the artsy one in the Weiss family. One day my whole house will be covered in my own paintings! – If I ever have time to paint and draw again, that is, keeping you all entertained is taking up so much time!
2. Apparently I tend to often interrupt people when they are talking because I get so much into the conversation and want to get my word in before I forget what I wanted to say!
3. I was always really, really bad at writing essays – that’s probably why it takes me a long time to get blog posts together!
4. I am German, studied German administration and got a diploma, just to travel to Australia and end up “for good” there! The Australians don’t seem too interested in what I know about German administration…
5. I have climbed Ayers Rock in Central Australia and dived with sharks at the Great Barrier Reef (!?!? did I really do this?? How old was I??)
6. Since I had the kids (7 and 6 now) I have become the greatest CHICKEN on earth – I see danger in everything, hence me questioning No.5.
7. But I have still started to do waterskiing early this year and really enjoy it! When the season starts again soon I will have to learn how to drive the boat (shiver….) I don’t have a photo of me on skis, just of me and mini-me before her kneeboarding…
8. I absolutely love my two Jack Russells Boomer and Dash, but I am sometimes to lazy to take them for their walk (shame on me!)
9. I don’t like the telephone. Never have. It took me ages to get a mobile phone.
10. I am a “Yes”- Sayer. I can’t say no. I want to please everybody. I HATE my weak self!
11. I am obsessed about my weight. I eat too much. I love food. I LOVE FOOD. Constantly on a diet or other….
12. I am very good at making resolutions about what I am going to do; but I really SUCK at sticking with it!
13. I am extremely compassionate. Sometimes too much, because hearing about certain events can mess me up for quite a while…
14. My 2 dream holidays: Horseback riding in the Rocky Mountains, Painting course in Tuscany.
15. Swimming is one of my favorite sports. I am a water rat.
16. I’ve served ice-cream in our own store in the center of Australia for 7 years, and hated every minute of it. Loved the “all-you-can-eat-for-free” though.
17. Been together with my partner for nearly 15 years…
18. Never in my whole life has anybody asked me “will you marry me?” – …They must all have known that I would say no!!
19. I consider myself a single mum as my partner is constantly away on business.
20. I am currently doing Certificate IV in Bookkeeping – I want to be able to do someting for the unlikely case that my Internet Marketing doesn’t take off! (don’t put all your eggs in one basket, or so the saying goes?)
21. My favorite book right now is Enough: Breaking Free from the World of More fantastic read!
22. One of my favorite things to do is to go for a walk along the beach here with my kids and dogs and watch the sun set over the Indian Ocean…. (are you jealous??)
23. I love to do paperwork and office work. I know – I am a rare breed! And I have always been absolutely pedantic about being organized and neat. I should have married an accountant! – If I ever would have been asked, that is…
24. I cannot lie. I am too honest. That’s probably a good thing!
25. I am a happy person who enjoys life and I am on a quest to better myself by being more mindful, doing 10 minutes of meditation every day (so far I still suck at it, I have to learn), by giving more and being more content.
26. I am always up for a challenge (hint hint!). What I consider my biggest challenge right now is to show all my friends and family that you can actually make lots of money with Internet Marketing!!!

Here is what I have added after completing the list (I will keep adding here as I see fit, on an ongoing basis!)

• I yearn to see more of the world. I have been to lots of countries in Europe while I was still living in Germany, and have also been to Sri Lanka, Thailand and Bali, and of course now I am living in Australia, but I would love to see North and South America, and Africa! Russia, China, Japan….
• I have been snow skiing in Zermatt in Switzerland (at the Matterhorn)
• I have cycled around Bali by myself – now THAT was cool!

Puh, that’s done! I hope I haven’t scared you off now, and you will keep enjoying reading my blog! Thanks, Gene, for tagging me to take part in the challenge, as you can see I have risen to the task, now I will go off and tag my 5 people, too!!! I will be listing the other “contestants” who get the T A G from me right here as they complete their tasks. Watch this space!

Here are the Internet Marketers who were fortunate enough to get tagged by me :

1. Rob Willis – 25 things you may not know about me.
2. Vance Sova – What are Alex Jeffreys students up to?
3. Veronica Purdey – Tagged by Petra for 25 random things

I think I will have to look at all my widgets, plugins and images – might have overloaded the site whilst trying to give you the best experience when visiting my blog Apparently that can happen – too many widgets, plugins and images etc. can considerably slow down loading time of a site.  We will see!

BTW, when I noticed that my site was having problems I immediately opened a support ticket with D9 Hosting (my brilliant hosting company), and they responded literally within minutes, personally! So, thanks, Paula and Dan, for your absolutely outstanding customer service, you have no idea how much it is appreciated!

So, sorry, but here you go, my blog, better late than never! May you have many more exciting years ahead of you!

Get Website Traffic

I am writing this to “further” my previous post on how to get website traffic.

Last night, for some reason, I went down my list of bookmarks in Firefox and saw the folder “Online Classifieds”. Well, I thought, I nearly forgot about all my classifieds I have got going! I haven’t looked at them for quite a while!

I know that online classifieds are a bit of a “red rag” for many Internet Marketers as it is widely assumed that they do not work (any more) to achieve any sales/conversions when advertising  websites. Whilst that might partly be true, some of them still have some pulling power when it comes to creating traffic for your website, even to make (affiliate) sales, IF YOU DO IT RIGHT.

One of my favorite online classified sites is US Freeads. When I logged into my account I found the following statistics:

As you can see, my ads for my Beach Theme Home Decor site are definitely getting looked at! I have each ad optimized for a certain keyword, and the good thing is with each ad I can target a specific page within my website to generate traffic not only for the “home page”, but for pages within.

What I also like is that writing these ads is quite simple, all you want to do is get people to click through to your website. Have a look what I have done in some instances:

Unfortunately, the links you put in the ads are  NOT dofollow (the search engines won’t “count” those links towards your sites ranking), but either way you will be getting traffic to your site. Just make sure you do your keyword marketing research right and try to optimize your ads by putting your keyword in the title and once or twice in the body of the ad. Also, if possible, link your keyword to your site (make your keyword the anchor text for a link to your site).

Now, I have got a premium account with USFreeads, which means I pay an ongoing $6.99 a month, and for that my ads get automatically renewed each month. So once I place and ad, that’s it, it will run forever without me having to think about it. Set and forget! If you don’t want to spend money on this, of course you can renew your ads once a month yourself, not a problem.

Basically I just wanted to mention Online Classifieds as a way to get website traffic as well. It might not be huge, but every bit helps, and it doesn’t take long to set the ads up.

I did mention at the beginning that you can make affiliate sales with classifieds, too, and I will get into that in one of my next posts. So stay tuned!