George Files

I took a month breather from blogging, and posting articles.  A month.  I started with eBay niche sites, internet fundamentals, network structure, to social networking.  What’s next?

For the past few months, I’ve been working with several programs.  I’ve got involved with a marketing blueprint program, Ed Dale’s 30 Days Challenge, and lately, Sam Clark’s 16 Steps to Success.

I did some reflecting and figure what to do with the knowledge that I got from all of these.  Initially I was going to work with creating a review of the said programs.  However, I think it will just create confusion as each one has its own merits depending on where you are as an internet marketer. 

Initially, I was planning to write a book on helping people get started with their internet business.  I want to create something that will allow someone to get that jumpstart, create that momentum and sustain it.  Which got me thinking….

• What prevents someone to achieve success with their internet business.
• Is there something that a new person could start, using minimal investment and create a sustainable business.
• What are the necessary tools to use?
• How much time is required?  Can I do this part time?

I struggled, and I decided to create a mini series to target stay at home or work at home people, people who want to create a part time income starting their own internet business.

Since John Reese’s release of his program a month ago, there’s been a couple of other marketers that have released their own products.  Mike Filsaime, Frank Kern, Rich Schefren, and now recently The Golden Thread by Mike Cheney.

As a kickoff, and if you’re one of the people who are trying to build an online business, we need to have a deep wakeup call.  Do you really need this ebooks that this marketers are selling for your business? 

Starting tomorrow, I’ll outline the basics.  I believe a good understanding of fundamentals, a setup of good framework, and creating an action plan to create momentum, are all necessary to getting a successful online business.

I am not going to make a claim that anyone will become successful with what I have to share but with the right vision, plan, and execution, it can happen.

Let’s recap.  We have our niche on the lower level, and created a middle tier just before we get to our authority site.  We are working with Wordpress as our platform of choice to write our contents.  To monetize, we’re using eBay Partner Network to create our niche site.

Well and good.  The previous articles focused on our own network.  This time around, let’s create an activity hub.  For a start, a little bit of history.

During the early days of internet, we use single document page that are written much like a word processing document, interlink together by what is called ‘hyperlinks’.  Then came the database driven pages.  What it means is that web content that is displayed on the browsers are taken from stored data that is on the database server.

Previously, pages that are created for the web are being written by so called web designers.  The second wave of internet paved the way for users to create their own content and use readily available snippet of codes to create a more user generated content to the user delight.  And this platform is what Friendster, MySpace, etc is all about.

This 2nd generation of web is called Web 2.0.  It allows the control of creating contents to any user without having to worry about what the backend platform is all about.  All you need is to subscribe to the site, create a profile, make your page pretty, become part of the internet community, discuss anything that you can write about and network with other people in the world with the same like and dislike that you have.

Web 2.0 brought internet to the finger tips of anyone.  This fame did not come without fault.  Some unscrupulous people have use this medium to exploit the naiveness of some users, specially on MySpace.  Privacy was not a big issue then, and you could almost learn and chat with anyone on the network.

What does have to do with our network?  This activity is going to aid our sites to allow traffic from this activity hub to our niche sites, or mid-tier sites.  There is an underlying psychology in Web 2.0 and that is ‘Relationship Building’.  This is where Web 2.0 is described as a medium to establish relationship in the internet, which is know in the internet world as Social Networking.  The medium of interaction is generally known as Social Media.  Social Media sites are the web sites where you could network with one another.  Social networking is the activity that you do on these sites.

Now that we have a fundamental understanding of Web 2.0/Social Networking/Social Media, we will tackle the different Social Media (SM) types.

We’ll take a break right here.  The discussion of SM types will take a couple page by itself.  We’ll reserve it for the next post.

George Manlangit

I will continue on with the discussion on Niche Sites.  Although, we started out with our discussion on eBay niche sites, bear in mind that you don’t necessarily need to create eBay sites.  The only reason I decided to discuss or use eBay is because of its popularity.  You could use whatever content sites that you wish to use.

As we progress with our discussion on the Structure, it can be overwhelming to some new comers in the internet world.  Just digest the information that you get as much as you can and I’ll try to keep it simple.

The rationale behind creating a network site is to be able to create the maximum number of links to the major site of the network.  The end result = traffic.

Let’s say you want to create a sports network.  Judging from the outcome of the Olympics, sports is a huge market.  So therefore, creating a Major site that discusses all about sports will compete with gazillion of similar sites on the internet. 

So what do we do?  We create a site for basketball, baseball, hockey, football, soccer, etc.  The goal is to create as much content on these sites that will link up to the Major site.  As you provide content, the search bots will be crawling these niche sites leading up to your Major site.  Although you may only have a single link on the footer of these sites, it is enough to allow the search engines to create a grade on their database as your contents grow. 

Now, you could create additional tiers upward.  In the above example, you may designate summer-sports-site and winter-sports-site.  Above these sites is your Major site.  Below these sites are your niche sites.

You can cross promote or link the niche sites up to the middle sites but DO NOT let the middle site link down to the niche sites.  If you work on this structure, the end result is that your Major site would become what search engine specialists calls ‘Authority Site’. 

Authority Sites become your money sites.  If structured diligently and carefully, with the proper content, your authority site would create tremendous amount of traffic that you could use to promote other websites.  This is how the major players are using this network scheme.

As your niche sites are updated with content and as I said on my previous post, (we would be using Wordpress), the niche sites will be constantly pinging the ping servers, sitemaps generated which will in turn signal the search engines that there are new contents, and consequently traversed to your authority sites to provide more link juice.  Also, you will also have to make sure that you are also providing necessary content to your authority sites.

We have only discussed linking from within our own networks.  We have not even tackled the latest mode of interaction that is so popular nowadays - Social Media.  That’s another story.

To your success,

George Manlangit

P.S.  I know I have been late in continuing this series, but lately, I have regained back my focus and have decided to concentrate on my own networks that I am discussing.  I have some sites that I will be promoting but mainly it will be internet marketing related.  I’ll keep you posted.

We end the last post with ‘Capitalizing on eBay’.

A few disclosure for the readers. 

- This is an affiliate marketing strategy using eBay as one of your sources of online income. 
- This is not a get rich quick idea.
- It will take some work on your part
- Properly set, you’ll be able to create a virtual real estate as your portfolio

As an affiliate of eBay, you could earn commission from the sale of the items that was generated by your website leading to the items at eBay.  Why for heavens sake will someone go to your site when they could go to eBay themselves?  It will be a long answer and will make me drift from what we intend to do but suffice to say, they do. 

1) Affiliate Account on Ebay -> 2) Website promoting ebay items -> 3) Commission.

That’s as simple as it gets.  Now, #1 and #3 is the easy part.  #2 is the bulk of the project. 

‘By George, you mean I have to create a website?’

If you don’t want to, you could skip this whole post and go to another site and continue on the quest for the serial information addiction.

I am actually browsing thru the set of eBooks that I got over this years and trying to see if I could share one that teaches to set up a website.  Unfortunately, either the writer is boring or it is written by someone who does not have a clue on how to setup sites and just trying to get a quick buck.

Nowadays, it is relatively easier to set up websites.  And I would like to introduce you to something that has been what I’ve been working with for the past 3 years, WordPress.

Wordpress, is by far, the easiest way to produce content for the web.  It is so easy to setup and there are literally thousands of developers working on a lot of plugins that you could use to enhance the system.

About the only skill that you need to posess other than writing the post or pages on Wordpress is the ability to upload and download files through FTP. 

FTP is the internet protocol being used to transmit files from on source to the other, typically from your computer to another site somewhere.  The target could be a computer or an internet host somewhere.  The reason that I mention computer is that most people don’t understand that when do file transfer through FTP to your website, they imagine something else.  Erase that thought.  You are just sending and receiving files from your computer to a computer on your hosting site. 

Imagine this:
(FTP Client - files on my computer) <–> FTP software <–> (files on remote computer - FTP Host)

That’s just it.  It’s no different than copying files from one folder to another.  Except, the other folder is on another remote location from your computer.  And the only way to transfer files between computer through is with the FTP client software.  There is a way through Windows Explorer but I rather that you learned how to use FTP client software.

You see the middle part, I mentioned an FTP software.  There are a lot of free FTP client software out there.  If you use FireFox as your browser, you could use install add-ons and one of them is FireFTP.  For standalone FTP client software for Windows, there are CoreFTP and FileZilla.  I use FileZilla because that was what my hosting guys use before and I got use to it now.  I used a different one before but FileZilla is so easy to use that I suggest it for newbies as well.

Before I forget, we need a domain name to get started so that your customer will remember your site.  There’s a lot of domain name registrar out there.  I do have accounts with a couple of registrar but for the most part most of my domains are handled by GoDaddy.

Your domain name registration will be handled by GoDaddy/(DN registrar) which holds the information regarding who owns the domain, the administrator, the contact and the most important information, about the nameserver.

Nameservers are servers on the internet that holds information on where the particular domain name host ip address is addressed to.  This nameserver is usually your webhosting nameservers.  Your webhosting nameservers holds the information where the site is located. 

(domain Name) –> nameServers –> website

Take note that either way, if your domain name registration is not paid for the renewal, they will disable the nameserver that you put on the site and have the domain default to a page that they will direct.  The same thing with your web host.

So there, we have started with this website basics.  I did not intend to discuss the website basics but I felt that this is going to be the one of the fundamentals that beginning internet businessman needs to understand.

Resources mentioned on this post:
GoDaddy.com | FileZilla | CoreFTP | WordPress 

eBay is the #1 auction site in the world right now.  If you’ve watch video-1 of John Reese’s Traffic Secrets 2, you’ll find out that John mentioned eBay as one of his site that he use to generate traffic.

Sometime ago, I’ve learned something from Charles Heflin of SEO2020 on how he uses eBay as a tool.  Savvy internet marketers uses eBay to find out what the ‘hungry’ market are looking for.  In short, market targeting.

eBay happens to have a site for you to check out the trending actions, what items are being searched most, hot picks, etc.  That is pulse.ebay.com.  Great subdomain name!  The heartbeat of eBay. 

As of today, 5th of July 20008, the top of the search list is WII, followed by IPod, Xbox 360, Coach, & IPhone.  PSP ranks #8.  What does that tell us?  This is where the hungry market are.  It seems that the video games arena is still hot.  Knowing this vital information, you could then create a strategy to figure out what to offer this hungry market.

Most of the failure of internet marketers out there who are starting out is their failure to figure out what their target market is.  If you know what your potential customers are hungry for, and provide them what they want - by recommending or giving them your input on how to help them, you’ve got yourself what most of them don’t get - a SALE.

In the next few days, I will discuss something that I have been experimenting for a while.  Creating niche sites with eBay items.  Some of you might ask, ‘Why do you have to create a site like that when these customers could just go to eBay?’  We’ll tackle that in our series - Capitalizing on eBay!

We’ll use a platform that I am very familiar with - WordPress and work the pages to show auction items on eBay.  Stay tune….

If any of you are active in anyone’s internet marketer’s list, chances are that you’ve been bombarded by each one promoting John Reese’s Traffic Secrets 2.

Believe me, there’s a lot of buzz going on regarding this product.  There are two videos that are being promoted.  You’ll get to a first one that outlines which traffic sites and strategy outline that we could use to gain more traffic on our websites. 

The first video concentrated on certain mistakes that most internet marketers make regarding generating web traffic.  He outlines how to use Google, eBay, Digg, FaceBook, PR sites, Technorati, Commission Junction, Compete, StumbleUpon, just to name a few.

The second video focuses on what internet marketers should be focusing on as a strategy to generate the traffic.  This a more long term strategy but is nothing new to the internet marketers nowadays.  And  it is about creating Content.  But this is about creating content to become a site that search engines would love.  This part is more business-focused as far as what the course business men should take to constantly get traffic.

I’ve watched several videos generated by so called gurus.  Video/media producing is one of the things that I like doing, and John Reese’s videos are on the top 3 internet marketer that has utilized proper communication through video.  My hunch is that his next Traffic Secrets(3) would be more involved on Video Marketing.  Maybe I should beat him on to it.  The videos were well produced, and if I am right, these videos will now set a standard on how internet marketers create videos for the net.  I don’t want to name names and I might get flamed, but I know of one who admitted that John’s videos made his videos look really bad.  And this guy is a multi-million marketer.  Just to show you that we can learn from each other.

TS2 will be sold for $399.  Now, don’t get excited about this and start to buy this because of the hype going on.  My take on this, if your business is generating some income right now, go ahead and get this.  If you don’t, don’t fret.  Focused on generating income for your internet business first.  There are a lot of information out there that you could get that you could use.  Just because you were not the first one to buy it does not mean that you will lose on the opportunity.

Although I’m excited to get hold of the product, I aimed to generate profits from product sales to come up with the purchase amount.  If you want to watch it, you could go to http://trafficsecrets.com.  I don’t have an affiliate link so you’ll get there straight.  (Affiliate links are given to some promoters who have justified an ability to promote products.  I’m not one of them.  Yet!)

First of all, for folks that are in USA, happy 4th of July.  It’s one of those day in the year where it’s about hanging out with friends and relatives, spending the day chatting, eating, or just trying to catch up with one another.  Speaking of catch up, it’s been some time that I posted anything at all here.  Well, it has been a journey.  However, I will start to be more active on this site again.  That’s a promise.  I won’t expound on the details but I’ll start sharing what I have learned and hopefully someone out there could benefit.

The site would become more of sort of like an information repository.  I know, I mentioned that before, nothing new but this time, I’ve learned from my mistakes.  I will try to post some articles that I think that are worthwhile for others to read that I get on my email*box, web surfing, notes from gurus-etc, and some tools that I’ve been using and experimenting lately.

It’s been a while since I posted here but I have been working on several things all at the same time.

Bhavesh is giving away a personal copy of his premium theme - WP Remix. He is in a good mood for Christmas.

For those of you who are new to CMS (Content Management System) particulary Wordpress, I encourage you to take a look at this theme. I would not even consider it as just a WP Theme but I consider it a ‘platform’. There are several page variation in this theme that is worthwhile for novice and experience WP users. I am a big fan of Brian Gardner’s Revolution Theme but WP Remix basically gave you all possible page options imaginable to create your website. It’s taking a step towards fully customized website that does not make your website ‘bloggish’

Back during the hey days of the dotcom era, every kid on the block want to be a MSCE (Microsoft Certified Engineer).  They get into the training and get the paper to show their employers and voila, they make roughly between $35 to $100 per hour.  But are they really ‘IT engineers’?  Then at some point in time, they decided that they could earn the same amount the consultants are paying them to do the work they do?

Unfortunately, not everyone is cut to be a consultant.  You’re most of the time, on your own.  Yes you can work on your own time, be your own boss.  But majority of the people who decided to go to this business found out that there’s more to it. 

I was at TechRepublic’s website and I read an article by Erik Eckel on the challenges of being a consultant.  Not to mention the challenge of making sure your spouse understood why you’re playing in front of the computer doing ‘research’ and not washing the dishes.

You can check out the article here.

Wow.  We are getting some beating here.  We’re getting triple digit temperatures that is not particularly normal in California.  News showed that there are at least 90 deaths as a result of the  heat wave.  Power outages in some areas and flash flood warning in areas where there is high humidity.

I, for one, tries not to consume unnecessary electricity but I would not blame anyone right now for powering up their ACs.  It was quite a field day in the freeway with an unusually good flow of traffic particularly Saturday.  I guess no one really wants to get out.

Just a note of warning.  If you plan to go outside on this hot days, please protect yourself and try to cool down your body temperature.  The last thing you want is a heatstroke.  For those who live in multi story homes, try to stay downstairs as hot air elevates.

Also, let’s not forget that we’re not the only one feeling the heat, our pets do too.  Make sure you get them adequate cooling or water.  My wife put an electric fan for our American Eskie, Jack.  Lucky!