New Site

I have started a new site, Structured Settlements. This is my second attempt at hosting a site on Aplus.net. The first didn't go too well since they did not support my linking software.

This time, so far, they have been fairly responsive. Although, I did send an email and never got a response. Calling the 24hr helpline did get a fairly quick response. We'll see how it goes. At the moment, I am trying to get the ability to set a cron job. They require photo ID sent to them before they will enable a shell. I'm guessing they have hade problems in the past.

I'm also trying to get my secure image functionality to work. It requires the freetype font generator along with PHP4 and GD. I have sent the secure image readme file to tech support to look into. I would really like to have this functionality to prevent auto submission or articles or links.

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Jimbo On The Loose

I wrote a year ago about James (Jimbo) Patterson and his crooked schemes. Among other things, one of his scams was a company called New Leaf Associates. In this scam, Jimbo promised to erase your debt and clear your credit record for a fee of $4,000 to $6,000. As you might guess, this was bupkus and New Leaf Asociates was shut down by the Florida Attorney General.

So imagine my surprise when I got an email from Jimbo with his latest offer. Jimbo is claiming to sell a Coastal Vacations level 3 package, which lists for $7500, for only $4000. This offer, of course, is only available through Jimbo. It appears that Jimbo wants me to send him the four grand and he will get me the package. I don't know if this is a legitimate offering from Coastal Vacations or not, but I gotta tell you, Jombo is a crook and I wouldn't touch that offer if my life depended on it.

So here is the moral to this story - it helps to have a long memory and be wary of emails from James "Jimbo" Patterson

Analyze

The biggest challenge for anyone running an online business is driving "targeted" traffic to the site. There are a great many ways to advertise, some of which are free, but the best way to generate traffic is to either be on the first page of Goolge for your keywords, pay for advertising on related websites or pay for advertising on pay-per-click (ppc) providers.

Google is probably the largest source for ppc advertising but I am discovering there are many others and most of them have a lower cost per click (cpc). I am trying several out but so far Search Feed is giving me the best results. And the cpc is less than half of Google for the same keywords.

This gets me to the subject of this post. The only way to know which of the advertising methods work is to track the performance. I recently was able to open a Google Analytics account. There are stats for everything you could want and it can be linked to AdWords if you also have that, which I do. I just found out how to link them this morning.

So as time goes by I hope to be able to identify the best sources of traffic and the performance of the links on my site.

Getting In The Search Engines

I was checking my stats yesterday and noticed I was getting hits for this site from MSN. When I checked them I found I had a good rank on several. Now I will admit that several, if not all of these are somewhat obscure, yet it gives me hope that I am moving in the right direction. Here are the search terms from the last couple days:

Keyword-------------------------------------------MSN Rank

home business ways extra money---------------1
quick ways to make cash in canada------------1
top ways to make extra money-------------------1
ways money home---------------------------------1
ways to make money at home -------------------1
ways to make money from home ---------------1
best ways to make money in 2006 -------------2
he best ways to make money online -----------2
ways to get money quick fast and easy -------2
ways to make extra money -----------------------2
easy ways to make extra money ----------------3



This may not be a rousing success, but it does make me want to continue working on my SEO plan.

If you want to know how I am doing this you can check out this ebook, SEO Made Easy. It is easy to follow and anyone can do it.

Changing Hosts

I originally set up this site on Aplus.net. But after a week of trying to get my link exchange to work I decided to take this one to Host4Profit where my other sites are hosted.

I use Reciprocal Manager v. 3.3 for my link exchanges but PHP 4.0 software on aplus has a bug in it that requires Apache to be restarted. Since it is a shared hosting plan I was unable to restart Apache and Aplus would not do it for me. I also tried other link software, but again, Aplus hosting does not allow PHP to access other sites.

So I had no option, other than to manually nuild my link pages. Like that was going to happen.

I got the new account open at Host4Profit on January 1st and forwarded the domain from Aplus. Today, January 2nd, I uploaded my site and am in business. I have even added several link partners to my site.

Now I can concentrate on my SEO.

Baby Steps

I think that I, like many trying to make money from home, have spent a considerable amount of time working on my sites, promoting, surfing traffic exchanges, etc. without a whole lot of success. Most of this, though, is part of the learning process. With an olnine business, just like any business, you have to continue to learn as you go. And you have to commit to the long haul.

Unfortunately, many people expect to put up their site and start to rake in the bucks. Doesn't happen. I have read many of them posting their complaints on the work at home forums I belong to. "I've had my site up for two weeks and don't have a sign up yet". Obviously, their expectations were created in part by the sales letter they signed up from. But those that are realistic will understand that it will take time and effort, but that the potential rewards can be substantial.

There are many ways to make money from home, but it is true with all of them - you have to be focused and you have to put in the time.

The Launch of Ways To Make Money

Today is the launch of my new site, ways-to-make-money.net. This is the culmination of a lot of research, study and listening to others who are successful. I hope to be able to recreate their success here.