A few weeks ago, I wrote about the problem of being a "Jack of All Trades and a Master of None." In that post, I talked about how challenging I found it to work on Internet Marketing (IM) part time. IM can be all-consuming. I complained in that post that I had not actually "finished" anything. That post was written at 32,000 feet over the pacific ocean on the way to Hong Kong and eventually to Singapore. I guess the air in the passenger cabin must have been thin, because in the same post where I was complaing about how busy I was, I also argued that I should buckle down and increase my post frequency. Go figure.

Garry Conn Warns of Blogger's Demise

Last night, Garry Conn brought all of this back into focus for me with his outstanding post entitled "Is Making Money Blogging Killing You?" In his post, Garry argues that blogging for dollars is a cut-throat competiton, and that it can totally consume you. He compares the blogging mindset to six-man chess, and argues that this 24-hour-a-day competitive lifestyle can impact your relationships, your health, and your mental state. I often say "Blogging Ate My Brain." I think that is what Garry is talking about. To make matters worse, I am not making money blogging. I am not trying to build a blogging empire. I have other plans, and the blog (which I love) is just a small part of the revenue strategy. So, why in the world do I want to redouble my blogging efforts? Answer -- I don't.

Really, Garry makes the strongest of two arguments for a reduced post frequency on MasonWorld.com. Garry's argument is that when you are building readership, you need to allow enough time for people to find your post. Based on my experience on this blog, that is at least two days. The other strong argument has to do with my long term business plan for my internet marketing hobby. Long term, I am interested in getting onto the information marketing end of the internet marketing business. Josh Spaulding warned in a post about information products last November that you need to be careful not to spend too much time blogging when your business plan tell you to work on other things.

MasonWorld Business Plan

So, what is my "business plan?" Well, I plan to have this blog as a resource for people coming after me. It is a journal of my experience. It is not intended to be a big profit center. I am experimenting with four "niche super-sites." The public example of these is the "Elvis Site." These niche super-sites are sites that are more than just MFA (made-for-adsense) sites. They are inteded to contain valuable information, market affiliate products, have user formus, etc. I intend to create and market information products (although I have not identified my ultimate niche yet). I can say that I find viral reports interesting, and I have been checking out Butterfly Reports. I am not sure where that will lead. What I really want is a solid product like Article Marketing Domination -- but not necessarily in the IM niche.

Ultimately, Garry Conn is right on the money -- If you are not careful, blogging will kill you and your business plan.

New Post Frequency

So, effective immediately I am changing my post frequency to Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I will try to post in the morning on those days. In the mean time, I am planning on increasing my efforts on other core businesses. That will give me even more to write about -- which will be great. Look for those musings here in the coming weeks.

Best regards,
Mark

Last week, I updated you on my Niche Super-Site Project, History of Elvis. My strategy of going after long-tail keywords paid off, and I demonstrated a front page ranking for history of elvis using link directory submissions. (It is important to remember that there are links from this site to the Elvis site as well). This organic search engine ranking is starting to "pay off." In the last 30 days, most of the traffic to the site has come from search engines as seen below:

It is interesting to note that 15 searches in the last 30 days came from AOL and MSN. I never pay attention to those engines, but I have heard it said that the people using AOL and MSN are generally less computer saavy and have higher conversion rates than their Google bretheren.

What are people searching for?

In any case, it is not surprising to see that the google searches are hitting for history of elvis. As of this writing, I have moved up from the number 10 spot to the number 7 spot. Other search terms that are starting to hit include some products:

This is cool, because you will recall that I enabled this site with and eBay store using phpBay and other affiliate products using PopShops. This probably means that I need to revisit my keword strategy. As it turns out, Elvis is not a great niche for Adsense revenue because the amount of money you can get from each cleck is low.

Value of Elvis clicks

As you can see on spyfu.com, this is not a great niche if you are going after PPC revenue.

So, no one will get rich collecting money from Adsense on this one.

Next Up, Article Marketing

In my next post on Elvis, I'll talk about Article Marketing. After reading Article Marketing Domination, buying a copy of Article Post Robot and outsourcing the creation of 20 Elvis articles on Scriptlance, I am ready to roll!

Talk to you soon.

Best regards,

Mark

%RELATEDPOSTS%

Several months ago, I started a case study of the Elvis Niche. I built a site, added content, and demonstrated that I could rank for a very long tail keyword with no competition. As I mentioned in that post, I felt like there was no stopping me after I ranked for “Elvis Aaron Presley Collectible Necktie”, and I announced my intention to attack higher competition phrases — “elvis presley collectibles” (74 searches per day), the “life of elvis presley” (226 searches per day) and “elvis presley history of” (4383 searches per day). My plan for ranking was to use Link Directories and Article Marketing.

Well, I have not started my article marketing, but I am accumulating backlinks

Backlinks Make The Difference

Because of this post series on niche sites, I have quite a few backlinks for terms similar to "history of elvis" and history of elvis presley or "elvis presley history of". A quick check of Google shows that we are magically on the front page! Woo hoo!

Obviously, the next goal is to move up the page.

Using Link Directories - OK or Not?

Sometimes, you learn as you go along based on the advice that you get. One guy that I trust recommended that I use free link directory submissions as a way to get backlinks. When these directories are new (and free), they have very low page rank. Once they get older, the page rank may increase, making the link more valuable. This takes a long time.

I tried to figure out if this was "white hat." According to Google's Webmaster Guidelines, they recommend:

Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites.

Now, free link directories are not exactly "industry specific expert sites," but it is pretty clear that Google does not consider all link directories to be bad. When these directories are new (and free), they have very low page rank. Once they get older, the page rank may increase, making the link more valuable. So, I'd be interested in your comments regarding the acceptability of free link directory submission (and the effectiveness).

Next step is article marketing as described in Article Marketing Domination.  I've hired someone on ScriptLance to write some content for the site, and I'll be writing about that experience in a future post.

Thanks, Mark

Be sure and check out these related posts.

%RELATEDPOSTS%

Well, it's early morning in Singapore. What a beautiful city. I woke up this morning to one of those confusing moments where you are not sure what city you are in, but you are positive you are not home. I hate that.

Last night as I was leaving Hong Kong, I got a message from Josh Spaulding that he had just released his new eBook called $5 Mini-Site Formula. At 17 pages, it's an easy read. That's one of the great things about Josh -- he gets straight to the point. In the book, he makes a couple of critical points about how to build a niche site that will generate at least $5 per day in Adsense revenue:

• Pick a niche that has high pay per click revenue
• Pick long tail keywords that you can rank for
• Build a simple site
• Market with article marketing.

This is great timing. Of course, I have been working on my series about Elvis and Niche Super-Sites. My site violates Josh's premise about high-paying Adsense ads, but it's spot-on with the rest of his book. Actually, the Elvis niche was picked at random, but I do hope to generate some affiliate revenue one I can get traffic there. I have hired a writer to write articles for that site -- and I need to post about that process too.

Most of the marketing strategy Josh describes is a condensed version of his Article Marketing Domination eBook (which I recommend).  I'm using that method to promote the Elvis site. One thing that Josh does a good job of in the $5 eBook is describe how to select a niche using free tools.  "Free" is a really important issue for people who are getting started -- you can waste a lot of money buying stuff you don't need. I personally have been using Micro Niche Finder to accomplish what Josh describes, but the free tools he mentions to find long tail keywords work great too.

So, Josh's report has motivated me to start start another niche project and report on it here. I am thinking about the credit card niche. Stay tuned.

Best regards,
Mark

So much has been going on in the last few weeks. Most obviously, I was able to convince Garry Conn to redesign my blog and create this killer custom theme just form me. Garry is a great guy, and he knows a heck of a lot about niche IM. On top of that, he is pretty handy at php, CSS and graphics. If you need someone you can trust to work on your blog for a fair price, I can honestly recommend him unconditionally. I am still turning some knobs and adjusting some dials (most notably, Aweber), but I could not be happier with the new look (and the amazing service from Garry).

Turning my attention back to Elvis Presley

Now that the new theme is up, I simply cannot believe that my plan to document my creation of a Niche Super-Site started on February 4th. Man, time flies when you are having fun with part-time Internet Marketing. In case you missed the press frenzy in early February (LOL), I am quite literally taking a page out of Caroline Middlebrook's free eBook and documenting my experience of trying to create a niche site. I picked a random topic (Elvis Presley), and so far on our journey to build the Niche Super-Site we have discussed:

• Definition of the Niche Super-Site case study
• List of Niche Super-Site design goals
• How to select your niche
• Choosing your keywords
• Choosing a domain name
• Setting up your niche site
• Making things look nice
• Installing Plugins
• Getting listed in Google
• Making Money with phpBay
• Adding PopShops to your site
• Adding Adsense
• Adding Amazon Omakase Widget
• Adding a favicon
• Testing the Long Tail Keyword (1) (2) and (3)

At the end of the long-tail keyword test, we were able to declare victory because I now rank on page one of Google for the killer MMO phrase "Elvis Aaron Presley Collectible Necktie.” This shows that on-page SEO works to get listed for a search term. The problem is that where you rank for that term depends on your off-page SEO. For more on this, I recommend the free EasySEO eBook from Josh Spaulding. As I mentioned in my previous post, with “Elvis Aaron Presley Collectible Necktie” under our belt, it is now time to attack higher competition phrases -- “elvis presley collectibles" (74 searches per day), the "life of elvis presley" (226 searches per day) and "elvis presley history of" (4383 searches per day).

Simple plan for niche market SEO

Simply put, my strategy is to create a landing page for Elvis Presley collectibles and another for Life of Elvis Presley. I'll write good SEO copy and pay attention to details like making sure the keywords appear in the title tag, headers, beginning of the article, exerpt, etc. Basically, I will simply do all of the things that are documented in the free EasySEO eBook. Once those pages are complete, I plan to use the variation on Bum (article) Marketing taught in Josh's Article Marketing Domination (AMD). If you are not familiar with article marketing, the basic idea is to write articles about your niche containing your keywords. At the end of the article, you include links back to your site for your keywords. You submit the article to article directories. These directories are well indexed, and they allow you people to copy your article, propagating your links. (Note that you do not put these articles on your own site).

In Article Marketing Domination, Josh outlines some key steps for article marketing, including

• Creating effective articles
• Creating an effective signature block
• Submission strategies

So, I plan to put this to the test starting in a few days. The problem is, I need some articles. I am not sure I have lots of Elvis Articles in me (this is why it is useful to choose a niche you really care about).

Buying Articles

Article marketing is the perfect place to use a writer for hire (ghost writer). I was able to hire a lady on ScriptLance to write 20 300 word articles about Elvis for $70 ($3.50 per article). ScriptLance is neat because your job goes out for bids, and you can select from the people that respond. This writer has a BA liberal arts and is US based. The $70 is held in escrow until I am happy. Now, I might not always want to spend $70 on a marketing -- but this is an experiment...

So, we'll see how it goes. The traffic data for HistoryOfElvis.com is contaminated by this case study, so it may be hard to judge. Again, we'll see.

Topics remaining on my list for this niche super-site series include the following:

• eZineArticles Content
• Write your own content
• Set up AA404 plugin
• Set up a pseudo-link-directory as pillar content
• Remember to back up your data.
• Comment Kahuna
• Secure WordPress
• Other marketing ideas
• The 50 site checklist
• Others…

Best regards,

Mark

%RELATEDPOSTS%

I have mentioned how much I like Caroline Middlebrook's blog before. Caroline's eBook on building niche sites in WordPress inspired my current "Niche Super-Site case study." It's inspiring to watch her progress because she is doing what I want to do -- having success making money on line without going down the "snake oil path." A lot of people refer to Caroline as "the honest blogger," and that is about the highest compliment that can be paid in my book.

So, I was surprised and excited to hear that Caroline is finally working on an email-based StumbleUpon course that will result in her building an email mailing list. I was surprised because she has resisted this in the past. She finally settled on this project because it focus on delivering valuable free content, and not on selling. In fact, she has no definite plans to sell any specific products right now. For now she is happy to add value and learn about building lists. The press was stunned and amazed, and as you can see here, the story was instantly picked up by Net Money Daily.

I also said I was excited. I was excited because I have wanted to start working on my own list. Jay and Sterling over at Internet Business Mastery are always talking about the value of lists. Like Caroline, they focus on real businesses (not snake oil). They also happen to have the best Internet Marketing Podcast on the internet. Anyway, as usual I will be able to leverage off of Caroline's excellent work. This is great for me. As a part-time internet entrepreneur, I need all the help via mentoring I can get.

See, even though this is not Caroline's focus at this time, mailing list are important for sales. I heard once (from Sterling?) that studies show that it takes an average of 7 contacts before someone buys something. The cool thing here is that Caroline is not all about money - and she will build a list of people that know that about her. I expect that if she tries to sell me something from the list, it will be something that she really believes in. Why? Because that is her behavior. So, let's forget about internet marketing for a minute. What if one day Caroline's becomes aware of someone in her community that needs some help? She can use her list to ask for some help. It's permission marketing. People on your list have given you permission to talk to them. Lists are powerful -- they are the asset in an internet marketing operation.

Now the cool thing is that Caroline is introducing the project as a contest. The winner gets the privilege of having Caroline use their Aweber Affiliate ID to sign up for Aweber's excellent mailing list management service. This is an excellent prize as the affiliate commission is paid each month for the life of the subscription. Very cool. Aweber is really supposed to be the best, and if it's good enough for Yaro Starak, it's good enough for me.

So, I knew right away, I had to try to win.

But, Caroline has thousands of readers. No telling how many entries there will be. It's all very brilliant really -- a viral contest about mailing list to get mailing list opt-ins. I love it. Anyway, I was immediately worried. See, Caroline lives in the UK, and I live in the US. I was scared to death that she might still be pissed about that whole taxation without representation - tea party thing. Then I thought that maybe she is already over that. Phew. (God save the Queen and all that).

So, I settled on a multi-part entry. Here is my entry to Caroline's email course project contest in multiple parts:

1. Appeal to her European heritage. I've never been to Stratford-upon-Avon, but I suspect quoting William Shakespeare could have some positive effect. As it happens, much like Nostradamus, Shakespeare predicted the arrival of Web 2.0. "Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast." Of course he was talking about the dangers of quick love in Romeo and Juliet -- or was he?
2. Buy her a word. I actually bought the word stumble from The Big Word Project and pointed it at yet to be defined page on her site. (Caroline, you need to make a landing page. You now own the word "stumble". This is a big responsibility). The Big Word Project allows you to purchase a word from their list to represent a site. That site will then represent stumble in their list and when people click on it, they will be taken to Caroline's site. The project is aimed at changing definitions and creating a new tapestry of words, meaning altogether different things.
3. Write poetry. Women love poetry. I wrote a haiku:

Web two-point-oh comes

In it's wake, some will stumble.

Some will be stumbled.

4. Digg and Stumble her contest announcement. OK, that was shameless, I know. But, I did it. I'm not proud, but I did it. I really want to win. I need to win. Winning is everything.
5. Find a cool graphic for my post. Boy, I sure did that. The above "stumbling down the stairs" graphic is from All Sux dot Com. I have given them a backlink, so hopefully they wont be pissed that I used their graphic without permission.
6. Long sales letter. Caroline loves long sales letters. I suspect she will be using a lot of long sales letters in her email list. I could add testimonials and yellow highlighting. There could be bonus video and free ebooks if she picks me. It could be a limited time offer. I would win for sure then. Strike that. Just kidding Caroline.
7. Redesign my blog.  Sure, it's a big expense and a lot of work.  But if I really expect to win this contest, I need to go all out.  So, a blog redesign may be just the ticket!

8. Call on a higher power. Looks like some local advertising might be just what I need to win.

That about does it for my entry. If you like my entry, please leave a comment here for Caroline to see, stumble it, and then go visit her blog. Note that I reserve the right to augment my entry before the deadline...never know what the competition will bring.

Thanks,
Mark

Wow! I left a voice mail for Garry Conn today on his site, asking him about my Elvis project, and got an amazingly helpful reply regarding the development of my niche site. What a nice guy. Check out his post about HistoryOfElvis.com.

Garry's blog is really great. He tells it like it is, so bring your flame-retardant undies.

If you want to know more about my niche site project, you can check out these related posts:

%RELATEDPOSTS%

 Well, I did it. In a previous post, I declared my intent to test long tail keyword theory. Now, I proudly rank on the first page of Google for the highly competitive term "Elvis Aaron Presley Collectible Necktie." What does this tell me? Look out "internet marketing" and "make money online." Mark Mason is an unstoppable SEO POWERHOUSE.

Well, not exactly. Actually, it tells me that if you can identify long tail keywords with low competition where you can make money, you can easily rank on the first page of google. If you read the free EasySEO Book, you will begin to believe that you can rank in google for any term you want.

So, let's try that. I still have the goal of writing several articles for ezinearticles. So, let's attack something harder -- "elvis presley collectibles (74 searches per day), the life of elvis presley (226 searches per day) and elvis presley history of (4383 searches per day). To do this, we are going to create three specific "landing pages" (one for each term), we are going to write 5 ezinearticles (with a resource box targeting each term), we are going to pay to get submitted to directories, and we are going to buy a few blog posts. Let' see how we do." More on this 4-part traffic strategy in the very near future (like tomorrow). For the meat of my strategy, i plan to follow Article Marketing Domination.

For now, I will bask in my glory.

%RELATEDPOSTS%

I think my eyes are finally returning to normal, so I will be getting back to focusing on the Elvis project after a few days off. Did you miss me? I hope so.

So far on our journey to build the Niche Super-Site we have discussed:

• Definition of the Niche Super-Site case study
• List of Niche Super-Site design goals
• How to select your niche
• Choosing your keywords
• Choosing a domain name
• Setting up your niche site
• Making things look nice
• Installing Plugins
• Getting listed in Google
• Making Money with phpBay
• Adding PopShops to your site
• Adding Adsense
• Adding Amazon Omakase Widget
• Adding a favicon
• Long Tail Keyword Test
  

You will recall that the purpose of this case study is to get a niche site up and running as quickly as possible in the style recommended by Caroline's eBook and then expand the site into a "Niche Super-Site" by monetizing it with other methods like Adsense search, Amazon, PopShops and phpBay. When you need to get up and running quickly, you need content. The absolute best thing to do is write some compelling original content. Content is king.

Sometimes, you might want to get started by borrowing some content. In this context I really do mean borrow with the permission of the author. I do not mean steal.

One source of content that is "designed to be borrowed" is Ezinearticles.com. EzineArticles.com is a service that tries to match the articles of content authors to the needs of publishers. Article writers can post their articles to be featured on Ezinearticles.com. They have hundreds of thousands of original articles available for use on publisher sites (you are limited to 25 articles per year per site according to their Publisher TOS). Ezinearticles.com has some social-media-like features that allow popular authors (experts) to be featured on the site. The attraction for authors is exposure to "hundreds of thousands or even millions of people" (according to their web site).

So, with the task at hand being bringing up the HistoryofElvis.com website, I searched Ezinearticles.com for "elvis" and amazingly found 921 results. I selected on that I liked based on keywords and posted it on the History of Elvis page on the historyofelvis.com site. Now, organic site traffic gets something like what it expects -- some information on the History of Elvis, and I have started a base for some great original content (to be added later perhaps in the form of blog posts).

Of course, it is well known that use of massively duplicated content is penalized by google.  So, you should use this approach at your own risk.

Topics remaining on my list for this niche super-site series include the following:

• Traffic strategy
• eZineArticles submission
• Write your own content
• Set up AA404 plugin
• Set up a pseudo-link-directory as pillar content
• Remember to back up your data.
• Comment Kahuna
• Secure WordPress
• Blog by email
• Great podcasts
• Running adwords ads
• eBooks
• Other marketing ideas
• The 50 site checklist
• Others…

Well, this is funny.

My post about ranking for "Elvis Aaron Presley Collectible Necktie" ranks #1 for that phrase. The actual post on HistoryofElvis.com is no where to be seen yet. I'll keep you posted (so to speak).

So far on our journey to build the Niche Super-Site we have discussed:

• Definition of the Niche Super-Site case study
• List of Niche Super-Site design goals
• How to select your niche
• Choosing your keywords
• Choosing a domain name
• Setting up your niche site
• Making things look nice
• Installing Plugins
• Getting listed in Google
• Making Money with phpBay
• Adding PopShops to your site
• Adding Adsense
• Adding Amazon Omakase Widget
• Adding a favicon

We really need to start turning our attention to traffic for HistoryofElvis.com, but I wanted to start a small test first. Everybody always talks about long tail keywords, and they can be important for making money in a niche. In fact, Caroline Middlebrook has an excellent article on Long Tail Keyword Research that you should check out.

As a complete aside, saying "Caroline Middlebrook has an excellent article" is completely redundant. Every word on her site is excellent. But, I digress.

Anyway, I thought I would run a test. Let's see if we can rank for a really long tail phrase on HistoryofElvis.com. The phrase I have selected is

"Elvis Aaron Presley Collectible Necktie"

Now, those of you on the other side of the pond will notice that I have intentionally selected the Yank spelling of Collectible. According to Wikipedia, although "collectable" is the spelling listed first by the Oxford English Dictionary, and is standard spelling in British English, the dictionary observes that the "-ible" form is also valid, and has come to be common spelling in the United States.

A quick check on google confirms that there are only 200 pages answering to this search, and none of them match very well. Additionally, a look at the Adwords keyword tool confirms that there is no search traffic and that there is no competition for that phrase. So, this should be like shooting ducks in a pond.

So, I have created a page on HistoryOfElvis.com with the following characteristics:

• Page title tag is Elvis Aaron Presley Collectible Necktie
• Page title is Elvis Aaron Presley Collectible Necktie
• Keyword meta data is set to variations on the target phrase
• Description meta tag is set to include the phrase 3 times.
• Page slug is elvis-aaron-presley-collectible-necktie
• The phrase Elvis Aaron Presley Collectible Necktie appears in the copy many times
• The page is linked from the HistoryofElvis.com home page
• There is lots of related product copy on the page

Now, to keep from passing page rank from masonworld.com to this page, I am not linking to it from here.

So, I launched the page today. You can find it from the HistoryofElvis.com main page of you are interested. Let me know what you think. I will report back the results in a few days (or you can check google yourself).

Thanks,

Mark

Topics remaining on my list for this niche super-site series include the following:

• Traffic strategy
• Really long tail keyword test
• eZineArticles Content
• Write your own content
• Set up AA404 plugin
• Set up a pseudo-link-directory as pillar content
• Remember to back up your data.
• Comment Kahuna
• Secure WordPress
• Blog by email
• Great podcasts
• Running adwords ads
• eBooks
• Other marketing ideas
• The 50 site checklist
• Others…

If you have a topic that you would like to see added to my list, please feel free to leave a comment. Thanks!

%RELATEDPOSTS%

So far on our journey to build the Niche Super-Site we have discussed:

• Definition of the Niche Super-Site case study
• List of Niche Super-Site design goals
• How to select your niche
• Choosing your keywords
• Choosing a domain name
• Setting up your niche site
• Making things look nice
• Installing Plugins
• Getting listed in Google
• Making Money with phpBay
• Adding PopShops to your site
• Adding Adsense
• Adding Amazon Omakase Widget

As I mentioned, I had Lasik (PRK, actually) last week, so I am just getting back to where I can see the computer screen. I am excited about the end result of 20/20 vision promised in 4-6 weeks, but the transition is a challenge for blogging.

Today, we'll talk about adding a favicon to your niche site. That silly icon beside the url at the browser address bar is called a favicon. Why bother? Well, I think that often times in blogging, as in life, it is the small things that matter. Favicons suggest a professionally maintained site, and a favicon can remind people to bookmark your site when they see that quite little icon at the top of their browser. Anything that adds that extra bit of trust that can help us monetize a click should be taken care of. Finally, adding a favicon is EASY, so we should do it for completeness.

Adding a favicon to WordPress is really easy, but it involves editing your theme.

• Pick a picture for your favicon. Something simple is most appropriate since the final image is going to be only 16x16 pixels. Not a lot of detail will be possible. Obviously, it needs to be a square image.
• There are free tools for drawing your own favicon, but I never use them as I cannot draw (and I have never tried the previously mentioned tool).
• There are free favicon libraries too. I never use them either, and I have never tried the previously mentioned site.
• There are free tools for reducing a pic you like to 16x16 for use as a favicon. That is what I usually do. For the Elvis site, I have located a jpg of the letter E and used a free site to reduce that to 16x16. That free site results in the creation of a favicon.ico file.
• Next, you need to upload the favicon.ico file to your WordPress site. I like to put the icon into ./wp-includes/images/, but you can put it anywhere you like as long as WordPress can find it.
• Next, find your theme header file. It should be in ./wp-content/themes/ in a directory named for yout theme (i.e. Prosense or K2, etc.).
• I like to take this moment to copy my current header file to a safe location for later retrieval in case disaster strikes.
• Using your favorite editor, open up your header.php file and locate the <head> tag.
• Add the following code just after the <head> tag but before the </head> tag: <link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”<?php echo get_settings(’siteurl’).’/wp-includes/images/’;?>favicon.ico” />
• Save the header.php file and reload your home page. You should see your favicon.
• If you do not (or if you get an error), check closely the path to the favicon file and the quotation marks above. Some editors will munge the quotation marks during cut and paste operations.

Thanks!

Topics remaining on my list for this niche super-site series include the following:

• Traffic strategy
• Really long tail keyword test
• eZineArticles Content
• Write your own content
• Set up AA404 plugin
• Set up a pseudo-link-directory as pillar content
• Remember to back up your data.
• Comment Kahuna
• Secure WordPress
• Blog by email
• Great podcasts
• Running adwords ads
• eBooks
• Other marketing ideas
• The 50 site checklist
• Others…

If you have a topic that you would like to see added to my list, please feel free to leave a comment. Thanks!

%RELATEDPOSTS%

Sorry that I have been off the air for a couple of days. I plan on continuing the Niche Super-Site series starting tonight. I had laser eye surgery Friday, and I underestimated the impact that getting my eyes blasted with high-energy photons would have on my ability to type (go figure). Actually, I can type as well as ever -- it's my ability to see the screen that was compromised.

Anyway, future topics to include (in the coming days):

1. Traffic strategy
2. eZineArticles Content
3. Write your own content
4. Set up AA404 plugin
5. Set up a link directory as pillar content
6. Remember to back up your data.
7. Comment Kahuna
8. Secure wordpress
9. Blog by email
10. Great podcasts
11. Running adwords ads
12. eBooks
13. Other marketing ideas
14. The 50 site checklist
15. Others...

I am also taking requests. If you want me to cover a topic about the making of the HistoryOfElvis Niche site here, drop me leave a comment!

Thanks!
Mark

So far on our journey to build the Niche Super-Site we have discussed:

• Definition of the Niche Super-Site case study
• List of Niche Super-Site design goals
• How to select your niche
• Choosing your keywords
• Choosing a domain name
• Setting up your niche site
• Making things look nice
• Installing Plugins
• Getting listed in Google
• Making Money with phpBay
• Adding PopShops to your site
• Adding Adsense

I had Lasik yesterday, so this will be short.

I mentioned yesterday that we were really focused on 3 ways to monetize our niche site -- Adsense, eBay using phpBay, and affiliate links through PopShops. I forgot to mention Amazon Omakase links. I like adding the Amazon Omakase gadget because I think it makes a positive association between your site (mostly unknown and unbranded) and Amazon (well know excellent brand). Now, in most cases, I have Amazon below the fold. The commissions are low. Still, if some is really looking at your stuff and is unwilling to buy from you because they don't know you, Amazon gives them a way out where you still get paid. Just a personal theory -- but I do see some clicks. Amazon offers lots of page widgets. I like the Omakaze widget because it automatically features products based on "Amazon's unique knowledge about what works for your site" (whatever the heck that means).

To add Amazon widgets:

• Sign up at Amazon
• Pick your widget (like the one below)
• Add to your page

That's about it for monetization for the moment. See you tomorrow.

%RELATEDPOSTS%

So far on our journey to build the Niche Super-Site we have discussed:

• Definition of the Niche Super-Site case study
• List of Niche Super-Site design goals
• How to select your niche
• Choosing your keywords
• Choosing a domain name
• Setting up your niche site
• Making things look nice
• Installing Plugins
• Getting listed in Google
• Making Money with phpBay
• Adding PopShops to your site

Over the last to days, we have talked about how you could diversify your niche income by taking advantage of the eBay affiliate sales program using phpBay Pro and how you can make affiliate sales of niche items using PopShops. The third piece to our monetization puzzle is, of course, Adsense.

If you don't know about Adsense, you are living under a rock. In fact, you are living under the same rock that I was under until my wife learned about Adsense on the Today show and asked me about it three months ago. Adsense ads are everywhere, but I never stopped to think about how I could benefit from them.

If you are following along in Caroline's eBook on how to build a niche site with WordPress, you will be using the Prosense template from Dosh Dosh. That is a great template because the Adsense stuff is already done for you. All you need to do there is change your publisher ID, and optionally set your ad channel. I wonder how many clicks Dosh Dosh gets from people who forget to change that?

In our case, I wanted something a little different for HistoryofElvis.com, so I am using the k2 WordPress template. To make Adsense work with that, I am also using the Adsense Manager WordPress pluging. There are other managers, and you are free to choose the one that you really like. I am placing the following Adsense ad blocks on my nice site:

• An Adsense for search box at the top of the middle column.
• An Adsense link unit block at the top of the middle column, just under the search box
• An Adsense skyscraper adunit in the second column under the link unit
• An Adsense link unit at the top of every page at the start of the 1st post
• An Adsense ad unit at the end of single posts

I usually set one ad channel for the entire site. that way, I can tell the difference between ad clicks coming from historyofelvis.com and those coming from masonworld.com. If traffic gets high, it might be worth setting one channel for each ad placement. But, until we have enough traffic to optimize for, it does not make much sense.

In my case for the k2 theme, I actually edited the theme to so that the Adsense ads related to posts (the link unit at the top and the ad unit at the bottom) would appear where I wanted them. So, if you know a little php, this is a nice thing you can do (and something that you don't need to do if you are using the Prosense template from Dosh Dosh.) If you want to attempt that, be sure to check out the complete usage instructions for Adsense Manager. The other thing that I like about Adsense Manager is that you can send a percentage of the click revenue to the plugin developer. Pretty neat.

So, that is about is for Adsense. There are 16 other Adsense Plugins for WordPress if you don't care for Adsense Manager.

Tomorrow, talk about one more revenue tool from Amazon.com.

So far on our journey to build the Niche Super-Site we have discussed:

• Definition of the Niche Super-Site case study
• List of Niche Super-Site design goals
• How to select your niche
• Choosing your keywords
• Choosing a domain name
• Setting up your niche site
• Making things look nice
• Installing Plugins
• Getting listed in Google
• Making Money with phpBay

Yesterday, we talked about how you could diversify your niche income by taking advantage of the eBay affiliate sales program by taking advantage of phpBay Pro. Today, we'll look at our second method of nich store diversification -- PopShops.

PopShops provides tools for setting up an affiliate store inside your website. PopShops claims to be the largest searchable collection of affiliate products (said to be currently over 28 million and growing). They work with the major affiliate networks, including Commission Junction, LinkShare, ShareASale, and Performics. With the PopShops program, you keep all of your commissions. ProShops offers a Free Basic account where users can add affiliate products one page at a time using JavaScript. I use the Pro account ($5/month) because that allows you to use php instead of JavaScript. This is important because the php is SEO friendly and the JavaScript is not. This is because with the Pro account shops, the product descriptions are actually in your page, and can be inded by Google (similar to phpBay Pro). PopShops also offers an Enterprise account (at $30/month). The latter account offers better sales tracking, supporting multiple commission junction PIDs (among other things). If I am making so much money at some point that I am confused about where it is coming from, I plan to upgrade. You can read more about PopShops in PC World (good description of what they do).

To make this work really well on our nice site, we need the PopShops plugin for WordPress. As of this writing, it is still in Alpha release, but it works quite well for me. Features include (from their website):

• Add products to your WP blog from any of the major affiliate networks.
• Click the POP button on your WYSIWYG post editor to add affiliate product links directly into your posts.
• Build affiliate stores for your sidebar, footer, static pages, under a post, or randomly after posts.
• As always, keep 100% of your commissions

So, for HistoryofElvis.com, we want to add shops that Elvis fans will enjoy. You can use your imagination. For this demonstration, I have added shop pages targeted at Elvis Apparel, Elvis Auto Accessories, Elvis Pins, etc. I also created a sample Elvis t-Shirt PopShop at the end of this post for your viewing pleasure.

One thing that you have to watch out for with PopShops is adding products for merchants in commission junction for which you have no relationship. As far as I know, there is no way to tell PopShops what merchants have accepted you on Commission Junction. So, if you accidentally add a CafePress shirt to your PopShop page and you are not a member of the CafePress affiliate program through Comission Junction, you will not get any commission for the sale of that item.

One great thing about PopShops is the AutoFeed feature (available on Pro and Enterprise accounts). With AutoFeed you can automatically display additional pages of products similar to the ones you originally selected for your shop. The technology uses the same shop keywords and merchants you originally chose to decide what items to add. AutoFeed pages are SEO friendly when using the php code option.

So, that's about it for PopShops. Man, this blogging stuff is hard work. Phew.

Tomorrow we need to talk about Adsense. That will complete our three-pronged monetization attach (Adsense, niche store and niche auction). In the mean time, don't forget to check out the cool PopShop store below. Neat, huh?

So far on our journey to build the Niche Super-Site we have discussed:

• Definition of the Niche Super-Site case study
• List of Niche Super-Site design goals
• How to select your niche
• Choosing your keywords
• Choosing a domain name
• Setting up your niche site
• Making things look nice
• Installing Plugins
• Getting listed in Google

You'll recall from our List of Niche Super-Site Design Goals that we are striving to create a niche site that generates $2 per day in residual income. We said that we did not want to rely only on Adsense alone to accomplish that. So, one thing that we can do to diversify our niche site income is add affiliate sales. One great affiliate program to look at is the eBay affiliate sales program.

As I reported previously, phpBay Pro is the way to go when you want to add eBay auctions to WordPress.  According to the Wired Studio’s website, phpBay Pro enables web publishers to quickly and easily add keyword rich eBay auction listings to WordPress or php driven sites to generate serious affiliate revenue in a matter of minutes!  Boy, can I confirm that claim personally.  In our case, we need to focus on the feature rich phpBay WordPress Plugin (for more information on why, see Build Niche Sites with WordPress). There are at least two great ways to use this plugin. You can embed auction items in posts, or you can created entire pages of auction listings.

Wired Studios’ product boasts several important features:

• Simple installation takes minutes to get up and going
• Keyword rich results adds SEO value to your content
• List auctions from specific categories
• List auctions from specific vendors
• Mask outgoing Ebay links
• First Class support in case you have a question or need help

From my point of view phpBay Pro delivers all of this and more. Specifically, the support is over the top - outstanding.  In fact, since I was new to WordPress, I had a couple of newbie questions that were answered by the developer himself (Wade) the same day.

You will recall that our niche site (www.historyofelvis.com) is up and running in WordPress.   When people visit there, we would like them to buy things (thus helping us make our $2/day).  The great thing about  phpBay Pro is that we can install the plugin and have a page up and running in just a few minutes after becoming an eBay affiliate.  Generally speaking, the steps are as follows:

• Sign up with Commission Junction (www.cj.com)
• Apply to become an eBay affiliate.
• Install the phpBay Pro plugin for WordPress
• Set your affiliate sales ID in the software
• Insert one line of code in any WordPress page and see your auction come alive.

You can see an example on HistoryofElvis.com implemented in the Elvis Autographs page.  The cool thing is that phpBay content is indexed by Google.  If you mix in some ad copy, this can have a dramatic impact on your page SEO for your search keywords.

So, that's it for today.  Tomorrow, we'll talk about PopShops.

%RELATEDPOSTS%

Looks like we are having some success with our strategy to get listed in the Google search engine.  Hey --  I'm not talking about SEO ranking yet -- we will work on that later. But our pages are in there. Woo hoo!

If you look at the google search results for site:www.historyofelvis.com you can see that the auction listings are indexed.  phpBay Pro goes to some pains to make sure that the links to eBay are cloaked and SEO friendly.

Some progress. Three pages showing up (including About and Login).

So far on our journey to build the Niche Super-Site we have discussed:

• Definition of the Niche Super-Site case study
• List of Niche Super-Site design goals
• How to select your niche
• Choosing your keywords
• Choosing a domain name
• Setting up your niche site
• Making things look nice
• Installing Plugins

Today, we need to focus on getting listed in Google. This is a pretty straightforward process, and is not the same thing as landing on the first page of Google for a certain keyword phrase. Although, if you are not listed in Google, chances of landing on page 1 are pretty slim.

Telling Google we are here involves

• Generating a Google-compatible site map
• Pointing Google at the map

For our purposes, a sitemap is really just an XML file that lists the pages of your blog and gives Google hints about how often those pages change. Google requires that this file be in your root directory.The task of automatically generating a Google sitemap is handled very well by the Google XML Sitemap Generator plugin that we installed yesterday. This plugin creates sitemap.xml in the root directory. If you look at that file, you will be able to recognize URLs to all pages on the target website. For example, you can see the sitemap MasonWorld.com here. Now the question is, how do you tell Google about it?

There are at least two ways to notify Google about your sitemap.

• You can register with the Google Sitemaps program and submit your sitemap. This is what I do, as this will also allow you to see some interesting statistics about your site like the most used keywords and spidering problems.
• If you don't have a Google account or for some reason don't want to create one, you can notify Google about your sitemap by "pinging" them. You can hit the following URL (where mapurl is the fully qualified sitemap URL for your site). Google will come by on a regular basis, so you only need to do this once:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=mapurl

As I said, I prefer to register with the Google Sitemaps program and submit my sitemap.

Once you do that, you can get a result like this in a day or so

:

Have great day. Tomorrow, we'll discuss phpBay.

%RELATEDPOSTS%

I know we are making some progress, because we were mentioned on Caroline's blog and our site HistoryOfElvis.com is up and running. So far on our journey to build the Niche Super-Site we have discussed:

• Definition of the Niche Super-Site case study
• List of Niche Super-Site design goals
• How to select your niche
• Choosing your keywords
• Choosing a domain name
• Getting your site up
• Making things look nice

Today we need to spend some time installing some important plugins. If you have not done this before, I recommend that you spend a moment looking at this post about installing plugins in WordPress.

Here are the plugins I recommend for the Niche Super-Site and why I recommend them:

• Adsense Manager. We will be using Adsense ads, and I like this manager. There are other managers, and you are free to choose the one that you really like. In a niche site that relies solely on Adsense, this is the bread and butter. As we discussed in our design goals, we will be trying to diversify HistoryOfElvis.com to build income streams in addition to Adsense. Still, we want a good ad manager.
• Akismet. Kills blog spam. Standard with WordPress 2.3
• All in One SEO Pack. Allows us to optimize on-page SEO for our blog. We will need to get organic search engine traffic on our blog, and this tool will help.
• Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress. It is really important that Google knows about all our pages and how often to visit them for fresh content. This tool will build a map for Google. I'll have another post later about how to tell Google about our map and verify our site on Google.
• phpBay Pro Plugin for WordPress. This plugin will let us make money from eBAy auctions on our site. It cost $49, but you can use it on as many sites as you want (as long as they are your sites).
• PopShops Plugin for WordPress. Like phpBay, this plugin lets you sell Commission Junction stuff from your blog.

That's about it to get started. This will allow us to end up with a nice looking blog with SEO potential where we can sell Adsense ads and niche merchandise.

Tomorrow we'll go get an article from eZineArticles as our very first piece of content.

Have a great day.

So far on our journey to build the Niche Super-Site we have discussed:

• Definition of the Niche Super-Site case study
• List of Niche Super-Site design goals
• How to select your niche
• Choosing your keywords
• Choosing a domain name
• Setting up your niche site

Now that is done, and we are ready to make things look nice. Caroline covers the Prosense template -- which is great. I really like Prosense because it is clean, easy to use, and ready for Adsense. I am not crazy about the way that Prosense jams ads into the top of single posts (a personal taste thing). So, I am actually going to recommend that you use the k2 template for two reasons:

• I plan to take control of Adsense placement
• K2 supports a banner graphic natively
• It is widely used and well supported in general

Note that it is possible to take control of Adsense placement in Prosense easily with just a little php programming. I just really like K2. Note that the latter point above about wide distribution means that plugins often (but not always) play well with k2.

You can get the k2 theme from www.getk2.com (where else?).

As I mentioned, one reason that I use k2 is built-in banner graphic support. What I recommend is that you search for a copy write-free image that is related to your niche. Once selected, size and crop the image to 950x200 pixels (the default size for k2). If you are a graphics guru, you can do some manipulation of the header with your tool of choice. For example, I use Paint Shop Pro to resize, crop and edit banner images. It's really nice and has lots of advanced features.  It's not the cheapest image software on the block, but it's not the most expensive either.

You can install the k2 theme by downloading it to your hard drive, uploading it to the wordpress/wp-content/themes directory and unzipping and installing (the latter from the WordPress admin interface.) The banner you create can be uploaded from the Presentation menu. As you can see on HistoryOfElvis.com, I have updated the banner to include a picture of Elvis. Nice and clean, it is my belief that little touches like this will set your site apart from all of this MFA (Made For Adsense) sites out there.

Once you have k2 installed with a banner graphic, you can drag some widgets to display comments, pages, posts and feeds into the rightmost column. I'll be reserving the middle column for ads (Adsense and Amazon for sure) and some affiliate links.

Tomorrow we discuss adding some plugins (including my favorite, phpBay).

See you then.

%RELATEDPOSTS%

So far on our journey to build the Niche Super-Site we have discussed:

• Definition of the Niche Super-Site case study
• List of Niche Super-Site design goals
• How to select your niche
• Choosing your keywords
• Choosing a domain name

So now it's time to register the name and set up the site. You will remember that last time we settled on www.historyofelvis.com. We had confirmed that it was available by checking either AjaxWhois or DomainBot.

If you don't have a webhost provider, now is the time to find one. I can recommend two -- LunarPages and ServInt. I have used them both with good results. Caroline Middlebrook recommends BlueHost (I think she uses them to host her blog). Note that while I think these are all great hosts, the previous links are affiliate links (I get paid if you use my link to sign up with them). So, do your research if that bothers you.

At this point, I am going to recommend that you read chapters one and two of Caroline's excellent free eBook entitled "How to Develop Money-Making Niche Sites with WordPress. In that book she teaches

• Signing up with a host
• Using Fantastico to install WordPress

There is a lot of debate about this, but I believe that if you are serious about running a business around WordPress, you should consider learning to install it yourself too. If that scares you, the fantastico route is great.

For installation, I recommend you install WordPress into the ./wordpress directory in your home directory and that you modify your wordpress configuration to make pages appear from your webroot directory. This keeps you from having the word "wordpress" in every URL, and generally makes things prettier. Here is what that setup looks like on the MasonWorld blog.

We are going to need lots of plugins and a theme to make things nice. I'm even going to recommend that you buy phpBay (you can check it out before we discuss it tomorrow if you like). Anyway, we will start to install plugins tomorrow.

%RELATEDPOSTS%

So far on our journey to build the Niche Super-Site we have discussed:

• Definition of the Niche Super-Site case study
• List of Niche Super-Site design goals
• How to select your niche
• Choosing your keywords.

Remember, our overall goal is to build a niche site that returns $2/day in residual income.

Today, we pick a domain name.

I think that domain names are of limited importance for SEO. Why do I feel that way? Search for "California Surfing" in Google. What do you see? You see none of the page 1 results contains both california and surfing in the domain name. Some have surf or surfing, though. So, while it can be helpful to get some keywords in the domain name, it does not seem to be critical to get them all.

I think that Dosh Dosh has this about right. To select a domain name, you need to:

• Determine what kind of blog you will have (we did that)
• Research keywords (we did that too)
• Brainstorm for domain names
• Check availability
• Register an available name

You will recall that our keyword search showed that people want to know about history of Elvis -- they are searching for elvis presley "history, born, death, funeral, etc.". Some quick brainstorming get you stuff like historyofelvispresley.com. As expected, a quick domain name search reveals that "historyofelvispresley.com" is not available.   Like Dosh Dosh, I tend to use either AjaxWhois or DomainBot to check name availability.  I tend to buy my domains from ServInt (they host this blog), and you can also check domain name availability there.   More on hosting tomorrow.

For now, we need to check some other names.  And, as if by magic, historyofelvis.com is available. Or, it was available. I own it now.So, based on our results, we have spent about the right amount of time selecting a niche domain name: http://www.historyofelvis.com. It has two of our keywords (history and elvis). In a few days, that will be up and running with our new niche site.

See you tomorrow, when we can talk about registering our domain name and choosing a web host for our site.  For that, we're going to rely heavily on Caroline Middlebrook's excellent eBook on building niche sites.

So far on our journey to build the Niche Super-Site we have discussed:

• Definition of the Niche Super-Site case study
• List of Niche Super-Site design goals
• How to choose your Super-Niche

Remember, our overall goal is to build a niche site that returns $2/day in residual income in the Elvis Presley niche.

Before we rush out and buy a domain name, we need a keyword strategy. Now that we have settled on Elvis Presley, let's hop over to Wordtracker.com and see what they have to say about The King and his Keywords.

If you sign up for the Wordtracker free trial you can access their competition search tool. If you enter the starting phrase elvis presley, you can then pick your 30 favorite phrases returned for further analysis. The 30 phrases come from analyzing the keywords from 100 other "elvis presley" webpages.

The results are very interesting.

Based on the KEI (a measure of the goodness of the keyword), people want to know about history of Elvis -- they are searching for elvis presley "history, born, death, funeral, etc.". So, for now, let's decide that our main keywords are:

• elvis and elvis presley (these are implied but very competitive. We will not try to rank for these. Some day, if our page rank is high, we might make the first page for these (but not any time soon).
• history of elvis and history of elvis presley
• elvis born/birth/death/funeral
• elvis presley born/birth/death/funeral

As a note, let's remember the other top keywords (KEI greater than one with some traffic) and try to create a page for each phrase. More on that later. Also, note the misspelling of Presley (as Presly).  We are also going to want to add some keywords specific to the affiliate programs that we will be offering (like eBay through phpBay).

See you tomorrow when we'll talk about registering a domain!