In 1995, I started seeking ways to get away from corporate America and the 9-5 drill with 2-3 hour commutes. I loved my job, but I was away from home too much and working in an industry that had begun to suffer (newspapers).

Somewhere around that time, a man named Ken Evoy started dabbling in Internet marketing and sales also. Ken is actually a doctor and I don’t remember how he got into online marketing but I remember he came out of the gate about the same time I did. He did this to the benefit of thousands of people.

One of Ken’s strengths is that he can focus; one of my weaknesses is that I can’t (or don’t). Every bright pebble turns my head.

Here we are quite a few years later. My intense dabbling has resulted in Websites that keep my clients happy (because they rank high on Alexa and Google Page Rank Checker). I also have several of my own sites that do well, and some eSale successes. My largest site The Maritime Heritage Project has afforded free travel by presenting world port history seminars. I also have a great selection of BedHead Pajamas and Zobha Yoga outfits.

Earning your living from online projects

This is a superb way to live. Once you get the methods down (and the sales up), you have freedom of time and place, which has been a dream of mine for decades, in part because we love to travel so much and THAT is why I just became a travel agent again — haven’t done that work in years — and am updating my International Harbors project once again.

Ken, on the other hand, because of his focus, is now living happily ever after on Internet residuals; and I thought I read that he is living in France!

e-Sessions and e-Lessons

It seems I’ve come full circle and am back to his guides. He just eMailed a free 153-page manual clearly illustrating step-by-step methods to online shops.

Some weeks ago, I also committed quite a few thousand dollars for a slick (translate to seemingly more sophisticated) program through StoresOnline.com after spending a few days in their seminars. StoresOnline does put lots of energy and effort into their package. The methods are the same. The downside of StoresOnLine is that they continually try to upsell (and an even more downside — as of August 15, 2011, is that I learned they are under new management and, apparently, quite a few of their sales people have bailed.) Stores-on-Line’s package is presented as a “click-and-go” business. However, there are quite a few missing pieces, each of which costs quite a bit of additional money. Also their presentation packages seem to be slicker than their backend.

So, rather than spend thousands for flashy materials, if you are interested in learning about online sales, which really means you will be a shop owner — in cyberspace — check out Ken’s Site Build It! at http://first-day-of-the-rest-of-your-life.sitesell.com/TerraPublishingHouse.html

Ken is a nice family person. There is no sense of “shuck ‘n jive” with him. In all the years of reviewing his materials, I never felt conned or manipulated . . . quite the opposite of those bizarre presentations from James Denzel.

Ken’s instructions and click-and-build Websites will get you up and running for a fraction of the cost of other offerings and, basically, they are ALL the same and the steps need to be followed to lead you to success. And, again, Ken’s a nice guy; he doesn’t spend time telling you how dim-witted you are if you don’t take him up on his offers. (Yes, a few online marketing folk do — such as James mentioned above; it’s a bit silly.)

Niche Profits

“Niche” is key to making a living online. I still don’t have it down to rocket-science but I have met people making thousands of dollars a month (and a few making thousands per day!). If you would like a more sophisticated package, try Adam Short’s Niche Profit Classroom. Their presentation and offerings are exremely well done and relative low cost. Ken or the folk at Niche Profit Classroom are there to help you reach your dreams. I am positive that they can, especially if you have an affinity for the Internet . . . or even if you don’t.

I write about making money while travelling at International Harbors.com; this shot was taken in Santorini during a two-week Mediterranean Cruise. Absolutely nothing is better than freedom of time and place; perhaps these pages will give you a means to life life as you want to.

Ken Evoy’s 5 Pillar Marketing Guide is perfect for people just starting out, on a tight budget, and looking desperately to make additional money — at home in pajamas or even on cruise ships.

Whatever your dream, perhaps an online shop is for you.

Planning is a process for accomplishing purpose. The companies we have seen fail (or not increase revenue as effectively as possible) are those that do not plan . . . they just keep working away.

Project planning is your blue print for business growth and a road map of development. Such planning helps in deciding objectives both in quantitative and qualitative terms. It is setting of goals on the basis of objectives and keeping in view the resources.

With this package, you get 184 Project Management Documents in MS Word, Excel, Project, Power Point and Visio.

This software also includes a Web development project plan — we spend lots of time “repairing” Web sites that were not built correctly in the first place. A well-thought-out, well-designed Web site will last for years and grow neatly as you do.

Click for Project Management Templates!

The following was just located on a blog/forum and since it echoes what I believe, it seems you might find value in this also.

Surely you receive eMails daily proposing to dramatically increase your traffic if you use their SEO program/plans.

Are you sure the company contacting you knows what they are doing? Because the average person doesn’t know exactly what SEO means, it’s too easy to fall for a sales pitch and spend money unnecessarily. The writer of the blog states “Personally, I do not recommend using such services when you are not sure about their methodology, effectiveness and trustworthiness.”

The downsides of paying for SEO:

1. Wrong SEO methodologies could hurt your website for ever or could get you banned.
2. SEO is self doable if learned with a step by step approach
3. Most SEO companies charge very high when compared to the work done
4. SEO rankings are not often maintained, so ranks drop eventually

SEO – search engine optimization – literally just refers to the WORDS — the CONTENT — on your pages. If you have solid content that reflects your services and business, you will rank well on search engines. If you do not, you won’t. One downside of using outside services is that you will be paying them to learn your business so they can position your business; while this is how traditional marketing works, it isn’t always effective or cost-effective.

Also, every single Web site on the planet needs frequent updating to stay up on the charts — at least weekly updates for a calendar or new content will keep you ranking nicely. Without that updating, you will drop in visibility no matter what anyone tells you. This blog, for instance, has not had new information in about two weeks and it has dropped one point on Google’s prchecker. It’s ranking was 4 out of a high of 10 and it is now 3 out of 10.

It is very vital for webmasters to have basic knowledge of SEO and start taking up SEO as a daily activity in a organized and patient manner. This will help you improve and maintain your SE rankings and thereby improve the traffic from the search engines.

You can learn SEO. If you don’t want to take care of your site, at least know what you are buying should you buy SEO services.

There are many sources on the web to self learn about Search Engine Optimization, take your time and gradually learn about on-page and off-page SEO techniques and start employing them on your websites.
What if I don’t have time for SEO?

There are services that charge when you get ranking, such as RankPay; they charge you after they have worked and optimized your search engine rank page position to what they have promised. That might be worth a try!

Editor’s Note: Following is a valuable piece of information for anyone building/maintaining Websites. It was posted on WisdomToChange.com — one of my other sites — but it is so useful that I’m including it here also.

When I started most of my sites, the term “SEO” didn’t even exist. “SEO” (search engine optimization) is akin to the newspaper term “above the fold,” meaning the part of a newspaper that faces out from newspaper racks and which is designed to get your attention so that you will buy a newspaper: It’s the “headline” and it’s in large type so you can see it when you are hurrying past.

As the information “above the fold” is crucial to success in the newspaper business, it is also crucial to success on the Internet in the form of SEO and relevant content — this latter is sadly lacking on many sites as is noted on many site such as eZine.

So please take time to read the following from a reader. I learned a lot from this post and find it very valuable to my work . . . it might benefit you:

Hello Web Admin, I noticed that you do not use all three H tags in your post; also you are not using bold or italics properly in your SEO optimization.

On-Page SEO means more now than ever since the new Google update: Panda. Backlinks and simply pinging or sending out a RSS feed are no longer primary to getting Google PageRank or Alexa Rankings; you now NEED On-Page SEO.

What is good On-Page SEO?

1. Include your keyword in the title.
2. Then it must appear in the URL.
3. Optimize your keyword so that it has a nice keyword density of 3-5% in your article with relevant LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing).
4. Spread all H1, H2, H3 (headline) tags in your article.
5. Your Keyword should appear in your first paragraph and in the last sentence of the page.
6. You should have relevant usage of Bold and italics of your keyword.
7. There should be one internal link to a page on your blog and you should have one image with an alt tag that has your keyword….wait there’s even more . . .

The writer provided a simple WordPress plugin that does all the On-Page SEO automatically . . . just click the link below to learn more.

In my “defense” if one is needed, as mentioned at the top, the term “SEO” did not exist when I started building Websites somewhere around 1990. My largest site The Maritime Heritage Project is 14 years old, has thousands of pages, and will take years to update . . . if I EVER get around to it.

Product sales via eCommerce totaled $142.5 billion, representing about 8% of retail product sales in the country. The $26 billion worth of clothes sold online represented about 13% of the domestic market. With 72% of women looking online for apparel, it has become one of the most popular cross-shopping categories. Forrester Research estimates that the United States online retail industry will be worth $279 billion in 2015.

You will be able to sell the Internets’ top selling brand name products through more than 100,000 manufacturers via affiliate marketing or by contracting directly with companies. No inventory, all products are shipped directly to your customers. Last year, the National Retail Foundation (NRF) Index captured purchasing in 24 separate categories. Following is information about the best selling products on the internet according to the experts NRF/Forrester Online Retail Index, The NPD Group (formerly National Purchase Diary), The Media Metrix Online Shopping Index, CyberAtlas, Internet demographics by Nielsen Media Research, CommerceNet, and the award winning Shop.org.

eCommerce Categories

• Software and bundled downloadable software, books, music, videos and flowers was $711.3 million, or 26 percent of the $2.8 billion total.
  • Cautionary Note: Millions of dollars of items such as books are sold online, however, your percentage might be slim. Carefully evaluate plans/payouts. Amazon.com was my first affiliate program and thousands of books have sold through my Websites. However, as of July 1, 2011, Amazon turned its back on California affiliates and shut down affiliate payments without notice. The upside of this is that Amazon.com’s payouts were not good; while I appreciate any income, it wasn’t worth the effort involved. A surprise in the realm of books has been eHarlequin.com. In only a few weeks of becoming an affiliate of theirs, books are selling nicely through them.
• Airline tickets, car reservations and hotel reservations was $582.8 million, or 21 percent of the total.
• Another Cautionary Note: Because so many travel reservations are made online, I assumed affiliate links to airlines would pay well. They aren’t great. Expedia’s payouts, for example, are so low that it isn’t worth the effort to get their links and upload them unless you are converting many thousands of people each year to travel packages; even then, better travel affiliate programs exist.
• Computer hardware, consumer electronics and office supplies was $449.2 million, or 16 percent of the total; this market is beautifully serviced by companies such as Gadget Town, with electronic gadgets, Laptop Parts, Computer Components, Cell Phone Accessories!.
• Apparel, footwear, jewelry and linens/home decorations was $353 million, or 13 percent of the total.
• Health (such as the APY60 fitness program), beauty and food and beverages was $220.5, or 8 percent of the total.
• Toys, video games, such as those from the HP Download Store!, and sporting goods was $199 million, 7 percent of the total.
• Small appliances, appliances, furniture and tools and garden equipment was $95.6 million or 3 percent of the total.

The best selling products on the Internet for approximately two years have been:

BOOKS: Forecasts indicate that more than 600 million books will be sold on the Internet this year. This should not come as a grand surprise when you realize the marketing power of Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble and others who have been in the market for awhile, such as Pearson Education with its Financial Times Press and Peachpit.com, which focuses on computer-related books. A newer contender in the book world is Kobo with its free downloads for the Kobo wireless eReaders.
Amazon is currently talking about pulling out of California because of possible tax issues, so presumably companies like Kobo will be filling the gap with thousands of books, including 101 eMarketing Secrets.

The average Internet surfer is well educated, self employed or in a responsible management position, making keeping up with new information and new trends mandatory. but also of relaxing and sit-back time.

The market is well fitted with the major book sellers, however, small and aggressive entrepreneurs will always have a chance to conquer a chosen niche markets. In order for you to succeed online selling books choose a specific high demand book category and focus on this niche.

COMPUTER HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE: Literally millions of people use computers and purchase computer products daily. Aditionally, more than 1 million new internet surfers arrive at the Net each and every day looking to fulfill their computer product shopping needs, including products to repair computers which is not surprising given that the computer reseller industry is one of the most profitable businesses of all. Computer hardware and software continue to be among the most popular items purchased via the Internet, according to the latest research from NRF with double the amount spent over the Net on computer products for last year.

And here we have Buy.com again: Buy.com began by offering good deals on Computers, Accessories and Electronics in 1997 and has since expanded into many other categories. Initially Buy.com sold items below cost and intended to make up the losses “from the sale of advertising and ancillary services like warranties and equipment leases.” Buy.com sold $111 million worth of goods and services in 1998, its first full year, beating Compaq ‘s record for most first-year sales of any company; now, because Buy.com offers Free Shipping on Millions of Products, they will be knocking others out of the market. Often during online check-out, when people estimate the shipping costs of selected items, they back off completely and buy nothing so free shipping is key to your online store success.

APPAREL: Online retailers made large strides in gaining market share. Online apparel retailers marked a major milestone last year, with sales topping $1 billion for the year. According to NPD, the percentage of total apparel dollars spent on the Internet tripled between September and November, leveling off at year end, at slightly over 1 percent of the total apparel market.

Across all channels of distribution, sales of men’s apparel outpaced total market growth, for the second year in a row. Women’s apparel sales, which account for more than half of all industry sales, lagged slightly behind the market as a whole.

TOYS AND VIDEO GAMES: As expected, online toys and video game sales experience their strongest quarter during the fourth quarter of the calendar year as holiday sales increase. According to BizRate.com, 57 percent of Q4 sales will be generated during the holiday season.

BizRate also expects a 25 percent year-over-year increase in online toy sales for Q4 this year; online sales of toys are expected to generate $500 million in Q4 this year compared to $430 million last year. Again, “free shipping” attracts attention. Gadgettown.com is a gift shopper’s dream, especially if the “giftee” is a male. They offer watch cell phones, car diagnostic tools, spy cameras, Electronic Gadgets, Laptop Parts, Computer Components, Cell Phone Accessories, MP4 Players . . .

VIDEO DVD MOVIES: Home Video DVD’s Outsell Feature Films and Movies. The incredible success of DVD video has propelled home video to become America’s most popular entertainment medium, surpassing consumer spending on movie tickets, music and mass-market books.

Just announced by the DVD Entertainment Group at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, U.S. consumers spent more than twice as much buying and renting DVDs as they did going to the movies. Last year, consumers spent $20.3 billion buying and renting DVDs versus $9.3 billion moviegoers spent at the theatrical box office.

HEALTH AND BEAUTY: Consumers Showing Interest in Online Health and Beauty Sector. Online beauty product sales accounted for approximately 1 percent of the $25 billion-plus total US beauty market last year, but could gain significant market share in the near term.

While a relatively small percentage of Internet users reported previously purchasing beauty products online, nearly two-thirds of those polled said they would consider doing so in the future. Stepping up are specific health items from stores such as HeartMath’s, which offers stress relief solutions.

The following is extremely helpful if you are considering opening an online store. Of course, these rankings need numbers attached. For example, If position #18 means millions of gifts are sold or there is a special niche market that you can “take over,” it is still a viable consideration.

1. Books
2. Computer Hardware
3. Computer Software, especially from Download Stores.
4. Apparel
5. Toys/Video Games
6. Videos DVD’s
7. Health and Beauty
8. Consumer Electronics
9. Music
10. Jewelry
11. Office Supplies
12. Linens/Home Décor
13. Flowers
14. Sporting Goods
15. Footwear
16. Small Appliances
17. Tools and Garden
18. Gifts

Google employes a “User Experience Team” that creates designs that are “useful, fast, simple, engaging, innovative, universal, profitable, beautiful, trustworthy, and personable.”

The following is excerpted from Google’s Corporate Site. Google suggests that the following principles will keep your visitors happy. The following is excerpted from their site and, if you haven’t already done so, their site IS worth a visit for anyone in business; they are the world’s top search engine and they make many of the rules.

1. Simplicity is powerful. Simplicity starts with the design of a product‘s fundamental functions. Do not let anyone talk you into and bling that you don’t need and that won’t serve your visitors well.
2. Focus on people lives, work, dreams. Unless your site is being build to merely amuse you, think about your visitors and what will serve them well. Create Web sites, blogs, online stores, etc., that solve real-world problems and spark creativity.
3. Don’t waste people’s time: NOTHING is more valuable than people‘s time (except their families and friends, of course). Google pages load quickly, thanks to slim code and carefully selected image files. Place essential features and text in the easiest-to-find locations. (Check this Heat Map, which measures the path of a Web viewer’s eye if you are not sure of placement importance of text and images). Eliminate unnecessary clicks, typing, and steps. No one has time to figure out your site or your services/products.
4. Engage beginners and attract experts. The best Google designs appear quite simple on the surface but include powerful features that are easily accessible to those users who want them. The intent is to invite beginners with a great initial experience while also attracting power users whose excitement and expertise will draw others to the product.
5. Dare to innovate. Design consistency builds a trusted foundation for Google products, makes users comfortable, and speeds their work. Google encourages innovative, risk-taking designs whenever they serve the needs of users.
6. Design for the world. The World Wide Web has opened all the resources of the Internet to people everywhere. Currently, many users explore the Web from their mobile device while they are on the go. Design products that are contextually relevant and available through the medium and methods that make sense to users. Google‘s mission (and our mission) is to make the world‘s information universally accessible and provide a useful and enjoyable experience for everyone, including those with physical and cognitive limitations.
7. Plan for today‘s and tomorrow‘s business. (I spend a considerable amount of time redesigning Web sites that did not take growth into consideration. A well-designed site can last for years . . . and should . . . if growth is considered in the initial plan.)
8. Work towards a clutter-free design. If your viewer becomes confused by poor navigation or too many choices, you will probably lose them. A positive first impression makes users comfortable, assures them that the product is professional, and encourages people to make the product their own. Ensure that pages load quickly without distraction from the focus of the site. Visually appealing images, color, and fonts are balanced against the needs for speed, scannable text, and easy navigation.
9. Trust: Good design can go a long way to earn the trust of your audience. Establishing reliability starts with the basics – for example, making sure the interface is efficient and professional, actions are easily reversed, ads are clearly identified, terminology is consistent, and users are never unhappily surprised. Be transparent about how information is used and/or shared (if at all).
10. Add a human touch. Text and design elements are friendly, quirky, and smart – and not boring, close-minded, or arrogant. Google text talks directly to people and offers the same practical, informal assistance that anyone would offer to a neighbor who asked a question. No design is perfect.

Today’s seminar speaker is Simon coming from “Web Meeting Live.” He started by saying that he, like so many of us, tried everything to make money on line.

Simon stated that it took some years to find a method of producing income and he’s found it. His ClickBank snapshot ranges from $470.32 to $3,235.89 per day throughout April 2011.

What Simon doesn’t do:

• No search engine optimization
• No AdWords
• No AdSense
• Does NOT do Twitter: He does not know anyone making money on Twitter. He has one Twitter account with 20,000 follows; it has not turned into sales/money/income.
• He refers to Facebook as “rubbish.”
• What he is proposing is not based on a fad; it is based on key principles for sales.
• He is also NOT using YouTube.

He is working specifically with ClickBank, which, again I don’t entirely like ’cause most of the offerings and interfaces are staggerinly ugly.

That’s one of my Web-related hangups; I like pretty sites, but pretty sites by themselves will not sell anything. You could starve with just a pretty site.

Simon was doing what I’m doing . . . building content sites — lots of content sites. I love building sites, but they are labor intensive and they as yet have not produced dramatic income . . . a couple thousand a month, which is more than welcome, but there is so much more out there, especially for the amount of time I spend I spend in front of the computer.

This seminar is the third one I’ve listened to in the past 30 days that refers to automatic niche sites. When Simon was looking to speed up his process, he met with a programmer who said it would cost $6,000 to set up one site. He balked at the cost because at the time he wasn’t making sufficient income.

Now that it’s up an running, he says that he has his grandmother up and running with this program.

Niche Marketing

Through his software, Simon is setting up a Web site click-by-click during this seminar. He started with a project called “Piano Lessons,” to reach a niche market. If you do not have an idea of what to type in, he recommends going to Click Bank, go to the market place, and type the left banner “Promote These Products.” Under that are a list of categories, i.e. Arts & Entertainment, Betting Systems, Genealogy, Marriage, Parenting, Special Needs, etc.

For people like me this is ideal. I’m interested in too many things and have trouble focusing.

Once you find a couple of words, go to “Search Ideas,” type in the term needed, and look at the words that are in a larger fonts; that gives ideas on what terms are being searched. This video shows how to “drill down” to find a niche inside a niche until you develop a short list and their ratings on possible searches. (StoresOnLine.com out of Utah will charge you $6,000 to find out how to do this type of reverse search.)

The idea of keywords is to narrow down your market for a given Web site that sells that product. And the idea of how this now-popular niche marketing works is that it focuses on a given market, drives the traffic to your site(s).

The above chart is an indication of possibility and further indicates how much you can make on each type of earning, i.e. Google (CPC), Yahoo (CPC) or Amazon (Affiliate Marketing).

Click and Build Your Website

Through an easy interface and point-and-click, I’m watching Simon build a website through a few keystrokes and drag-and-drop. He started at 6:45 p.m.

Built into his software are links to content related to your topic. I am a coder, I can build sites. I can assure you that most of the so-called “drag-and-drop” packages and sites are NOT “drag-and-drop.” They are generally quite a mess. This is set up similar to a Word interface, so the average person should be able to do this. We’re now at 6:59 p.m., and he has text, headers, an image of a Piano. He is adding an eMail opt-in form. We’re now at 7:01 and he is embedding a video for “piano music” found on YouTube Video. (I’ve added many YouTube videos on sites and I know next-to-nothing about YouTube; it IS unbelievably easy). It is set up for easy socialization, which helps build your traffic when people forward your information to friends.

We’re now at 7:04 p.m. He is embedding “Ads by Google,” which is a per-click system of payout and which, of course, is how you make money from your site IF people click through. My issue with “Ads by Google” is that I have not found them effective, they are ugly (yes, again, I like attractive sites).

Better, is that he added a ClickBank link which comes up with a variety of items not necessarily related to the topic, but it could draw cross-markets, which could result in sales and EVERY sales draws income.

He’s dragging around text and image boxes to make the page look more attractive.

It’s 7:13 p.m. and Simon’s Web site is done. Now, it can’t happen quite that fast; one does need to have set up an account with Amazon.com, AdSense, etc. Those are very quick to do and codes are automatically generated that will go into your pages.

7:09 p.m.: He’s now at Amazon.com searching content relative to his topic. Amazon is extremely easy to use for affiliate marketing. It is where I started 6 years ago, I’ve made some thousands, and now, through presentations such as Simon’s, and viewing StoresOnLine sites such as Wheat Grass Kits (Now THAT’s a success story!) I will be building quite a few more small sites.

Simon’s presentation is now setting up a system to drive traffic to your Web site. He’s found a $24.99 “Beatles Best: Easy Piano” book. (There also a Disney collection, classical collection.) From the Beatles Best, he’s clicked the links to find reviews and THAT went to a selection of Web sites . . . in this case 96 sites . . . which can be used to siphon traffic to your site.

We are 1 hour 19 minutes into this store setup. Simon is going slower than usual because he is talking us through each step. He has just finalized the site and broadcast it to the 96 sites mentioned above, which will generate traffic and back-links.

In the past 10 minutes, he created two more pages based on his initial page.

$4,000 a day!

Simon just said that he is making well over $4,000 a day from this system. I don’t doubt him. I have one site that pulls in a few thousand a year; imagine if I use a method such as this, duplicate my more successful sites . . . This is $997 and limited availability.

Unfortunately, I signed up for a system through StoresOnLine.com that will ultimately cost $6,000; if I’m making $400/day, I won’t care. But it would have been nicer to pay $997. Also the StoresOnLine programs seems to be in some trouble, as in their sales staff are bailing, there seem to be quite a few complaints, and someone other than the initial presenters are managing the company. That does NOT bode well.

I will be looking for an affiliate program for this and will put that on this site. This is dissappointing but other plans are available; I will find them and share them with you.

In the meantime, if you haven’t looked at ClickBank, you might want to take time to do so. Most of the offerings I see include Click Bank and I’m listening to one of their newer presentations right now by Frank Lucas regarding Mobile Mass Money: Click Here! I hate these presentations. But they are effective and the products work. Some of these are how I make money. This one is on cell phones, including Watch Cell Phones at Gadget Town, which I’d never heard of — the watch cell phones; I browse GadgetTown New Arrivals Section, which is where I went to view the watch cell phones.

Cell phones are a multi-billion dollar industry and Lucas is talking about getting one percent of one percent of the cell phone market. That is a lot of money.

Content strategy is one of the hot buzzwords in the web design world today. The main force behind all the attention content strategy is getting is simply how badly it is needed—so many sites have big problems with their content. After years of focusing on design, it is finally dawning on everyone that the design exists to serve the content, and that content needs to be more than an afterthought if you’re going to build an effective site.

The explosion of interest in content strategy is also due, in no small part, to the efforts of Kristina Halvorson, whose landmark 2009 book Content Strategy for the Web is the most widely read book in the field. Her company, Brain Traffic, was one of the first to focus on content strategy work. Without meaningful content, your website isn’t worth much to your key audiences. But creating (and caring for) “meaningful” content is far more complicated than we’re often willing to acknowledge. Content Strategy for the Web explains how to create and deliver useful, usable content for your online audiences, when and where they need it most. It also shares content best practices so you can get your next Website redesign right, on time and on budget.

• See content strategy (and its business value) explained in plain language
• Find out why so many web projects implode in the content development phase … and how to avoid the associated, unnecessary costs and delays
• Learn how to audit and analyze your content
• Make smarter, achievable decisions about which content to create and how
• Find out how to maintain consistent, accurate, compelling content over time
• Get solid, practical advice on staffing for content-related roles and responsibilities

Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery
Learn to successfully manage Web content to achieve a competitive edge using content management strategy the author developed for companies such as Nortel, Motorola, Cisco, and others. Hackos walks you through the stages of effective Web content management based on type of content a user needs, the platforms to which it should be delivered, and the types of content necessary for the organization. Learn how to develop and incorporate an information model into your Web design as well as how to transform an organization”s processes to ensure dynamic content delivery. Includes tips on effective use of XML.

I can’t say I like this guy’s presentation much — or at all — but I did laugh a few times. More important, he’s right, he knows what he is doing, his methods work.

How do I know? Because I’ve been online for about 20 years, building Websites and making some money through various affiliate marketing programs, i.e. Amazon.com (which was a ground-breaker in the on-line store industry, but which had dreadful payouts). I’m doing fine. I travel a lot. However, I’m spending this year seeking streams of income that take me WAY beyond "just fine" to "just estatic, thank you."

This guy has taken this to the next steps. I prefer to build "pretty" Websites which, actually, hasn’t gotten me very far even though all of the sites I have designed and developed come up quite high in various search ranking scenarios.

What’s moving me forward is Affiliate marketing, and "James" (who is on the other end of the link below) sells a method on how to step up your game AND get a free website in the process.

You CAN make over $100 per day as an affiliate, and once you’re up and running, it is a part-time job. Dear James will show you how.

Again, I promise you, you will probably be offended, if you can get through to the end you will probably find this valuable.

It’s next to impossible to get me to buy anything to do with online marketing packages, but he got my attention, even though I don’t want to own a jet or a limo as he says he does: I just want to sit on tropical beaches or cruise to exquisite ports such as Greece (right in 2002). Because of Internet Affiliate Marketing, we made money while cruising on the Mediterranean.

So just click here or on the image below to see if this will entice you to make money while in your pajamas.

His package also includes a free Web site — you do have to pay for a site name if you don’t already have one — about $25 — and you will have to pay for hosting fees, which you would have to pay anyone. But they actually will build the site free and THAT is rare.

Feed search engines such as Google fresh fodder daily or be ignored.

It’s a Simple Concept

Google has more than 65% of the search traffic. You absolutely have to keep them happy or you will not have a presence on “their” Internet. This is most inelegantly stated by this Internet Marketer who bluntly lays it all out.

Terra Publishing and MarinEStudios built the starred sites below; these sites, developed by ONE person — me — rank alongside those built by expensive teams of designers, programmers, writers, coders, etc. Many of the large sites are paid-for positions; Terra Publishing/MarinEStudios’ sites rank high without paying one thin dime to anyone.

All of Terra Publishing’s and MarinEStudios positions are free with the Web package. Because the content is relevant to your business, the positioning is organic. Organic sites grow naturally and are most trusted than paid-for sites.

Google Analytics validates that “content is king.”

The Internet has more than 1 billion Websites, yet fewer than 20% are visible; most receive a dozen or so visitors each month.

Many of the Web sites you are up against have teams of writers, editors, photographers, artists, and programmers feeding their sites (i.e. SFGate.com owned by Hearst and fed by San Francisco Chronicle media professionals).

You CAN play with the Big Boys and keep your service/company on top of searches by adding frequent content relevant to your business. That is what feeds search engines.

Be absolutely sure your chosen Web design group has a solid track record and can give you appropriate statistics on sites under their charge.

make yourself believe you can do whatever you want!