The iPhone 3G is the smartphone I have been waiting for. I am now waiting for Singtel to announce iPhone 3G availabilty in Singapore, hopefully by early July.

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Does website hosted with GooglePages get indexed quicker and also ranked higher? I don’t think so. I have a couple of GooglePages websies:

http://mywebculture.googlepages.com

and

http://shihengcheong.googlepages.com

and they never got indexed and ranked. Maybe they will get indexed now that I put the links here. Anyway, if you think Google give preferential treatment to pages hosted in their websites then other search engines such as Yahoo and MSN might just blacklist these pages or keep them in the sandbox longer!

Ultimately, I believe you still have to following recommended webmasters’ guidelines and proper SEO practices to get your web pages do well in the SERP.

As for the above 2 websites, they are sub-domains of GooglePages.com and no matter high well ranked the GooglePages.com is, it has nothing to do with the sub-domains unless there is linking between these pages withing these websites.

I modified the template and made it more SEO friendly. There is the description tag in every post also the tag title is one of a kind - optimized but not too aggressively. I link Singapore Blog by a Singapore Blogger to a couple my other blogs using fancy colorful chicklets.

I also made a new post on STOMP website and how SPH (Singapore Press Holding) was using woman and girls in bikini to drive traffic. You can see colorful photos of half naked girls in nearly every other pages of the national newspaper.

At_A_Glance

• Modified blogspot template
• Added links to a couple of my other blogs using chicklet
• Made a new post on STOMP and bikini girls ad in the Straits Times

Many have asked me how do I measure the success of a website. You will probably agree that it depends. It depends what you want to achieve with the website in the first place.

Ok, ok… Make Money Right? Most of us build websites to make money. And if that is the case, it’ll be easy to measure success. You would set a target as to how much you want to make with a website right at the beginning. No? Most of us do not have the slightest idea how to build a money making website so I understand why we did not set a monetary target in the first place. Otherwise, it would be a lame reply… “As much as possible!”.

If you make more money than you initially invested, you’ll be in profit. Typically, a DIY website would cost you less than $100 to set up and maintain for a year or even two. So if you make $100 in the first year, you break even. If you make $100 every month from the 6th month onward you are doing really well. So build 20 such websites and you could probably tell your boss you don’t really need that job!

But do you know…

• How to make $100 per month with a website?
• What do you sell to make money?
• How much traffic do you need to make that monthly cheque?

It is true that your website revenue depends on the number and quality of visitors to your website regardless of what you sell - hard goods, e-products, subscription or advertising space (e.g. Google Adsense).

One of the easiest ways to monetize your traffic is to put up Google Ads by registering to be an Adsense publisher. Content website is probably where Google wants the ads to appear so you will need unique and useful content. You will need to optimize each of your web page for search engine so that you will get free traffic from Google, Yahoo, MSN and etc.

So you can see that the success of a website is a function of visitor traffic. Now, let’s determine how much traffic you’ll need to make a $100 cheque every month. We shall take the example of an Adsense publisher. Since you are a new publisher, let’s target less competitive keywords which you can still get ranked in the top 3 pages with proper SEO techniques. Each click will probably earn you $0.10 or less. You will need at least 1000 clicks to earn a $100 cheque. That will work to 33 clicks every day. If 5 out of 100 visitors click at one ad, you will need more than 650 visitors to your website every day. And that’s a lot of traffic for a new website for a newbie publisher!

If your website is not already generating 500 unique visitors a day then you’ll have to

1. Add more content to target more keywords.
2. Promote your website by submitting articles and press release.
3. Solicit backlinks by submitting to directories and other related websites.
4. Rewriting your content to make it search engine friendly and interesting to your readers.

Finally, one more tip for you to find out if your content is liked by your visitors. Go check you server log and see how many people bookmarked your website - people usually bookmark a website when they find it interesting and useful. You should have at least 30% of your visitors bookmarked your website.
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Google is number 1 and more and more people are using Google - the search engine of choice for nearly half the Internet search population. According to a report on Yahoo! (please see below report), Google’s market share increased by about 6 percentage point while Yahoo and MSN dropped. At the rate Google is growing, 50% is within reach by the end of this year. Google should be taking advantage Microsoft delay in launching of Windows Vista to gain more market and strengthen it’s grip in the search market.

Let’s face it, Google is bigger than Yahoo and MSN combined - that is to say even if Bill Gates were to buy over Yahoo search, MSN can only be number 2. So it’s time to consider seriously just optimizing for Google instead of wasting time on the rest of the search engines for they may never catch up!

Google Shores Up Search
Tuesday March 28, 1:57 pm ET
By Alyce Lomax

Despite rivals’ best efforts, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG - News) has increased its share of the search market, widening its lead in the space. It’s clear that Google has made itself the brand in search…

According to ComScore data for February, Google increased its market share to 42.3%, from 36.3% on a year-over-year basis. High-profile rivals Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO - News) and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT - News) both dipped. Yahoo!’s search share fell to 27.6% from 31.1%, while MSN’s share dropped to 13.5% from 16.3%. In an interesting aside, IAC/InterActiveCorp.’s (Nasdaq: IACI - News) Ask.com increased to 6% from 5.3%. (Ask.com recently dropped long-time gentleman’s gentleman Jeeves and has embarked on a TV ad campaign entreating folks to give its search tools a whirl.)

As for Microsoft, I have no comment — well, other than the fact that I’ve made it clear in the past that I’m a bear, so why beat a dead horse. Although I have colleagues who think highly of Microsoft’s efforts to step up its search features, its rep for being an innovator — or even for being particularly on time with its products — isn’t too hot. Needless to say, the Vista delay hasn’t helped in that department.

Found an article on Google Sandbox Effect very interesting and useful. The author first explained what’s Google Sandbox and verified its existence - there are still many webmasters not willing to believe that their websites can be “locked up” for 3 months or more. To the knowing webmasters, the Google Sandbox has been a bane to their effort in SEO and gaining better search engines visibility.

Well, help is here. The article described 10 methods to help you avoid the sandbox effect though some of the method may be considered as blackhat tactics**.

1. Buy out old domains - typically a year is good age to ensure a domain is sandbox free
2. Buy recently expired domains - expired domains can avoid a fresh sandbox cycle
3. Collect the low hanging fruit - large quantities of low traffic terms can be just as rewarding
4. Buy your way in - consider doing PPC campaign for your targeted terms
5. Use subdomain from developed site - host your new site on a subdomain of an already established domain
6. Acquire “trusted” links - acquire high quality authoritative backlinks e.g. DMOZ.org
7. Explore non-Google traffic sources - learn to survive without being at the whim of GG
8. Drag your competitors down to your level**
9. Hijack your competitors rankings**
10. Perhaps you aren’t sandboxed after all - it is possible that you aren’t sandboxed but simply suffering the effect of a very ineffective web page design in terms of SEO

Read the full article here.

Since we are still on the topic of writing search engine optimized articles for better SE visibility, I would recommend that you take a look at a series of articles on Singapore shopping. Several weeks ago, if you checked my previous post, I discussed about Singapore targeted traffic. Just to recap, I mentioned that I observed an increase in the number of visitors from Singapore - thanks to sg.yahoo.com and msn.com - over the past 12 months to my Singapore related websites.

Now back to the articles, I commissioned a freelance writer based in Singapore to write 20 shopping related articles. I selected the keywords using Overture keyword tools, so these are not particularly great niche keywords but highly competitive keywords. I just want to see how will these pages performed.

I must admit I am quite impressed by the articles. The writer is familiar with the shopping locations in Singapore and gives good tips to those who like to have a shopping spree in Singapore. So go take a look while they’re still fresh.

Google updated the PR rating for all websites last week. Some of my websites PR have improved, most remain the same. My web hosting and search marketing website http://www.mywebculture.com is now rated PR4 - many of the internal pages are PR 3 and some even PR4. I believe the constant adding of new pages to the website has helped in the improvement of the PR rating. Hey, do you have an article on web promotion or search marketing? Submit to my Web Marketing articles archive and possibly get a PR3 link from my website.

So, if you want your website to be recognised by Google, make sure you constantly add good quality content. Otherwise, Google will mothball your website! especially if you do not already command good traffic.

You can install the Google Toolbar to display the PR rating of your website or go to this page:

http://www.prchecker.info

Now, let’s talked about the 4 websites put up by our Internet Marketing in Action Workshop participants back in August. Both the blog sites and the mini sites have PR1 showing that Google has visited your web pages and approved of the content. However, except for Tigercrab’s HYIP blog, the other 2 websites are dormant - no new content and very little traffic. Alas! How to make money with your website if no people come visiting…

Now that Google has ranked your web page, it is time to put in some effort and add more content to attract traffic and links from other people websites. Do not let your time and effort spent at the workshop go to waste. Let me know how I can help.

To see the above blogs and websites, please go to

Internet-Marketing-in-Action-Workshop.html

Before I go, do you know Jolly’s blog, http://internetmarketinginaction.blogspot.com had been promoted to PR2. He’s definitely doing the right thing.

Actually it is not so much a secret. Many Internet marketers use this technique to their online increase sales. In marketing jargons, it’s known as Tie-Downs. It takes lots of practice to refine this art in your sales copy - unless you can pay a top copywriter to do that for you. Anyhow, here’s new article by Mike Adams that discuss the topic…

An Internet Marketing Secret: Using Tie-Downs to Increase Sales

If you could get your prospective customers nodding their heads in agreement with every major point in your sales copy, that would be likely to increase your sales, wouldn’t it?

If you could get people saying ‘yes’ to almost any marketing statement of your choosing - long before they even get to the close - that would be valuable to you, right?

Did you find yourself agreeing with the last two questions? You’ve just experienced a sales technique called ‘tie-downs.’ One very old direct sales principle is to get people to say yes to multiple little questions. This gets them agreeing with you and also gets them used to saying yes. Psychologically, they will then be more likely to say yes when you ask for the sale. One sales technique for achieving that is the tie-down.

Why use a technique from direct sales in direct marketing? In a famous advertising and marketing story, Albert Lasker was a junior partner at the Lord and Thomas advertising agency in 1905 when he read a note from John E. Kennedy declaring that Kennedy knew the secret of what advertising is. Kennedy, a former Canadian mounted policeman, was new to copywriting and not yet known in advertising circles. But by an interesting quirk of fate, this was the question Lasker had been trying to figure out. Lasker met Kennedy, and Kennedy declared that the secret is, ‘Advertising is salesmanship in print.’ Lasker and Kennedy went on to revolutionize advertising and marketing forever with those words, and Lord and Thomas became one of the most famous advertising agencies of the day.

No matter how many people are visiting your website and reading your marketing material, you are still talking to only one person at a time. You are still selling one person. This sounds like a simple concept, but many advertising and marketing people still don’t get this secret. That means that if you understand this, you have an advantage in Internet marketing. You understand that advertising is salesmanship in print. And you know that you just need to talk with this one person and get their agreement to purchase your product. And with the power of the Internet, you can do this with dozens, hundreds, even thousands per day.

Tie-downs are one of the first tools to add to your new salesmanship toolbox. A tie-down is a short phrase that can be added to a statement to turn it into a question. You use a tie-down to turn a point that you want to make into a question that your prospect will agree with. It’s one way of getting your prospective customer to start saying yes long before you go for the close.

A few examples of common tie-downs include:

Isn’t it?
Wouldn’t it?
Wouldn’t they?
Wouldn’t you?
Aren’t they?
Aren’t you?
Wouldn’t you agree?
Don’t you agree?
Can’t you?
Couldn’t it?
Doesn’t it?
Right?

If you have been marketing for very long, you have heard about the concept of ‘features versus benefits.’ Features are what your product has or does. Benefits are why your prospective customer would want those features. What will your product do for them? For example, if you have something that is metal instead of plastic, metal might be a feature. But the benefit might be that it is more durable, longer-lasting, or unbreakable.

A common practice on web pages that are written as sales letters is to use a bullet list to present features or benefits. Let’s just imagine a couple bullet points for some imaginary ‘tie-down creator’ software. Most people would write the bullets as features. A couple features might look like this:

- Creates tie-downs automatically
- Adds tie-downs to the end of every statement in a list of statements

Not very exciting bullets, are they? (Wow… there’s an example of a tie-down that I want you to say ‘no’ to!)

Now let’s imagine how someone might write a couple bullets as benefits:

- Get your prospective customers nodding their heads in agreement with every major point in your sales copy!
- Get a prospect to say ‘yes’ to almost any marketing statement of your choosing - long before you get to the close!

That’s an improvement over writing the marketing bullets as features, isn’t it? But although that might get their interest and even get them thinking of how they could use the product, it doesn’t build agreement yet. Let’s try wording them a little differently:

- If you could get your prospective customers nodding their heads in agreement with every major point in your sales copy, that would be likely to increase your sales, wouldn’t it?
- If you could get people saying ‘yes’ to almost any marketing statement of your choosing - long before they even get to the close - that would be valuable to you, right?

Would you agree those bullets do a better job of building both interest and agreement? (And did you catch that example of a tie-down at the beginning of a sentence?)

Now for your homework. It’s time to go look at your website with a critical eye, while this article is still fresh in your mind. Are you selling features or benefits? Are you using tie-downs on marketing statements where they would help build agreement that will lead to sales? If not, you know what you need to do!

About the Author
Mike Adams has been building web sites and playing with Internet marketing since 1996. Visit his site for Internet marketing tips, tools, news, articles, and resources: www.timberway.com

I have been using Netfirms for several years now. One of the first website that I built was a GPS Land Surveying website, Geo.Netfirms.com. It was not until last year that I really put up some useful content. Of course, I also optimized it for major search engines, e.g. Google, Yahoo! Search and MSN Search. Since then, traffic to this website has been increasing.

Yesterday, I revamped the website and added a land surveying directory. With this directory, I hope to generate even more traffic to the website. My maxim for search engine optimization and targeted traffic - “Traffic Grows, Money Flows”. I have Amazon affiliate ads on each of the web pages. As this is a site on GPS and land surveying, the more appropriate products to recommend to my visitors will be handheld GPS by Garmin and Magellan.

Summer is here and more people will be engaging outdoor activities, such as hiking and boating, which could lead to an increase in the demand for handheld and portable GPS units.