iamned.com Blog

Want to make more money online? Want to quit your 9-5 and become a full time internet entrepreneur?

Well um good luck because it’s probably not gonna happen. In fact, the odds are you will fail and waste a lot of time and money in the process.
This may come as a shock and disappointment to many people who aspire make a living online, but before you set yourself up for disappointments by living in a world or online grandeur here are some key reasons why making money online generally sucks.

1. Too much competition. Since 2004 following the dotcom shakeout the number of websites across all niches has simply EXPLODED. NO matter what niche you target there will be a lot of completion and trying to get your foot in the door will prove to be exceedingly difficult for most aspiring internet entrepreneurs.

As you can see from the graph below after a pause in 2001-03 the rate of domain registrations has surged, and shows no sign of slowing. With more websites being created it is generally more difficult to get traffic

As you can see from the graph below the total number of internet users has tapered off since 2004.

You can electroplate using the domain registration graph above that the rate of new websites being created vastly exceeds the rate of new internet users. Therefore supply is exceeding demand which makes it more difficult for your website to be seen.

2. Google aging and filtering factors. It used to be until around 2004 you could literally write a 500 world blurb of content, point a few high pagerank domains to it and have a permanent top ten ranking for most moderately competitive keywords. Yes, it was that easy to rank and get traffic. There were no sandboxes, no link age filters, no duplicate content filters, and very few penalties. You could use an automatic page generator program like Traffic Equalizer (which I still recommend) to build thousands of pages and have each of those pages rank for well for a multitude of terms with almost no work.

Nowadays it is generally much, much harder for newer sites to rank well and get traffic because google has implemented tons of filters and updates since 2004. There was a Florida update, the sandbox, Big Daddy, and many others. While this has resulted in less spam it has made it drastically more difficult for new sites to get a foothold in google.

3. Surge in online advertising costs After the dotcom rout of 2002 online advertising rates hit a nadir because so many dotcoms has gone out of business and the demand for online advertising had flatlined. But by 2003 the trend began to reverse. As you can see from the chart below the total spend in online advertising began to pick up in 2003 and has been on a tear over since.

As a reusult it is more expensive to promote your website regardless of what advertising medium you use. Adwords has become more expensive as well as banner ads and popunders. Since online advertising has become so expensive it is more difficult for online entrepreneurs to cover advertising expenses and actually make a profit. Online ad companies like Google, Yahoo, Valueclick are raking money from the surge in online advertising, but are entrepreneurs faring as well? Maybe not.

4. Copycatting It used to be that a solid, original novel idea could remain unique for many months or years allowing the creator to reap profits unabated, but that is no longer the case. With the surge in forums, social networking sites, and other mediums on online communication and networking it is nearly impossible to keep an original idea..original. Nowadays there are probably thousands of Digg and Youtube clones as budding entrepreneurs try to capitalize on the astonishing success of Digg and Youtube. As soon as a profitable niche is uncovered other people jump on the bandwagon and the niche no longer becomes as easy to monetize.

5. Centralization. There are millions of websites but only a tiny minority of those sites receive the bulk of internet traffic. The top 10,000 Alexa sites get the vast majority of traffic which makes it difficult for a new site to establish an audience or user base since the majority of internet traffic is centered around so few sites.

According to Roughtype.com “Using data from Compete, MacManus shows that the top ten sites accounted for 40% of total internet page views in November 2006, up from 31% in November 2001, a 29% increase. The greater concentration comes during a period when the number of domains on the web nearly doubled, from 2.9 million to 5.1 million.” (http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/12/sharecropping_t.php)

What this statistic shows is that website traffic has become increasingly concentrated to fewer sites in the past six years.

In conclusion where there is still a lot of money to be made online, it is much harder now than many years ago for the five factors listed above. Overall, I wouldn’t recommend trying to make money online. There are much easier and efficient ways of making money such as trading options or working a 9-5 job and getting a promotion.

This afternoon I ran into MAJOR wordpress problems. I tried to modify the template and I accidentaly screwed up the entre blog so badly I had to copy paste all my content to notepad, delete all the blog files form the server, and start over again.

First I altered the uri settings which was a huge mistake. As a result I was unable to access most of my admin panel. Second, I was unable to fix it because I couldn’t access the MYSQL database for some reason. The final blow came when I uploaded a brand new php myadmin interface over the blog, overwriting almost every original file.  It was an enormous mess.

The newer version of iamned.com is much easier on the eyes. The old template had too much white space and the large blue header was intrusive.

Next time before I modify files I’ll be much more cautious.

Although this has already been mentioned in an earlier blog post many weeks ago I will restate the objectives of Iamned.com so new readers will know to what to expect from this blog.

Iamned.com isn’t an entreprenuer blog. While I am sort of an entrepreneur, but blog doesn’t revolve around my personal life. There are no screenshorts of my desktop, pictures of my office, updates on my websites, monthly earnings reports, and other aspects of entrepreneur blogs. I may include some photographs later but at this point it isn’t a high priority.

The goal of Iamned.com is to provide (hopefully) unique insight on various aspects or internet marketing, seo, and and other aspects of the world wide web. Iamned.com will cover a wide range of stories on a micro and macro level and isn’t simply relegated by my daily affairs.
To learn more about the goals of Iamned.com and its format read my original mission statement

Recently many webmasters have reported various problems with auction ads. I have noticed that the number of reported clicks for the past few weeks has fallen from 50 clicks a day to just a few while the traffic of my site has remained the same.

Here are my stats showing that in spite the number impressions is the same the number of clicks has cratered.

08/01 34321 91 0.27% $1.13
08/02 42217 118 0.28% $0.00
08/03 35276 87 0.25% $0.25
08/04 29478 66 0.22% $15.63
08/05 30035 108 0.36% $0.38
08/06 15486 43 0.28% $14.40
08/07 0 0 0% $1.18
08/08 76754 92 0.12% $3.29
08/09 35678 15 0.04% $0.00
08/10 34190 14 0.04% $3.07
08/11 32354 14 0.04% $15.91
08/12 32803 10 0.03% $0.65
08/13 37107 9 0.02% $0.00
08/14 35650 3 0.01% $0.00
08/15 36062 12 0.03% $1.41
08/16 36676 5 0.01% $0.00
08/17 33006 9 0.03% $0.0
08/01           34321

On one day auction ads completely failed to record any stats.
Other complaints include delayed payments and lack of email support.

Here are some threads on myspacepros that exemplify this point

thread one

thread two

The major complains are ads not loading, discrepancy in reports, poor customer service, and inaccurate ad targeting.

If this continues auction ads will fail within a year. People will simply pull the ads and look elsewhere. Ever since auction ads was sold a month ago it has gone to hell and there seems to be no silver lining in any of this.

There is no excuse to monetize a national tragedy like the recent Virginia tech shooting. I have nothing against making money, but lines must be drawn. On Wickedfire SEO_Mike (Don’t be fooled. In spite of having the username SEO this guy knows little about seo) tried to promote a site (virginiatechprayers.com) and get people to digg it. Here is a link to the thread This to be a disgrace, and signifies the epitome of human greed. Although the site is now a parking page earlier it had multiple adsense ads. Instead of a parking page it should be replaced by a memorial completely devoid of any monetization. How distasteful.

Conventional business wisdom says not to put all your eggs in one basket. This phase is so commonplace is has become cliche. By diversifying, if one part of your business fails you will still be able to turn revenue from the other better functioning components. If you have multiple websites you can still derive income from the other sites if one site should falter.

But diversification isn’t always worthwhile and you are often better off putting all your eggs in one basket-provided that basket is very sturdy and you watch it closely. Having a single superior website over a group of mediocre websites will always produce better returns.

Many successful businesses derive their revenue over a single type of product. Google, for example, drives 99.9% of its revenue through selling adwords ads. By any metric that isn’t a diversified revenue stream. If people stop buying Adwords ads then google will falter, but do keep on mind that is extremely unlikely given the staggering success of the adwords problem. Google’s basket is virtually indestructible since there is no seemingly way google can fail. Google has many other revenue streams such as google earth, youtube ads, gmail ads, but these only constitute a tiny percentage of google’s total revenue.

By putting all your eggs in one basket you can devote ALL you resources to making one site extremely successful rather than diluting your resources on many sub par sites. This way you create a single, very sturdy basket.

I often visit webmaster blogs and usually the blogger will have their portfolio of websites listed on the blog. Usually only one or two of those sites are successful and bring in most of the revenue while the other sites on the network constitute a negligible about of revenue. So technically while the blogger is diversified his revenue stream isn’t. All his eggs are still in one basket. These webmasters would be better off focus their efforts solely on the most successful sites.
In conclusion, my advice is that instead of trying to launch and develop multiple websites focus on maybe one or two websites that have the greatest potential. Devote all your resources to those sites rather than dilute you time and money across multiple sites.

Is anyone besides me running into the problem of firbox tabs completely freezing? It is extremely annoying problem because you often have to close the entire browser and you lose your tabs. Sometimes the tabs freeze completely and other times they may only freeze for 2 minutes. Nevertheless, it is very irritating and a detriment to productivity.

Firefox should fix this problem or  firefox users will switch back to IE, which already offers tabbed browsing. I have also ever never run into the probl of IE tabs freezing. But for some reason firefox’s tabs freeze.

PPC (pay per click) advertising has become an incredibly popular form of online advertising in the past four years. However, there are many downsides to PPC.

The main problem with PPC is that while people may be interested in the type of product you’re offering they may not be necessarily interested in your specific offer. For example, if you want to advertise window blinds you could put up a Google adwords ad for “window blinds” “white window blinds” etc. However, the problem is when someone searches for those keywords they will probably want to comparison shop before they buy to find the best deal or the highest quality, etc.

As a result your adswords ad may get lots clicks but little or no conversions. If you’re paying $1 a click or more this can be very problematic because the costs can mount quickly. There could be a fundamental flaw in your ad copy that you’re completely oblivious to that results in not getting any conversions. Or maybe your competitors offer a better deal that you simply can’t match without sacrificing profitability.

If you’ve just launched a new business or want to promote an affiliate product what is a marketing strategy that doesn’t involve PPC? Here is a very important rule:

TO SELL SUCCESSFULLY THE CUSTOMER MUST HAVE AS FEW CHOICES A POSSIBLE
This strategy worked wonders with Pfizer in the 90’s with the launch Viagra. If someone wanted a pill to treat erectile dysfunction their only option was viagra and as a result Pfizer made billions.

The same rule applies to the success of Microsoft and Intel. If someone wants to buy a computer they only have three choices for the opperating Microsoft, Linux, and Mac OS and only two choices for the microprocessor; AMD or Intel.

Why does PPC violate this rule? Because surfers not only sees your ad but all your competitors so he will just click around. Maybe he will buy from your site, but often he won’t. He has too many choices. And unless you bid high enough your ad may not be seen at all because it will be below the fold or on page 2 or 3. Meanwhile, your spending lots of money on clicks. Why not make YOUR site the only choice?

Thats why I recommend advertising via flyers because your potential customer will only be able to see your ad. He won’t be surrounded by ads from other competing companies, as is the case with PPC. This improves the chance the prospect will call the number on your flyer of visit your website and complete the sale, which equates to a higher conversion rate and better use of ad dollars.

Overall, I’m not advocating abandoning PPC. For many businesses PPC works wonders. But if you’re running into difficulties converting PPC traffic you may want to consider the rule I outlined to optimize your ad dollars instead of wasting them on non converting clicks.

For the one or two people who read this blog sorry for the lack of updates. I’ve been very, very busy past few days and never had the time to sit down and blog something.

Without further delay I am going to blog about why bluehatseo is underwhelming, or sucks to be blunt. Bluehatseo as many people know is a popular SEO blog. It is run by a programmer extraordinaire named Eli and in the past six months its readerbase has exploded. It isn’t uncommon for one of his entires to get fifty or more comments. Yes indeed that is a lot of comments and indicates that the reader base must be staggering.

While Eli’s growing army of sycophants and disciples are blinded by the bluehat hype, I’m not. There are three three main problem with bluehatseo which I want to address. My previous attempts to criticize the blog on various forums & b logs have been censored but I figure that since is is my own blog censorship wont be as easy as just logging into an admin panel and deleting my posts.

The first problem with bluehatseo is that most of the techniques Eli writes about are difficult to code and only work in theory, not in practice. Other times they are completely wrong and demonstrate a lack of understanding about the mechanics of the major search engines such as Google. While I have nothing against originality, but the line must be drawn when his ‘ideas’ become flagrant.

Eli’s most popular post is how to make a $100 a day which got a staggering 284 replies. His method involves setting up a wallpaper site and getting a paltry 25-30 cent commission for each download through zango. 250-300 downloads a day and presto..$100 a day! Sounds pretty good huh? Um maybe not..The major problem is that there is TOO MUCH completion for wallpaper sites and the vast majority of readers lack the ability to market such a site. Angelina jolie and 50 Cent wallpapers? Wow who would have thunk that one up? You and 1000000 other people. Good luck driving thirty people to it let alone the 300 needed to make 100 a day. He recommends using some $60 promo software to help drive traffic, but if it is so effective why do think the programmer is selling it?

Another problem is the significant decline in posting, which ties into the release of his $100 SQUIRT tool. Usually Eli will blog one or twice or week, but his last entry dates back to July 31st. It has been over two weeks of inactivity, and his most recent entires have been lackluster. Any professional blogger will tell you that inactivity is a sure fire way to lose readers, which doesn’t bode well for his blog should this trend continue. Considering how many loyal readers bluehatseo has wouldn’t it be in Eli’s best interest to blog more often? But maybe Eli has already cashed out having, which leads into my third point…

About one and a half months ago Eli along with a business parter released a widget called SQUIRT. From the SQUIRT sales page here are the most important aspects:

>>you can read this whole sales page here: http://cloakingforums.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/8886009592/m/4491036323

What is SQUIRT?
SQUIRT stands for Super Quick Indexing & Ranking Tools. SQUIRT is an all in one and easy to use tool that helps your sites get indexed, deep indexed and ranking faster in the search engines.

What Does It Do?

SQUIRT utilizes over two dozen techniques to get your sites both indexed and ranking very quickly. Many of these techniques range from easy to complicated to very secretive. It is very easy to use and is 100% safe. Every site you submit gets thoroughly analyzed and custom promoted to best fit it’s promotional needs. Everything is 100% automated and all you have to do is tell the tool your URL and what keywords you want to rank for. SQUIRT does the rest.

So in nutshell, for $100 SQUIRT allows you to submit sites to improve its rankings and traffic through various automated blackhat methods.

The problem with squirt is there is no concrete evidence that SQUIRT actually works. I browse many webmaster forums and I have yet to read any testimonials praising SQUIRT. Even on bluehatseo, the blog which SQUIRT originated from, contains no positive testimonials from any of its readers. I am not too surprised by this. SQUIRT appears to be marketed to readers looking for an easy, out of the box solution to rankings and traffic as promised in the sales page, but from what I gather if falls significantly on that promise.

Think about it this way: If such a widget could to what squirt promised why would the programmer sell it? He would use it for himself to rank for competitive keywords and make lots of money.
Thats enough for now. I’ve made my point. With everyone constantly praising bluehatseo as some sort gift from god there is nothing wrong with presenting an opposing view when it is justified.

To rank well it is important to get incoming links to your website. While onsite and other factors contribute to rankings, inbound links play a major role.
There are two important variable: Quantity and Quality. You can rank will with a huge amout of low quality, low PR links or with a few high PR quality links.

The key is finding a middle ground between quality and quantity.

Frist I’ll discuss the less effective methods of getting links and end the article by discussing the more effective methods.
Waiting. Sometimes people will link to your site out of generosity without you having to pay a fee or providing a reciprocal link. These types of links are rare but tend to be of high quality. Unless you have superior content, a highly established site or are extremely persistant don’t count on people giving you very many links. It just doesn’t happen much anymore.

Social bookmarking. I know that social bookmarkeing is extremely popular but article “Why socialbookmarking is a waste of time” explains why you shound’t invest much time into social bookmarking. The main prolem is that the links often have no follow atributes or never get visited by the google bot.
Spamming blogs This method of promotion may get you good rankings provided you spam enough blogs or may get your site banned or peanalized from the search engines. In addition, you may get in legal trouble and spamming people’s blogs is a good way to soil your online repuation.

Effective methods:

Link Exchanges To find sites to exchange links with go on a webmaster forum like digitalpoint and simply request a link exchange by creating a link exchange thread. Only exchange links with sites that are relvant to yours; otherwise you may get a google penatly and your site will drop in rankings. Link exchanges are effective because not only are they free but you get traffic and rankings benefits.

Buying Links will usually improve your rankings provided you buy links that are relevant to your site. If you have a legal site don’t cut corners by buying a cheaper link to an entertainment site. Google will notice and the purchased link may be devalued thus wasting your money. Paid links can also provide a steady stream of traffic provided the link is relevant to your site. A new site that desires to quickly become an authority, high Pr site can benefit from link purchases.