KhalidsLife.com

Purchasing traffic is something I wouldn’t recommend, it usually results in fake page loads of your site to imitate people. Purchasing visitors…well that’s a different story.

The effects of being Dugg or Stumbled Upon can be fantastic, both for real visitors, extreme exposure and revenue! You can buy Stumbles or Diggs, but what if your site isn’t voted for by non-paid users? It’ll probably be a waste of money.

Whilst I totally agree with focusing on quality content and positive word-of-mouth spreading like wild fire, sometimes we want a quick fix. So, what about buying real visitors?  Jon Warass, a fellow internet entrepreneur, successfully showed his visitors how to make $20 a day from a $200 investment and it involved purchasing visitors. You can read the proof post here.

I intend to do the same, with a free wallpaper site. I have built a site that provides “hot and sexy”wallpapers for free. Well placed ads dominate high CTR area’s and I’ve just paid $7 for a weekly ad that averages a few thousand clicks. Doing the maths, say out of 4,000 inbound visitors I get 200 clicks, meaning 5% of people visiting will click on my ads.

200 x 0.05 = $10 = $3 profit.

Not much I know, but the basic maths multiplied on a large scale could result in a large amount of profit. I’ll let you know how it goes, my ad doesn’t start until the 4th. It may be profitable, it may not be - It’s an experiment after all.

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, mostly whilst in bed and my entire flat is in a beautiful silence. I’m not turning weird I promise, but as a result of this deep though, I’ve managed to break down my $100 a day aim into different networks (by niche) and then further sub-divided this into single websites, each targetting a different keyword in the niche.

My aim is to dominate each niche I enter by targeting the top 10-20 keywords in that area. This does sound like a big task and yes it’s no walk in the park, but the benefits will far outweigh the labourious task of developing loads of sites.

The strength of having many websites in the same category ensures I have spread my risk evenly. When one network is complete, I will be adding fresh content to the main site daily and smaller sites monthly. This reduces the ongoing workload by greater than 50% whilst ensuring the network is not ignored. The time then available will then be spent on the next network.

I have it all planned out, but we know nothing ever goes to plan.

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

The Rise and Rise of Kortaz.com

When I first began building sites for profit and dabbling in ppc revenue methods like Google Adsense, trickles of income began coming my way. My problem is that I become wrestless, I don’t like to wait. That trickle could become a stream, then a river and so on and so forth.

I wasn’t prepared to wait, and my first network of sites were sold for $50 each.

A lot of learning has occured since then and I now follow strict personal rules when considering selling a site. I plan for the future, I think about the short and long term gains and I don’t sell until I am sure I either need the cash or want to exit the market.

Proxy traffic is considered “trash”. Proxy users are generally people who want to bypass school filters, view adult content or get away with playing their favourite arcade game at work. The only company willing that offers good revenue and is willing to allow placement of their ads on proxy sites is Google Adsense, a network which I was banned from about a year ago.

Aside from Google, there’s Adversal and Adbrite, but both offer low payouts. Adversal did provide a few extra dollars per month for their non-intrusive pop-under ads so it is a network I’d recommend.

Getting a little off track, I bought Kortaz.com for $15 simply because I liked the name. Kortaz was originally a big site divided into smaller sections, including an arcade, funny videos feed, proxy and image host. The idea originally came about when I saw arcades making, say $10 per day, a video site $20, a proxy $5 and so on. I thought about combining them to create one large site that would generate revenue through each section.

Unfortunately it was difficult to market without a big budget, I hadn’t really thought it through properly, but being a businessman involves learning, so I’m glad I made the mistakes.

Knowing I could profit from proxy traffic, as I did by building and selling SneakOnline.com for $750, I turned my sites back to the trash nobody wanted (apart from us profiting proxy webmasters). I was bored with a proxy site as you couldn’t do much in the way of earning money, so I thought about a proxy listing site.

I didn’t want one of these topsites nobody visited, so I managed to find a free script that offered something more unique - a links lister with sections and a hit counter for each link. The only change I made was to randomize link orders. Kortaz, the web proxy list was born.

Originally I offered free placements to all and a few lucky people were “Featured” (premium placement) for free. A link back to Kortaz with the anchor text “web proxy” was always required on the homepage if you requested a free link.

As the number of submissions and backlinks grew, so did traffic. The hit counter beside each link, along with a few testimonials, was proof to webmasters Kortaz provided great traffic, all for $6-$10 per month (I changed the price to attract people during difficult times).

I managed to profit here from two things. The first was that links rotated randomly so each featured and non-featured link got time at the top of the pile in their own sections. Secondly, there was some negative press about the biggest proxy listing site, proxy.org, using bots to imitate traffic and click on Adsense units of sites listed on the site.

However, as the site grew, so did the problems. The script was designed for heavy use and would max out after 2,000 outbound hits, I couldn’t integrate automatic Paypal payments and so on. I managed to hire a great coder for $50 who developed the site as you see it today using a free web template (why waste money if you don’t need too!).

The new design was rolled out and I put some contextual advertising and Adversal popunders on it, afterall it was “trash traffic”! I managed to get the stage where the site was earning around $150-$170 per month. It was doing well and I had a small money-maker on my hands.

Traffic was excellent, with the site ranking first in the SERPs for “Web Proxy” and on the first page for a number of other terms. This was simply due to the high number of relevant backlinks accumulated over time (slow but steady link building).

My reason for selling - I needed cash, I have student debt and bills to pay. I was sad to see it go.
I decided to list the site on Sitepoint.com with a price tag of $2k. I didn’t think it would reach this because nobody likes proxy sites but I was surprised it was sold within 48 hours. I think I could have gotten more but you learn. I think the strongest selling points were the SERPs positioning and the private link sales, i.e. no reliance on an ad network.

Building, establishing and maintaining Kortaz.com was one of the best experiences I’ve had online. I turned a domain name into a profitable website, I learned about SEO and link building and I tasted success.

One man’s dirt is another man’s foundations and Kortaz.com was exactly that. The owner didn’t want the domain and a lot of webmasters don’t like proxy traffic. I took two negatives and turned them into a positive - all in under one year.

I hope you learned a little from this story, good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

You’re born, you study, you get a job and you work. When you’re 65 you retire and live off pennies in an attempt to enjoy your last twenty or so years. << The most typical life cycle known to man.

I was having a conversation with my mother the other day and we were discussing our lives and how different things are now. Close to 50, my mum has worked all her life and now her two of her three children are independant, she’s getting to enjoy her own personal comforts more.

For many, we live to work and work to live. Society, culture and the economy have all changed and now the price of a loaf of bread and some milk is close to a half of the average hourly wage. At present, over half of my monthly salary goes to rent, bills and food…and I earn more than the average hourly wage.

This is what drives me to becomes successful. Since 8.30am this morning, a bank holiday, I’ve been adding content and building sites in an attempt to earn a few extra dollars per day, adding to my total and bringing me closer to financial freedom.

I work in the morning before work, I in my lunch hour, I work after work and I work on my holidays. I live to work right now but I don’t want to work to live forever. Success isn’t easy otherwise every Tom, Dick or Harry would wear an Armani suit and drive a Porsche. Failure is easy and not trying even easier.

I don’t blame those who work their whole lives, there are elements you can enjoy without a fat wallet and certainly the stress of trying to become successful can often be too much for many. Starting a family can be costly but it is certainly affordable and watching your children grow up bearing your family name is probably one of the most beautiful things a parent can experience - a success it’s own right.

For me, I’d like to do all that in time, for now my eyes are still stuck on my goals. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever make it, other times I dream about driving that 4 x 4 or sunning it in Greece. A dream, a reality? Who knows, but I’m not prepared for failure…it is simply not an option.

I’ll try and try and try until I can’t try no more, all because I want to be able to live my life without financial worries. I want to enjoy every moment without having to think about how I will afford to pay for things. A little worry is a good thing, too much can spoil everything.

So, for those who think you can simply log on and become the next John Chow or Jeremy Schoemaker, forget it. Work hard, work harder then work till you can’t work no more. Then, when you taste success, you’ll work until your fingers bleed because the taste of being at the top is better than all the foods in the world.

Sorry for the rant, happy easter.

Definition of Niche: a position particularly well suited to the person who occupies it; “he found his niche in the academic world”

In today’s World Wide Web, where each keyword becomes a market and every webmaster is a vendor, simply having one stall doesn’t cut it anymore unless you have a truly unique product to offer. According to Verisign - the digital infrastructure authority that manages Internet domain names such as .com - there were 153 million domain names registered in 2007, up 27% from the previous year.

For many of us budding entrepreneurs, creating the next FaceBook or YouTube idea is simply something we probably won’t be able to achieve, or fund for that matter. It’s not that we’re unable to think of great ideas and market them, it’s that these sites are a one-of-a-kind and generally very successful or huge failures.

You are rolling a dice hoping for that success, but for many, the odds of 1 in 6 are too slim. Entrepreneurs are risk takers, but we like to invest wisely. Dominating a niche in an attempt to become the king of one sector seems like a viable choice… and it’s working for me.

The benefits of dominating a niche include the following:

1. You’re concentrating on one sector so your knowledge of it is enhanced, thus your website’s content will be too.
2. Each site is targetting a different keyword in the same niche so you are spreading yourself well over one area.
3. You will automatically have relevant backlinks available to each other as each of your sites will be in the same niche.
4. Linking to each other helps boost your overall SERPs, as they help pull each other up the ranks.
5. Adding a new site and targetting another keyword will be easier as you already have an established network setup to help it get indexed and ranked quickly.
6. By establishing yourself and building strong foundations in one area, you are making it harder for others to compete.

I’m sure there are additional benefits to dominating a niche, but these are probably the most important. However, there can be downfalls too:

1. If the niche you are targetting already has this operation in place it’ll make it much harder to compete.
2. If the niche does’nt have many paying advertisers, having “all your eggs in one basket” will probably not convert to the profit you were hoping for.
3. The content is limited so spreading it over a huge network of sites may not be easy. For example, news about “tattoos” is rare so spreading this over 10 tattoo sites won’t be a walk in the park.

Overall I think dominating a niche, providing you have researched it well and have a viable business model, can be a success. At present I am doing this and have 3 sites in the same sector, adding a 4th by the end of today. It’s a proftable operation that is earning me money, and my aim is to have 5 sites targetting 5 different keywords and ranking in the top 5 of the SERPs (tongue twister I know)!

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

Recently, a fellow blog Jon Wheatley, video blogged about a statement made on website Retire @ 21.

The statement said “A lot of people spend 95% of there money on creating there website and 5% on promoting it, in fact it should be the other way round. Please do not make there mistake!“.

Jon completely disagreed, saying most large sites didn’t need to hugely advertise as their well coded design and web concept was enough to spread the good word like wild fire.

It prompts the question - How much should you spend? Allow me to use some examples…

1. OffBeatInk.com - my tattoo designs site - I have spent hundreds of dollars on marketing but the wordpress theme I use is freely available on the net, the logo is simple and I made it myself. The site is successful and ranking well in the SERPs, yet not a lot was spent on the design.

Does that mean Micheal’s statement is true afterall? No, not exactly, but he has a point. Off Beat Ink is just a blog about tattooing with a few cool wordpress plugins. It is a success because of the content I created then pushed out with the marketing. I spent more on marketing than the design, but what if the content was crap? My money wouldn’t have been well spent.

2. Kortaz.com - proxy listing site - Before I sold this I spent a lot of money on the design, with a custom coded site and free/paid placement automation. The marketing was through a few posts on webmaster forums offering, at first, a free listing. Word of mouth spread this site because it was simple, easy to use and offered something valuable to both proxy webmasters and proxy users. Jon’s point is valid here, spend time on the design and the visitors will come.

3. Ribbu.com - my cool pictures site. Again just another simple blog with some cool pictures. I spent $13 on marketing and got close to 100,000 uniques to the site through one, established, social media portal. Virtually nothing spent on marketing, just a little time on the content. Here, neither Jon nor Micheal are correct.

Three examples, three different strategies and three different successes.

I think the answer is that it’s site specific. How can you define exactly how much of your budget you should spend on a site? You can’t, and so you need to explore other avenues to ascertain what is a valid amount.

My best advice to you would be to ensure what you have is free if possible but as unique as it can be. For example, always write unique content but don’t go spending hundreds of dollars on a unique wordpress theme immediately - Tyler Cruz and John Chow didn’t (until recently), they just tweaked free ones!

If you can’t find a free solution, rent a coder to make you one, but don’t overspend with hundreds of features - you’ll only confuse your users. Google was a unique idea and custom coded, but it has one of the simplest interfaces ever.

Good luck with your persuits,

Khalid.

The “No Follow” attribute (rel=”nofollow”) was originally created to block search engines from following links in blog comments due to comment spam. As time passed, websites began using this in other areas, such as text links, to ensure their pagerank (PR) was not being leaked to other sites and to stop search engines indexing external pages.

Whilst he “No Follow” attribute may stop PR leakage, links are still counted towards the overall backlink count, which is what you should be targetting. In my post Off Site SEO, I stated “I’ve found building relevant backlinks works a treat when trying to rank well in the search engines.”

Regardless of whether these links are “No Follow” or not, they’ll still be counted. Sure it would be beneficial if they were “Do Follow”, but it is not the deciding factor.

Here are some important notes regarding the “No Follow” issue…

1. Linking to someone with a NoFollow attribute is a sign of not trusting them. It’s like reaching to shake someone’s hand, but stopping to put on a pair of latex gloves. In short, it doesn’t look good.

2. Search Engines follow NoFollow. Both Yahoo and Google have been known to count NoFollow links as backlinks in SiteExplorer. Proof from Search Engine Journal and Jon Warass.

Before reading this, ensure you’ve followed all my tips for On Site SEO. The next stage is to get your site indexed fast! These are just some simple techniques, but as Tesco’s say, “Every little helps”.

Sitemap – Upload your sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools and verify your site.

QUIT – Use this tool provided by BlueHatSEO.com to get your site indexed within 24 hours.

Add Url – Manually add your site to Google’s search engine

Backlink Building

I’ve found building relevant backlinks works a treat when trying to rank well in the search engines. By relevant I mean on sites that relate to your niche, so if you have a health related site you want links on other health sites. Easier said than done!

Remember, don’t rush this stage and have all your links with the same anchor text of Google will smell a rat. Take your time and mix it up, even doing deep linking, i.e. linking to a sub page and not the home page.

The following are not all the techniques but just some simple ones I use…

Directory Submissions – An old fashioned, labourious task, submitting your site to directories can take a long time. Google it and you’ll find someone to do this for you in no time!

Social Bookmarks – As previously stated, having your site bookmarked is like buying permanent backlinks, except they are free! If you get your site on the front page of a popular social bookmarking site, you’ll automatically get at least 100 backlinks from other sites who have found your content and like it!

Link Exchanges – Getting your site linked to by an older site in the same niche and giving a link back will benefit you more than them, so try it. E-mail the webmasters, don’t say your site is new just say you both have quality content and your visitors will benefit from each other’s information.

Wikipedia – This is heavily monitored and they do use “No Follow” but the links are great for getting your site indexed and they are counted as strong backlinks. They key to getting linked is by writing quality content and putting it in the “External Links” section. For example, if you write an article title “Why protein is important in your diet”, add it to the “External Links” as “An interesting article on why protein is essential in your diet”.

Forum Signatures – I’ve got over 2,000 posts at one Webmaster Forum, each containing my site’s links with their targeted keyword as the anchor text. That’s a possible 2,000 backlinks, just for being a forum member.

I split my Search Engine Optimisation program into three main areas; On Site SEO, Off Site SEO and Backlink  Building.

This is the first of three posts about SEO and my aim is to help you understand the basics that often go unnoticed. Why take my advice? Well it’s free and to prove it works here are two examples of my recent achievements…

Kortaz.com ranked 1st for “Web Proxy” 

TattooLettering.net ranked 2nd for “Tattoo Lettering” in one month 

I’m not an expert and I don’t have all the answers, but these tips do help me so they will help you. So, what’s my advice? Well let’s begin with the meta tags…

<Title> Tag – Keep this your targeted keyword. If you are wanting to rank well for “Diet Plans” then your title should be exactly that, nothing more. Don’t confuse search engines with “Free and Simple Diet Plans and Weight Loss Assistance” if that’s not what you’re targeting. For my blog, my title is “Internet Entrepreneur Khalid Al-Khames”, so people know who the blog belongs to.

<Keywords> - Keep this to a maximum of 10 keywords, let’s not try to target anymore than that. I’ve never ranked a site 1st for more than 3 keywords, so 10 is out of reach, but keep a few extra in for choice. Use a keyword search tool to find other popular keyword terms

<Description> - Short and sweet, keyword inclusive, for example “Diet Plans and Diet Information by DietPlansUK.com”
Secondly, the content…

Articles – Your site should have at least 4 pages with 500 word articles that are keyword inclusive, for example “Simple Diet Plans”, “Vegetarian Diet Plans”, “Bad Diet Plans” etc etc (notice how they all have your keyword “Diet Plans” in them). Article headers should use <h1> tags too!

Links – Your internal links should be keyword inclusive and use the description tag too. For example, “Simple Diet Plans” should be “Simple-Diet-Plans.htm” and not “sdp1.htm”. If you are using a CMS like WordPress, use SEO friendly links by editing the hyperlinking in your control panel.

Sitemap – Get yourself a free sitemap, just google it.

Robots – Ensure your site has a Robots.txt file too

Images – Ensure your images have SEO filenames and use the alt description tag too. For example “Diet-Planner.jpg” description “Diet Planner”.

Social Bookmarks – Sharing our findings is all the rage these days, with sites like Digg, Netscape, Stumble Upon and Technorati having millions of users. Although most of these sites use the “No Follow” tag, it is still worthwhile getting backlinks from these sites. Add a Social Bookmark button(s) to your site because if you get, even 1, submission by a user each day, that’s 31 new links every month.

I hope this helps, good luck!

Khalid.