James Hume - Entrepreneur Blog

I plan to make this a short post, however we’ll see how that works out. Today I’m just going to go over each project in my network and tell you guys about the goals and plans I have setup for each site. Lets start off with my first site (since my return into the web game that is), BuyShotGlasses.

BuyShotGlasses.com

This site has been pretty busy lately. Google and Yahoo have been crawling all over here, and picking up traces of the site throughout the web (backlinks hooray!). I recently completed a 100 social bookmarking link campaign (well I outsourced it) and a day after it was done I started to see backlinks appear in Yahoo. The site originally ranked for the keyword ‘buy shot glasses’ at #8, but it is now at #3 with only 2 additional backlinks (10 total). I expect it to shortly rank #1 for the term, however it won’t bring in much traffic. EDIT: It now ranks at #2 for the term ‘buy shot glasses’. To bad it only gets like 5 searches a day…

I’m trying to rank for more competitive keywords that should hopefully bring in around 50-75 visitors per day when it is all said and done. And that is my goal, to at least attain 50 visitors a day. Sadly, thats as far as the shot glass niche will go. I don’t expect this site to earn more than $1 or $2 per day, so optimizing the site for the traffic is key. I’m pretty sure I can attain this, however it won’t be easy.

Coupon.nu

My coupon site is coming together well. I’m currently at my favorite coffee shop working on the site (using my blog as a break, as always) and I’m going to try and put in a good 5 hours before work. So far I have most of the sales front complete, however I plan on getting some more content for the SERPs before I leave. I’m having some issues with how phpBay is displaying the auction feed. It currently isn’t displaying dollar or percent signs, which is crucial for the niche.

I have so far surpassed all of my goals for the site as outlined in my last post. I finished keyword research in one day instead of 3, and I have 14 pages of content up instead of 8. A good rule of thumb is that if you find yourself meeting or surpassing your goals, is that its time to setup new ones and raise the bar. So, here are my new goals:

• Have the site indexed by the end of the week
• Have 30 pages of content total by the end of the week
• Begin attaining backlinks next week
• Start ranking for keywords by the end of next week

The last goal is going to be extremely hard, but hopefully I can end up somewhere in the SERPs for one of my keywords in 2 weeks. If I do, I’ll share the details.

NissanGT-R.org and LexusLF-A.net

I haven’t done much with these sites lately. I’m thinking about changing things up with them; instead of making them blogs that take a lot of time to maintain and don’t really earn that much, I’ll just build them into mini niche sites.

And to be off topic for a second, I’ll write a post in the upcoming week about why I think blogging for bucks is dying. 

I’ll be using wordpress as my CMS (like I do with all of my sites) however instead of having to update them every day, I’ll just write 15 or so pages of content and focus on SEO work. I’ll try and rank for some decent longtails, and throw up some Adsense. I’ll be happy if I can get a few dollars per day out of them.

Editorialize.org

Editorialize as been put on the back burner. I don’t own the domain (its complicated) but I may be able to purchase it from him. I basically used it for an educational case study at Wickedfire to try and earn some money on the web. Basically this guy Mike (SEO_Mike on the forums) setup a little case study to help noobs earn money online. I don’t consider myself a noobie, however I’m not a pro either. I sat around and waited, and nobody claimed the domain. So I went ahead a snatched it. The agreement was that if you earn money with it, you can buy it. Well I haven’t earned anything yet, but I might be able to. We’ll see.

The Etcetera Part

I’m going to try and index my Coupons site just by linking to it on my blog. Lets see how often Google really crawls my site. If the big G does, then I should be able to index at least the homepage just by linking to it. Just a little experiment. 

In other news, I’m really finding it refreshing getting out of the ‘office’ (my bedroom) and working in other environments. Whenever my father gets home from work (I need to move out) he sometimes works on his laptop in the dining room. I’ll join him every now and then. His giant Toshiba laptop towers over my MacBook Pro, however he can’t beat the simplicity of my laptop, which by the way I love. I’m so glad I switched from PC to Mac. I feel like I’m much more productive these days.

And I guess I did it again by writing to much. Maybe I’ll do another video blog update some day, but not as long as I’m working outside of the confines of my bedroom. People might think I’m crazy or something. Well see you guys later, and don’t forget to leave a comment or two. It helps knowing people actually read my ramblings haha.