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  • Gary Lee 7.00 am on 11.04.2007 Permalink  

    Understanding the Market for the Good of your Business 

    Every successful business needs to understand who, where and why their customers are choosing to do business with them. Hopefully, I don’t have to explain this aspect of business much because if I do, I seriously think should dust off and update your cover letter and resume! In any case, to understand your customers and/or potential customers, the best thing to do is to break them down into groups that you can understand better. Here are some ways to break down the group:

    Basic Demographic Information

    • Age – 0-5, 5-12, 13-17, 18-24, 25-29, 30-35, 36-50, 50+ something along these lines
    • Gender
    • Marital Status
    • Income Level – I usually follow the U.S. Tax Brackets
    • Education Level – HS, Graduate, Post Graduate

    Geographic Information

    • Zip Code
    • City
    • State
    • Region
    • Country
    • Language

    Occupation

    • Blue Collar
    • White Collar
    • Work at Home Parent
    • Associates, Seniors, Managers

    Specific Product Market

    • Interest Based
    • Hobby Based

    If you’re just starting off with your online business, the best piece of advice I can give to you is that you will want to look at yourself and see what groups you fall within using these categories. The reason I say this is because most likely you’re doing business in a particular field because you’re interested in that field. Most likely, someone that is the same age, located in the same region, has the same type of occupation level along with having the same interests as you is going to be interested in the products/services your business has to sell. Once you have good base of these customers, analyze them and find a common attribute among them and see if you can market to another group to expand your customer base!

    Once you have done your home work, a great site to visit to understand how to break down your market is MarketingSherpa.com.  The provide great articles and case studies from other online businesses.

     

  • Gary Lee 12.13 pm on 10.04.2007 Permalink  

    Share the Power of Technorati Faves 

    Gaming the system with link building exchanges is great for rankings, but what I truly want to concentrate on is building web traffic for this site. A great way to do both is to start a Technorati Faves Exchange with my readers as Maki has done with Dosh Dosh’s Ultimate Technorati Favorites Exchange: An Interactive Experience! I actually read his post earlier this morning, but it wasn’t until Maki IM’d me later did I take a closer look at it. As always, his post was very detailed and explains the benefits of cracking the Top 100 in the Technorati Favorites list. I’m not going to regurgitate his work, so please take some time to read his post. It’s definitely worth your time.

    What I want to do is to continue the promotion of DoshDosh’s exchange. This is how it’s going to work:

    1. Click here to Add me to your Technorati Favorites
    2. Come Back to this Post and Leave a Comment that you have Added me. Use your own Technorati Fave link in the comment so I know where to go. (i.e. http://technorati.com/faves?sub=addfavbtn&add=http://www.yourdomain.com)
    3. I will go through my comments and then add you to my Technorati Faves list as well.

    A added feature that I would like to add to Maki’s exchange is to create a Technorati faves train.

    ***Start Copying Here:***
    Technorati Faves Train created by: Gary Lee

    Here are the rules:

    1) Write a short introduction paragraph about what how you found the list and include a link to the blog that referred you to the list.

    2) COPY the Rules and ENTIRE List below and post it to your blog. To avoid duplicate content and increase the amount of keywords your site can accessible for, go ahead and change the titles of the blog. Just don’t change the links of the blog.

    3) Take “My New Faves” and move them into the “The Original Faves” list.

    4) Add 3 Blogs that you’ve just added to your Technorati Favorites to the “My New Faves” section. Remember to also add the “Fave Me” link next to your new blogs (i.e. http://technorati.com/faves?sub=addfavbtn&add=http://www.yourfavesdomain.com)

    5) Add Everyone on this list to your Technorati Favorites List by clicking on “Fave the Site.” (Please FAVE EVERYONE on the List prior to posting the list or a Kitten will Die Alone in a Dark Alley Tonight). Those who want good kharma will fave you back. If not, you will for sure get the benefits of faves from the bloggers who continue this list after you.

    My New Faves

    Stephen Fung – Fave the Site
    Ed Lau – Fave the Site
    QMusings – Fave the Site

    The Original Faves

    Gary Lee – Fave the Site
    Dosh Dosh – Fave the Site
    Nate Whitehill     – Fave the Site
    Ms. Danielle – Fave the Site
    Jeff Kee – Fave the Site
    Scribble on the Wall – Fave the Site
    Jimi Morrisons Head – Fave the Site
    Jon Lee – Fave the Site
    Samanathon – Fave the Site
    Eat Drink & Be Merry - Fave the Site
    The Man of Silver     – Fave the Site
    Hannes Johnson – Fave the Site
    My Dandelion Patch     – Fave the Site
    Nathan Drach – Fave the Site
    SiteLogic – Fave the Site
    Julies Journal – Fave the Site
    Tea & Slippers – Fave the Site
    The Thinking Blog – Fave the Site
    Pencil Thin – Fave the Site
    Garry Conn – Fave the Site
    ***End Copying Here***

    Pretty simple, huh? If you missed my first train, then this would be a great opportunity for you to get in on early this time. As DoshDosh.com says, the hope is to increase traffic from being listed as one of the Top 100 Favorites on Technorati and with the help of the link train, you can also increase your rankings at the same time.

     

  • Gary Lee 10.06 am on 10.04.2007 Permalink  

    Make a quick $250 

    My friend IM’s me this morning this link for a Chase Credit Card. My first reply “is this a phishing scam or what?” Well, it turns out that I ran a WHOIS and it seems to be pretty legit. Here’s the deal:

    • Go to the Chase Landing Page – (I’m using a MGL Redirect because I’m currently using the SlickDeals.net link, but probably will switch to my own link once I get approved for the affiliate program.)
    • Apply for the Credit Card – Make sure you see “Receive $250 after your First Purchase”
    • Make your First Purchase and get 20,000 Reward Points which is redeemable for $250!

    The APR sucks at 19%, but if you just use it as a gas card and pay it off every month, it won’t hurt you plus you get 3% cash back at selected gas stations! It’s going to come in pretty handy when gas hits $4 a gallon this summer!

      I know this might sound like a commercial to some and I normally wouldn’t do this for this blog, but I thought I’d pass the word for those who could use an extra $250 in their pockets to fund their PPC campaigns or just to buy stuff =)

       

      • knupNET 11.46 am on 10.04.2007 Permalink

        Thanks for the tip! Will apply for sure!

      • Nathan Drach 12.10 pm on 10.04.2007 Permalink

        Just what I need, another credit card to forget to pay!

      • Gary Lee 12.16 pm on 10.04.2007 Permalink

        hahah . . that’s exactly what i said!

      • Sarakastic 8.30 am on 13.04.2007 Permalink

        I’ll have to look into it, I can always use another $250.

    • Gary Lee 7.00 am on 10.04.2007 Permalink  

      Things to remember when picking a Domain Name 

      I met some prospective clients this past weekend and to my surprise a lot of them have an idea for an online business and have been thinking about putting together a site, but just haven’t gotten around to even picking their domain name. The would ask me if they should use hyphens or uncommon extensions (i.e. .tv, .net, .org, .us). I basically sat them down and let them know the general guidelines when picking up their domain name.

      Don’t Make it Complicated – Just two things to remember!

      • Short, Sweet and Unique is what I always say. When you have a conversation with someone and you want to tell them about your new website, you want it to make it as easy to remember as you can. If you plan to promote your website through word of mouth, you want the person to be able to easily communicate it to their friends. Don’t forget that b’s sound like p’s, also m’s and n’s & d’s and t’s, so don’t have too many of those to make it easy for your promoters to spell your domain outloud.
      • Easy on the Eyes – What I mean is that you want your domain name to stand out on business cards, newspaper ads, tv ads and online ads, so avoid using a lot of double “m’s”, “t’s” and “p’s“, also avoid “l’s” cuz they look like “1′s!” An excess of these letters can confuse someone who’s spelling is not their greatest strength. Also, you only have a few seconds of their time when they see your ad, so make it count. One Tip to get people to remember your domain name when they see it is to capitalize the letters in the domain to make easy for people to see what the write words are – i.e. MrGaryLee.com. Courtesy of Bonnie at Best-Earning-Strategies.com who was having some fun with domain names, here are some examples of what happens when you don’t capitalize:
        • whorepresents.com (would’ve become who-represents.com)
        • expertsexchange.com (would’ve become experts-exchange.com)
        • penisisland.com (would’ve become pen-island.com)
        • therapistfinder.com (would’ve become therapist-finder.com)
        • viagrafix.com (would’ve become via-grafix.com)
        • Ihavegas.com (would’ve become iha-vegas.com)

      At the end of the day, I still say that the quality of your site always outweighs the quality of your domain name, so if you can’t come up with the homerun name you want, it’s not the end of the world. Just find an effective domain that follow these rules and you should be fine.

      The best tip I could give when asked about domain names is to

      1. Write down your top ten domain name ideas.
      2. Get in touch with your family, friends or online communities (such as the comments section at MrGaryLee.com) for your testing sample.
      3. To test the Word of Mouth Scale – Say each domain outloud and ask your friend to repeat the ones they remember. Keep a running count of which domain gets remembered first, second and third by creating 3 columns on the right of your list to record your results.
      4. To test the First Impression Stickiness – Create a 10 flash cards with your domain name options written on each card. Show them to your friend one at a time for about 1-2 seconds each. Then tell them about MrGaryLee.com to give them time to let all the names soak in their minds. When you’re done, ask them to tell you the first three domain names that come into their mind. Record the results on the back of the flash cards.

      After you’ve talked to 10-20 people, you will begin to see a clear cut winner. If you don’t, then keep on running your tests! Good Luck and if you just don’t feel creative, you could always put your own Name in Your Domain and join in on the fun over a hundred Bloggers have enjoying these past few months.

       

      • Jon Lee 10.53 am on 10.04.2007 Permalink

        LOL funny examples. Ihavegas is my favourite.

    • Gary Lee 9.54 pm on 09.04.2007 Permalink  

      Text Link Ads Move into Your Posts 

      After signing up for Kontera and finally getting the secret approval for Text Link Ads, I’ve been pretty excited about diversifying my revenue streams. I just got my first Text Link Ad advertiser – Tutorials for Outlook – thanks guys and good luck with the site! Hopefully others will support the cause and buy a link too!

      Speaking of Text Link Ads, I just received an email from them about their new WordPress plugin – Post Level. Here’s what they’ve got to say:

      Quick Post Level FAQ’s:

      • You will still have editorial control for each link purchased if you have opted for editorial control for your regular Text Link Ads.
      • Pricing is set automatically and is lower on a per link basis then typical homepage placed Text Link Ads.
      • No extra coding work for you, we sync all of your posts automatically with our new WP plugin.
      • If you regular Text Link Ads are sold out you will now have new inventory to sell.

      Also, the used John Chow’s site as an example:

      John Chow
      Looks like an interesting plugin, but for a site like mine, I rather use the Related Posts plugin to allow my users to read more of my content. I’m already on the fence about keeping the Kontera program on my site, so I definitely don’t want to cross the line of gaudiness with this Text Link Ads Plugin.

      So, I’m wondering . . . how’s your Kontera Campaigns doing?

       

    • Gary Lee 6.00 am on 29.03.2007 Permalink  

      How to Convert Blogspot to WordPress 

      We all know that the most serious of all bloggers like Samanathon (Vote for him now!), John Chow and Career Ramblings use WordPress as it offers the greatest selection of features and with it’s open source software, has generated an underground legion of plugin and theme creators worldwide. I do have to admit that you should know something about FTP and php coding to understand how to install and manipulate the way you want your blog to look. In any case, I always recommend to people to use WordPress if they want to really start a blog and if they just want to casually write, go to blogger.com. The problem lies when casual bloggers like Kumiko Suzuki, who thought they were gonna just be casual start to get real good traffic and now want to switch over to blogging software where they have more control over. Unfortunately for Kumiko, she has received too many linkbacks to her blogger account to really make a clean switch, but this is a totally different problem we’ll solve soon.

      In this post, I show you the 10 Easy Steps to importing your Blogger Account into your new WordPress Blog. So, if you’re still in blogger infancy, you might want to give this a try.

      Before you get started, remember to backup all your images and uploaded items you have put into your blogger account.

      1. Go to your WordPress Dashboard

      2. Go to Manage > Import and you will see a screen that looks like this:import.png
      3.Find the “Old Blogger” link and click on it to get to this screen:import-blogger.png

      4. Login with your Blogger Username and Password, then press “Start”

      5. The Import Wizard will now show you a list of blogs you have under this Blogger account. If you didn’t know, you can have up to 10 blogs under one Blogger account.

      6. Now select the blog you’d like to import to your wordpress blog by clicking on the appropriate link.

      7. WordPress will now import all your posts and comments and will be finished when you get a “Congratulations” notice.

      8. While you’re on the “Congratulations” page, you will want to click on the “Reset this Importer” link at the bottom of the panel to clear your blogger login information.

      9. Now you have to check your WordPress Blog for the following:

      • Posts
      • Comments
      • Archives

      You also have to remember that the Blogger Import Wizard does not import blogrolls, images or files you have uploaded in the past. Also, DON’T ERASE your Blogger account as your WordPress blog might be affected.

      10. The last and final step is go through your new WordPress blog and look for anything that might seem out of place.

      If you know of any other helpful tips that can help a blogger switch to the real Blogging Software on the Internet, please feel free to leave a comment. Or if you want to learn some dirty little secrets about Affiliate Marketing, just click on this link and head over to check it out!

       

      • The Man of Silver 12.42 pm on 29.03.2007 Permalink

        Thank you … thank you thank you thank you!

        I have been seriously contemplating taking The Man of Silver to the next level on a WordPress blog, but part of the hesitation has been wondering just how the heck I would get that to work.

        This is a very nice, concise explanation of the key steps involved … VERY helpful.

        If you wouldn’t mind, I’d love your input on my poll about which hosting provider people would recommend for the beginning blogger. You can find my post and poll here.

        Thanks again!

      • danielle 1.27 pm on 29.03.2007 Permalink

        wordpress has made it so easy for people to create their own blog sites now that i don’t see why even casual bloggers wouldn’t want to create one. with so many customizations, they’re fun to just play with. plus you can get rid of that extra annoying “.blogger” in the middle of your URL ;)

      • TJantunen 9.06 pm on 29.03.2007 Permalink

        I wrote similiar post about importing posts from new blogger to wordpress. I moved my site to own domin and wanted to move all my old posts from blogger to wordpress, but problem was that I used new blogger and import was not so simple. You can find my instructions from here http://tjantunen.com/2007/03/21/import-blogger-posts-to-wordpress/

      • Nathan Drach 6.59 am on 30.03.2007 Permalink

        Dont forget that wordpress has a hosted product also: http://wordpress.com/

      • Saman Sadeghi 7.46 am on 30.03.2007 Permalink

        It’s very true, WordPress would be fine as an entry level platform! Blogger is like the AOL of blogging platforms!

        I didn’t know anything about blogging at first and I started out on WordPress!

      • Saman Sadeghi 7.49 am on 30.03.2007 Permalink

        They do, but it’s kind of the same situation as Blogger!

      • Nathan Drach 8.09 am on 30.03.2007 Permalink

        Not really as you get the wordpress software. If hosting and/or the domain aren’t that important, I would go with wordpress.com

        It would be very easy to port that over to a hosted environment is needed.

        down with blogger!

      • Jessi 3.58 pm on 17.05.2007 Permalink

        Your site is perfect!

      • Roseate - Internet Business Promotion And Opportunities 4.15 pm on 26.06.2007 Permalink

        Hi Gary Lee,

        What do you mean by

        “DON’T ERASE your Blogger account as
        your WordPress blog might be affected.”

        Won’t I have to erase it? so when can I do so without
        affecting the new blog?

        Thanks,
        Roseate

      • tallfreak 12.06 am on 14.07.2007 Permalink

        Self-hosted blogs are the “real” blogs indeed! Besides with google ads you can get back the $50 you spend on hosting each year – and then some. Convert them all over Gary! Way to go!

      • ChaLicious 7.41 pm on 26.07.2007 Permalink

        Nice, before, i don’t if we can convert blogspot account into wp,…
        Nice,.. Thanks…

      • Etienne 8.08 pm on 08.08.2007 Permalink

        I have been wanting to switch over to wordpress, but i am not really good with php, since i want to personally host on my own ground. I would need someone who could help me in it..

    • Gary Lee 12.10 pm on 27.03.2007 Permalink  

      Best Home Workstation Contest 

      I know that a lot of us aspiring entrepenuers work from home a lot, so we all have our own little spaces that inspire us to work better. Inspired by one of my favorite MacNN Forum topics, I would like to start a contest for the Best Home Work Station. Here’s what you got to do:

      1. Take a Real Good Picture of your Home Workstation
      2. Write a Post on your blog (at least 100 words) about your workstation and include the Picture
      3. Within the content, link back to this post using the anchor text – “Work From Home” and also link back to http://www.MrGaryLee.com
      4. Email Me with a link to your post to enter the contest

      Here is an example post:

      Gary Lee has started a contest at his blog to see who has the best work station at their home. I mainly work from home, so I have a multiple monitor setup with enough deskspace for my Logitech Keyboard and Mouse and my very chic Ikea Lamp. I went with an all white theme to match the iMac and I got the desk from ikea.

      ht820.jpeg

      The winner will win this Motorola HT820 Bluetooth Stereo Headset which I received to review from a now defunct gadget site. It works great, has outstanding battery life and pretty much syncs up with any phone out there.

      Qualified entries will get a link back to their post including a thumbnail of their workstation to thank you for your efforts! This contest will run for 2 months or until I get a good number of entries.

       

      • Ed Lau 3.16 pm on 27.03.2007 Permalink

        Lemme clean up my desk first…I’m quite messy.

      • Jon Lee 4.34 pm on 27.03.2007 Permalink

        That’s very generous of you! Too bad my work station is nothing too special though…

      • Gary Lee 4.46 pm on 27.03.2007 Permalink

        hey jon . . you got a couple of months to make it look good! I’m sure you could come up with something!

      • Jon Lee 3.13 am on 28.03.2007 Permalink

        I’ll take a picture of what I have regardless and send it in anyway :)

      • Nathan Drach 7.22 am on 28.03.2007 Permalink

        Can non-Mac users apply ;)

        My home office is in purgatory right now though, not sure if my “office” office will apply…

      • Jonathan-C. Phillips 7.25 am on 28.03.2007 Permalink

        Good contest idea! count me in, i’ll post that tomorrow :)

      • Jimi 8.38 pm on 28.03.2007 Permalink

        I am so going to win this :) .

        or not.

      • Jonathan-C. Phillips 9.22 pm on 28.03.2007 Permalink

        Here you go, posted on my blog! Your workstation looks real nice by the way! :)

      • Shawn Knight 12.17 am on 29.03.2007 Permalink

        Hey, got my entry in as well. Will you be posting occasional updates with pics to the entries so far? Curious to see what other people are running :)

      • Gary Lee 12.22 am on 29.03.2007 Permalink

        most likely i’ll be posting an update as batches of 10 come in . . . at the current rate, that seems to be pretty soon! Thanks for entering the contest

      • Bob Buskirk 2.24 pm on 29.03.2007 Permalink

        I entered too Shawn! Looks like you have some competition!

      • Thomas 3.46 am on 30.03.2007 Permalink

        Is this contest still running! I will really need to clean-up my workstation before I enter.

      • Thomas 3.47 am on 30.03.2007 Permalink

        Ignore my last comment, wasn’t paying attention to the 2 month running note.

      • ilker 9.25 am on 01.04.2007 Permalink

        This is a great idea Gary!

        Unfortunately, I already posted about something similar a while ago when I discovered a blog that features the workstations of people who submit them. They are posted like this with a short description that you provide.

      • Stephen 1.13 pm on 02.04.2007 Permalink

        Woh! Just found this! Can i just post a work “AREA” shot or does it have to be only my main PC? The problem I have is that I skip between two or three computers and they are more or less used equally.

      • Gary Lee 2.06 pm on 02.04.2007 Permalink

        you can get one picture per website, so go for it!

      • Shawn Knight 2.08 pm on 02.04.2007 Permalink

        Ah well in that case, I guess ill be entering my “test system” in the contest too. Main rig = blog, test rig = OCIA.net heh

        BTW, will I need to resubmit a full entry, or can I just do a quick entry since I have already “entered” before?

      • Gary Lee 2.10 pm on 02.04.2007 Permalink

        a full entry would definitely be appreciated and would be the honorable thing to do . . . .

      • Jimi 9.06 am on 04.04.2007 Permalink

        Hey G-Man.

        This is one of those topics that made me go find the separate trackbacks from comments plugin. I’m digging it, but I’m sure you already saw that post ;) .

      • Gregg Hawkins 5.36 pm on 04.04.2007 Permalink

        I wish I could take a picture of my setup at home :( I’m at school..My set up isn’t very appealing in my opinion!

      • Gary Lee 6.24 pm on 04.04.2007 Permalink

        hey . . you have your name in your domain!!!!

      • snuz 5.50 pm on 05.04.2007 Permalink

      • Ed Lau 11.45 am on 17.05.2007 Permalink

        Weird…no pingback.

        Here’s my entry: http://www.ededition.com/my-home-office/

      • Torsten 1.17 pm on 31.05.2007 Permalink

        As my boss took posession of my work space meanwhile I unfortunately can’t enter the contest. Right now my work space is somewhere between living room, balcony and nursery. At least there is a photo of my boss taking over my former office chair at http://www.vi-su.de/wer-hat-den-besten-boss/2007/05/31/
        Good luck to all the other who entered the contest!

    • Gary Lee 10.56 am on 24.03.2007 Permalink  

      Technorati Reality Check 

      After a few weeks near the top of the Technorati Mountaintop, I have finally got my dose of reality and have come back down to earth with my real rankings. Well . . .sort of . . . it seems that in the process of cleaning up John’s Technorati Ping Attack, Technorati has also taken down every single link that he’s ever linked me with:

      Ya, I know it’s only two, but it’s two links from a highly ranked Technorati blog that would bump up my present ranking up a few notches.

      Anyways, here’s the screenshot of my new reality check! Check out how other blogger’s rankings go affected after Technorati fixes their Rank Glitch!

      technorati32100.png

       

      • Mark Robinson 12.01 pm on 24.03.2007 Permalink

        Well – it certainly makes it easier to see who’s linking to our blogs now. Oh well, it’ll be more fun getting legit links anyway (I guess).

      • Matthew 6.02 pm on 24.03.2007 Permalink

        Our blog also dropped down a few spots, about 3,000 to be exact

      • Culture Shiok! 10.27 pm on 24.03.2007 Permalink

        I was wondering why I didn’t get that boost from John Chow. I experimented on commenting after reading Mark Robinson “under 5000 in an hour” I’m now JC’s 3rd top commenter and my ranking is still the same.

        Good for Technorati!

      • danielle 10.34 pm on 25.03.2007 Permalink

        i was 1.3million when i made batch 36. after batch 36 i shot up to 80k. now i’m at 248k, which i’m ok with bc my blog is only 2 1/2 weeks old. at least i’m not back at 1.3mil. just gotta work on hustling some more backlinks ;)

    • Gary Lee 9.20 am on 14.03.2007 Permalink  

      Top 10 Blogging Topics 

      As the true colors of this blog begin to show, I have been learning more about what it is that attracts readers to blogs all over the internet. Since, a list is one of them, I wanted to write down a list of top 10 Blogging Topics being used today.

      1) Originality – Thoughts, Research & Experience

      There’s nothing like a unique original story that brings people to read your blog. Why do you think News Stations have been around so long and eyewitnesses are the ones that get always get interviewed?

      2) Well Crafted Fictional or Funny Stories

      Those email chain letters you get are great examples of what good original stories can do for your blog – good quality content that motivates your readers to pass it to their friends.

      3) Smart & Opinionated Political Viewpoints

      Blogging is much like real life – you don’t really want to get into a heated debate about politics or religion with anyone because no one ever wins the conversation! On the other hand, if you can present your viewpoint in a mature way where you clearly express your opinions with fact and no degradation of the other party, then you’ve got yourself something worthy of posting.

      4) Live Blogging from Great Events

      This has been extremely popular the past couple of years when Apple decides to launch a new product at MacWorld. Technology Blogs such as Gizmodo, Engadget and the Apple Blog TUAW all get their credentials and report minute by minute what is happening at the show.

      5) Top 10 Lists

      In the land of the free and the home of the brave, everyone likes to see who’s the best of the best. Top 10 lists are a great way to filter out the junk and save people time in researching the internet themselves.

      6) Helpful Tips – Tools and Checklists

      Who doesn’t need some help these days? Especially if it’s free and especially if it’s really helpful. Tools that have made your life easier will most likely make someone else’s life easier too. Its called Good Kharma and they will read you for it!

      7) Participatory – Self Evaluations, Quizzes and Polls

      A perfect example of this right now is Net Business Blog’s SEO Question. There’s nothing like quizzes and polls to get your readers thinking and participating in your blog’s community. Hopefully, the poll can spark new topics of conversations, which in turn sparks topics of blogging for your blog.

      8.) Synopsis of Complicated Issues

      Generation A.D.D. – Tech savvy – Needs Information Faster – Needs Information Shorter – Capiche?

      9) Great Photos

      Like the old saying goes – A picture is worth a Thousand Words – which is like 4 blogs or something. You do the math!

      10) Quantitative Analysis

      I think my very first post of this blog qualifies as Quantitative Analysis, since I did have to do some math with actual numbers which helped prove that taking the train to work saves more money than most people think!

      Got any other blogging tips? Let me and the rest of the readers know about it.

       

      • Tim 11.21 am on 14.03.2007 Permalink

        great post – I’m glad you’ve compiled a list for me to refer to.. as a thanks, a clicked a link :)

      • Jon Lee 11.33 am on 14.03.2007 Permalink

        How-tos and tutorials are also a great way to have people stumbling onto your blog in the future!

      • Marisa 2.26 pm on 14.03.2007 Permalink

        I love top 10 lists and tips/tools lists. I’ve got loads of those bookmarked.

      • Jimi 6.38 pm on 14.03.2007 Permalink

        What about controversy? There is nothing better than a serious argument, or nasty rumor to get people to come in. People can’t stay away from a good smear campaign.

        Celebrity crap seems to be pretty big too. I have sites that seem to get hits with nothing on them just because I have a couple of Britney Spears posts. I stayed away from those pics of the American Idol girl, but I’m sure that would have brought in a crazy amount of traffic ;) .

      • Gary Lee 1.42 pm on 15.03.2007 Permalink

        That’s a great point Jon! I’m going to keep that in mind for some upcoming articles!

      • Gary Lee 1.45 pm on 15.03.2007 Permalink

        Like the saying goes – there’s no such thing as bad publicity!

    • Gary Lee 7.27 am on 14.03.2007 Permalink  

      The Real Estate Business is BOOMING – Online, that is! 

      It’s called Domaining and not many people know everything there is to know about it. Well, I’m going to shed some light on it today with the assistance of DoshDosh and Net Business Blog. You see, I’ve been reading their basic explanations of the newest internet gold rush and have realized that it is not that much different from your every day real estate development market.

      For those of you who think they might remember the concept of domaining as buying a domain name and then trying to sell it for a higher price to someone who wants the domain – you’re almost right. With the growth of online advertising and the billions of dollars in revenue it generates for search engines such as Google (Shadow) and Yahoo, “Domainers” have learned that they can make more money “parking” these blogs and setting up simple advertisements on them to take advantage of the traffic the domains can attract.

      Much like how a real estate developer finds a cheap piece of land in a up and coming location, domainers find hidden jewels at places like GoDaddy, where they list expiring or about to expire domain names. And much like developers building office buildings, parking lots or condominiums, these domainers obtain their domain and then create a blog with all the free blog software out there now, perform a little standard SEO Magic, slap on some adsense ads and watch the money start to roll in.

      I’ve read a story of http://www.CreditScore.com being bought off GoDaddy for a couple of thousand dollars and then being turned around to make up to 10 times that much MONTHLY!

      Now, whoever said the real estate bubble was going to burst must be living in a cave (with no internet access) or something!

       

      • Matt Propst 8.17 am on 14.03.2007 Permalink

        Gary, how much work is really involved? I ask because I run two maybe 3 developed sites (the third is quickly coming to something presentable) however i’m sitting on about 6 or 7 domains simply because I realized they are great domains to own, however I’d never gotten around to putting anything up on them.

        Thanks!

      • Gary Lee 11.13 am on 14.03.2007 Permalink

        The amount of work that is involved really depends on your experience as a web developer and SEO Marketer. If you’re family with creating a blog and then incorporating ads into the blog, that should take you less than a day to do. To properly SEO the site, there are many things you have to do – research, research research – but if you know what you’re doing, it can be done in less than a day too. I would suggest that you find out the keyword you want each domain to be “known” for and work from there. That will be your theme and then your ads will be based around that them to increase the CTR and CR of your ads.

      • Matt Propst 4.13 am on 15.03.2007 Permalink

        Well content being king, I don’t think i’ve got the time right now to “properly” develop the sites, but i’m interested in your future articles on the topic, as well as possibly turning those currently unused domains into sites that can make me a few bucks!

    • Gary Lee 10.36 am on 13.03.2007 Permalink  

      Review My Blog LinkBack Promotion 

      I don’t know how many people actually click on my “Link X/C” link at the very top of my blog, but it doesn’t seem to be a whole bunch, so I’m taking it down and posting this.

      Taking the idea from the successes of root of all evil, I have decided to do a similar link exchange program. I know my blog is not even close to the popularity of his blog, but I aim to be one day.

      Here’s what you got to do – Just review my blog and I’ll post a link to your review. The requirements for the review is that it just has to be more than 100 words long which is a cakewalk for most of you and it has to have a link to my home page using the keyphrase “Work from Home” and a link to any post in my blog. Here’s a very straight foward example:

      “I’m able to work from home and write a review of a blog by Mr. Gary Lee. I’ve also been considering entering his Best Workstation Contest for a chance at that bluetooth headset!”

      You can be completely honest with your review, so don’t worry about hurting my feelings. I’m always looking to improve and this would be a great way for me to learn. An agreement is an agreement, I will honor all reviews with a link back. If you need an example, take a look at my first ever review from Simple Maui Weddings.

      Upon finishing your review, please send me an email or with the URL to your review. I will post a list of reviews once I receive 10 of them.

      This is a great way for a new blog to get some backlinks and hopefully we can all help each other raise our page rankings. Currently, you will be receiving a backlink from: (Click Here to Find Out why BackLinks are so Important)

      • Page Ranking – 2 with a Predicted PR6 by next update (iwebtool.com/tools)
      • Technorati – 21,775
      • Alexa Ranking – 184,890
       

      • Culture Shiok! 6.12 am on 14.03.2007 Permalink

        I just clicked on the “Link X/C” link at the very top of your blog…. Crap! Now I need to write a review just to get a link… sigh…

      • Gary Lee 1.26 pm on 16.03.2007 Permalink

        don’t worry . . it’s not as bad as you think :) I think i have a few more to go before I can release my first batch though, so you got some time!

      • nakichiam 9.51 pm on 17.03.2007 Permalink

        Reviewed. Decided to post this after reading the top 10 mistakes for the bloggers! (Not participating in the comment part)

      • Bri 3.50 pm on 22.03.2007 Permalink

        I personally think that more people should do this in the blogosphere. I know that search engines like blogs for searches, however, I think that there is still a lot of improvement to be had where many non-blog sites still dominate searches.

      • Darin Carter 11.18 pm on 17.04.2007 Permalink

        http://www.darin.cc/reviews/site-review-mr-gary-lee/

        There is a Site Review for you Gary!

        Talk to you soon!

        Darin

    • Gary Lee 10.25 am on 10.03.2007 Permalink  

      Why should I be a blogger if I already own a business? 

      Recently, I have had a lot of my clients ask me about blogging and how it can help their businesses. Of course, I could talk all day about blogging, but I control myself and tell them some few key points to let them decide from there.

      Point # 1 – Blogging is the newest communication tool that helps businesses market their products and themselves faster and better by using the power of the internet to take advantage of the oldest marketing tool around – word of mouth! If that’s not a good enough reason for you, blogging is the new “cool” thing to do to for companies, young and old, to get some free publicity. So, if you want to be cool and let everyone know it, you better start blogging to gain that early-adopter advantage while it lasts.

      Point # 2 – Since this is one of the newest ways of communicating with your customers, adopting this technology will create a buzz around your company and we all know that a “buzz” is always something we want when we’re running a business. The buzz will be about how you’re taking a risk by starting something so new and intimate with your customers. The buzz will be from your doubters and competitors who will predict your failure. The buzz will be from your customers who have no idea what to do with your blog, but still want to read it. Seize the moment and you will be able to take advantage of this buzz we also know as marketing.

      Point # 3 – The viral marketing possibilities are endless. If you can write something insightful or provocative enough for other bloggers or internet surfers to pick up and pass along to their network, the exponential growth of your business exposure will be unbelievable. For businesses, I always recommend that they not only celebrate their successes in their blogs, but also explore their failures to show your customers that you can learn from your mistakes and that your company is willing to take risks. A great side effect of practicing “full disclosure” is that as more discussions are held, new solution, topics and ideas are being generated for free and being posted on YOUR site!

      Point # 4 – Blogging as a communication tool has really opened up the flood gates of communication as companies are no longer hoping that customers get their messages, the are instead getting instant feedback as to what their customers want, thereby giving you quicker feedback to make adjustments to your business. Like the old saying goes – Time is Money – and Blogging saves you the time of having to wait for results and guess at what those numbers and lines are trying to say.

      It doesn’t usually take long for my clients to ask me to set one up for them asap, but I always try to remind them that it’s a lot of work. I tell them about the community aspect and the amount of content they need to write. I’ll post up their blogs once they are up and running. If your clients have not asked you about blogging yet, I think using these 4 points would be a great way to offer another service for them and they will value your work for them even more.

       

      • lyndonmaxewell 6.24 pm on 10.03.2007 Permalink

        Interesting tips, I guess many small time business owners still do not get the message. Only the bigger companies are seeing the advantages and plausible gains in doing so.

      • Gary Lee 1.59 am on 11.03.2007 Permalink

        I think most small businesses don’t have the flexibility to take risks like the big companies do, but once they see what can be acheived from the successes of bigger companies, they are much more open to the idea. The key to presenting to smaller companies is showing them examples of blogs such as google and IBM.

      • lyndonmaxewell 5.08 am on 11.03.2007 Permalink

        The next point that they would try to argue is that “they are much bigger than us”, and has to do with Economies of Scale or something like that. :) I guess they really need some convincing.

      • danielle 12.49 pm on 12.03.2007 Permalink

        not just small, but traditional, businesses… smaller media firms, for example, might just need someone to bridge the gap. i agree it’s harder for businesses that have no idea of the benefits of blogging.

      • John Anthony 7.14 am on 23.04.2007 Permalink

        You’re right gary – a company blog is some of the easiest, free publicity a company can get!

    • Gary Lee 11.57 pm on 09.03.2007 Permalink  

      Are you Wasting time Blogging? 

      Many new bloggers have been inspired by the stories of John Chow or Darren Rowse and how they’ve made thousands of dollars on the internet, just by blogging from the comforts of the world. Inspired enough to start their own blogs to see if they can replicate the kinds of successes they know in their hearts they can achieve. Well, if you ask a majority of them – “what do you know about running an online business?” – I would bet a majority of them would just give you a blank look. So, this post is for the beginners who are starting to build their business foundation.

      I’m not going to talk about what you should write about or what advertisers you will probably want to go after. I’m just going to talk about the basic formulas and numbers you will need to know if you’re making money or just wasting your time chasing a dream! I also will try and help you measure how well you are doing by giving you some markers to aim for.

      Theses are the metrics that measure the basic raw numbers you will have to know about your site to help you really gain a better perspective on how achievable your goals will be.

      • Total Revenue Generated – This is the total amount of money generated from all your revenue sources (Adsense, Adbrite, Amazon Associates, eBay Auction Affiliates, etc.)
      • Total Costs – This is all the money you spent on advertising for your website.
      • Total Visitors – The Number of People who actually visited your blog
      • Total Page Views aka Impressions – The Number of Pages viewed by your visitors

      Next, we will look at simple formulas you can use to measure the success of your site. Try and do this on a monthly basis so that you should have enough traffic and revenue to truly gauge the financial health of your site.

      Total Revenue / Total Visitors = A
      Total Costs / Total Visitors = B
      then
      Gross Margin = (A – B) / A

      • If your Gross Margin is 0% or below, that means there’s a lot of changes that need to be made to your site, since you’re either breaking even or losing money on your investments.
      • If your Gross Margin is between 0-30%, you probably need to do just a little bit of tweaking, since 0-30% means you’re making Zero to $0.30 for every dollar you spend.
      • If you’re Gross Margin is more than 30%, you’ve done a good job placing your advertisements in the right spots, so just ramp up the traffic.

      It doesn’t get anymore basic than this and yes – you can apply this formula of Gross Margin to other aspects of your business to help you make the right decision 99% of the time. Unfortunately, I will have to cover that in another post as there are many more metrics to consider dependent of what you would like to measure.

       

      • More Merchant.com 10.11 am on 10.03.2007 Permalink

        Wow this is a similar article that I have read recently. ;)

        Much better written from Mr. Gary Lee.

      • lyndonmaxewell 6.21 pm on 10.03.2007 Permalink

        I guess you have to include the opportunity cost for the valuable time spent on blogging. Not only the net value obtained must be positive, it must be considerably More valued than what you are doing elsewhere, or any other alternatives.

      • danielle 10.12 pm on 11.03.2007 Permalink

        how do i know i’m lame? i had a conversation with sam on saturday night at 3am pretty much going over the SAME information. jeez, stop me gare, please!

      • Starfeeder 10.47 pm on 20.08.2007 Permalink

        good post

    • Gary Lee 12.02 pm on 09.03.2007 Permalink  

      Getting Approved on ReviewMe 

      Some of you may have noticed that I updated the site a little bit. I’ve been keeping track of how some of my ads are doing and to tell you the truth, the Amazon banner below each post wasn’t doing so hot (only 12 clicks) and the Adbrite Skyscraper on the right (you know, the one that kept on promoting hairgrowth got 2 clicks) pretty much sucked. Considering that a lot of my traffic is coming from my Name is My Domain promotion, I decided to put a domain registration banner I got from commission junction. We’ll see how that does and I’ll report back to you in a couple of weeks.

      Also, I have been approvided for a ReviewMe account. I remember checking this out before and John Chow has mentioned it as one of his Evil Blog Promotion Ideas, but I couldn’t apply because of my low traffic and rankings. Well, it’s a new day and I was approved today. My going rate is $60 bucks, which means I pocket $30 bucks, so does anyone need a review? =)

       

      • Hannes 12.33 pm on 09.03.2007 Permalink

        Cool – congrats.

        I tried submitting my new blog (Hannes Johnson dot Com) but they wouldn’t accept it because it was brand new. Maybe I should try resubmitting it…

      • My New Choice 12.35 pm on 09.03.2007 Permalink

        Congrats on the ReviewMe approval! One suggestion for you on the Google ad block in this post would be to make the background color match the rest of your page.

        One of the best tips I used on the Google ads is to make them blend into the site as much as possible. Of course if you are getting good clicks on those now then maybe just leave it alone.

      • Hannes Johnson 1.00 pm on 09.03.2007 Permalink

        Cool – congrats.

        I tried submitting my new blog but they wouldn’t accept it because it was brand new. Maybe I should try resubmitting it…

      • Gary Lee 1.31 pm on 09.03.2007 Permalink

        Just changed it! Great suggestion as Hannes just told me the same thing over MSN. I’ll let you know how the performance has changed.

      • More Merchant 2.31 pm on 09.03.2007 Permalink

        Congrats on the Review ME! It is a new day isn’t it? For so many people, the internet has been amazing.

        Can you do me a favor? I would like to hear what you have to say on a blog post.
        http://moremerchant.com/09/how-easy-is-blogging/

        Thanks.

      • lyndonmaxewell 11.21 pm on 09.03.2007 Permalink

        I guess what they are looking for are good alexa and technorati rankings.

      • danielle 10.06 pm on 11.03.2007 Permalink

        hiiiiiy fiiiiiiiyvve!!!!

      • Matthew 9.43 am on 12.03.2007 Permalink

        Nice idea about the domain affiliate.

        We still need 10 reviews on our site :)

      • Matthew 9.44 am on 12.03.2007 Permalink

        it took us a while to get on review me

    • Gary Lee 3.40 pm on 08.03.2007 Permalink  

      Name is My Domain – The Day After Yesterday 

      Yesterday at about 3pm (before John Chow posted my Name in My Domain Link on his site), my T-Rankings were at about 87k, which I thought was a pretty modest number for my 20 day old blog. I was curious to see how my evil blog promotion idea affected my traffic and my rankings, so I checked again this morning – steady 87k. No big deal since my comments and traffic were at all time highs and I was getting messages from authors of a lot of blogs I have been reading the past few weeks. Well, it’s about 3:30p and I just got back from lunch. I go to Technorati cuz I’m stuffed and can’t really think straight and I see this:

      technorati33k.png

      As you can probably tell, I’m ecstatic and can’t wait to keep on working on my blog to make it better and better. Thanks to everyone for participating on the list. I’ve really discovered a bunch of new blogs and bloggers with the power of this list. Hope to hear from a lot of you soon! If you don’t have your name in your domain yet, click on the GoDaddy links below – they’re only $1.99!

       

      • dan1el 6.30 pm on 08.03.2007 Permalink

        This makes me wish my name was in my domain. Congrats on the jump on Technorati.

      • My New Choice 4.25 am on 09.03.2007 Permalink

        Great job Gary! I’ve been inspired to get a new site going with my name as the domain. Once I have a chance to get the site configured and a few posts under my belt, I will be jumping on the name train.

      • Nathan Drach 7.13 am on 09.03.2007 Permalink

        Have seen a large jump in backlinks, a little in traffic.

        Just finally got my site into technorati last week so not much of a change yet.

      • lyndonmaxewell 8.03 am on 09.03.2007 Permalink

        Wished I could have my name for the domain name as well. Sigh.. :) Oh wells, that’s some real evil working plan!

      • Hannes Johnson 10.57 am on 09.03.2007 Permalink

        Congratulations on this evil link scheme :)

        …and thanks for including me in the original list. I’ve gotten links from all kinds of blogs. I was actually just checking my Technorati ranking and I’m #34,562 – quite a jump from 100,000+
        – that’s definitely something to celebrate ;)

      • Gary Lee 11.07 am on 09.03.2007 Permalink

        No problem Hannes! I wanted to find a way to thank you and the rest of the few bloggers who actually first started to visit and comment on my site. I was just lucky enough that this way worked for all of us!

      • Gary Lee 11.09 am on 09.03.2007 Permalink

        can’t wait to see it! I’ve gotten a bunch of emails telling me they’re going to do the same!

      • Chris 11.09 am on 10.03.2007 Permalink

        It was a good idea, I’m not surprised it worked! I put it on my blog too :P

    • Gary Lee 1.19 am on 08.03.2007 Permalink  

      Content is Great but a Useful Site is Better 

      Every blog you read about building a great website will tell you that “Content is King,” but have you ever thought about why content is so important? Of course content can get you indexed on Google and you’ll get more traffic that way, but when visitors finally make it to your site, you want to make sure they’ve gotten something from your site. Basically, I’m going to tell you about how to make your website more useful.

      1) Create an Easy way for Visitors to Get Around the Site

      When you first design your site or if you’re getting around to a redesign, remember to look at it from a visitor’s point of view. Place menu/navigation bars where they are easy to see and use. Go through your site and make sure you don’t have any pages where the menu is not accessible. Also, remember that people might think differently from you, so you want to create as many options as possible to help them navigate through your site. Useful pages would be a Table of Contents Page or a Sitemap page that lists every page you’ve created on your site. Another piece of advice I got from my designer is to place text based links near the top of your page for your slower loading surfers.

      2) Don’t use too much Flash or Fancy Banners

      I just had a client that asked me to create a simple website for them that lists the kind of services she provides along with the prices. The only problem was she wanted it all in flash including a fancy 15 second flash intro. I had to really explain to her that even though it’s nice eye candy, those fancy animations don’t get indexed by search engines and usually serve no purpose to your visitors.

      3) Make sure your site is Compatible with Internet Explorer and Firefox.

      To be honest, if you still use Internet Explorer, please save yourself some money on advil and go download Firefox – it’s better. Trust me! Even with that helpful hint, we all know that Internet explorer is still used by about 70% of the internet users in the world, so considering that’s a big chunk, just make sure that your site looks the same on both browsers. You don’t want to lose potential customers just because you didn’t want to double check.

      4) Once you finalized a layout, stick with it.

      The reason you don’t want to change your site too much is to make sure your repeat visitors don’t have to learn a whole new navigation process for your site.

      5) Link More than One Word when linking within your content

      By linking a phrase as oppose to a word, you are in a sense providing more landing space for your visitor to click on the mouse. I’ve watched my mom work the mouse before and it’s painful to see her aim that thing for one word links. For SEO purposes, if you link the write phrase, it also strengthens those keyword when getting indexed.

      These tools are easy steps you should take to ensure a more pleasurable and useful site experience. If you have any other tips, please feel free to share them.

       

      • lyndonmaxewell 8.59 am on 08.03.2007 Permalink

        I like the points that you have mentioned, especially the fifth one. Not many people take notice of it much, and it is sometimes easy to miss the link if the word is pretty short.

        I do miss links at times as I scan through articles quickly.

    • Gary Lee 10.15 am on 27.02.2007 Permalink  

      Protect Yourself & Surf Wisely 

      Courtesy of ShoeMoney.com, I would like to go over the step by step how to start giving yourself a higher quality web surfing experience.

      Programs Needed – FireFox

      Phase I – Install Firefox

      1. Double Click Firefox Installation Icon
      2. Follow Installation Wizard
      3. Transfer Bookmarks if Necessary
      4. Start Surfing
      Phase II – Uninstall Internet Explorer

      1. Go to Control Panel
      2. Click Add or Remove Programs
      3. Click Show Updates checkbox
      4. Click whatever version of IE7 you have. For example “Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview”
      5. Click the Change/Remove button

      Other Hints:

      • Don’t Open Files from Unsolicited Emails on both your Offline and Online Programs (Outlook, Mail, Hotmail.com, GMail.com, Yahoo Mail)
      • Use Tab-Browsing on Firefox – Control-T (PC) & Apple-T (Mac)
      • Organize your Bookmarks into Correct Folders
      • Download & Install GoogleSync so you can always have your Settings, Bookmarks and Passwords available for every computer you use.
       

      • danielle 4.02 pm on 27.02.2007 Permalink

        hahahaha!! “uninstall internet explorer”

        i love it!

      • Nathan Drach 7.11 am on 28.02.2007 Permalink

        Uninstall Internet Explorer, not sure how that will help anything. Mind giving any statistics as to how this will help.

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