Have you ever noticed that a lot of bloggers seem to be doing a lot of brainless things on their website? I mean, I’ve surfed a lot and seen many different sites, but only a few of them stand out and hit me as blogs that try to do something different. I’d say that a vast majority of the blogs I read are cookie cutter blogs; they have some generic blog template serving up some affiliate ads on the right. They’re clogged with widgets, gadgets, and 3rd party bells and whistles that detract from the content of the blog.

The first thing I wanted to do when I started blogging was to develop my own Wordpress blog template. I knew nothing about doing this kind of thing before November and today I would like to think that given a bit more artistic talent, I could start a Wordpress theme design company. I can take any template and break it up into a Wordpress theme. Not only does a self-made Wordpress template help you to stand out from the crowd but it also adds a nice level of individuality to your blog. I also get the satisfaction of knowing the my blog template is unique and nobody else has this template. I’m not bragging about my template…I know I am no artistic genius, but I like what I see and am satisfied with my work. When people come to this blog, I hope they recognize that this is not a run of the mill, flight by night kind of blog.

Another thing that instantly turns me off to a blog while browsing the Internet is the use of 3rd party plugins. I currently use 3 of them on my site; one of which I think will be gone soon. Some websites that I see, however, take what seems like 5 minutes to load. When all I want to do is read a certain article, I often end up closing the blog before it even loads because these gadgets take so long to load. There are blogs that probably only get 10 hits per day and they load up all kinds of widgets in the hopes of making money online. For those blogs out there, hear me: get the traffic first, then add the monetizing widgets. You can’t make money if people close your blog before it even loads.

As a rule of thumb, I think of my users before setting out a new design for the blog or before adding anything to the site. Is your blog ready for new things? Do you want people to remember your blog as a good one? Then don’t do what everyone else is doing! Think outside of the box and do something different. Don’t bog down your blog with useless widgets. Make your user’s experience memorable. Want your own Wordpress template? Stay tuned to this site and learn! In the coming posts I will show you, step by step, how to create your own Wordpress template from scratch.

Yesterday, an AP story started out like this:

“WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI acknowledged it improperly accessed Americans’ telephone records, credit reports and Internet traffic in 2006, the fourth straight year of privacy abuses resulting from investigations aimed at tracking terrorists and spies.”

I don’t know about you, but I like my privacy…or at least the perception of privacy. I don’t have anything to hide but I still would like to feel like nobody is looking into my business. With so many privacy breaches occurring these last few years, it is as though our privacy has been thrown out the window. Most of the times, the claim is that our privacy has been violated to help win “the war on terror” (think: unlawful wiretaps, etc…), but to me it feels more like it’s been breached because the policies that do exist were created for a different time and are very outdated. Policies need to change from the ground up, and this means stepping on some toes and laying down a well defined line of what things are acceptable and what things aren’t acceptable.

Do you like your privacy being invaded like this? Read this article and tell me what you think.

It still amazes me how few people actually understand the principle of eBay. You’d think that by now everyone would know how to use eBay properly, wouldn’t you? If that’s the case, how come auctions get botched up and prices get driven through the roof due to bad eBayers?

Especially when talking about technology, eBay is (or used to be?) a prime marketplace to find great deals on good technology. However, as of late, the number of bad bidders and overpriced goods on eBay has caused me to look elsewhere for my tech needs. Firstly, it seems as though buyers don’t do research before bidding. Secondly, sellers are taking advantage of this and really marking up the price of new, refurbished, and used goods. As for me, I don’t like to pay more than retail price for used goods, so I haven’t used eBay in a while when buying electronics.

I am writing this article in the hopes that people will learn some of the finer points of using eBay. If you follow the steps listed below, you will not only be able to find the products you are looking for but you will also know what the “going rates” are for these products so that you know what you should pay, and you will learn a few tips on how you can save money by using eBay.

Do Your Research

Spending money on eBay is easy. Too easy, some will say. However, anybody who is buying anything on eBay should go in to an auction knowing what a fair price is for the certain product they want to buy. It doesn’t make sense to pay sticker price (sometimes people pay even more than sticker!) for something on eBay. It makes even less sense to pay full price for something that’s used or refurbished. So, how should you know what to pay for something? Easy. Let’s say you are looking for a USB turntable. Specifically, the ION iTTUSB turntable.

• Check Amazon’s price. Go to Amazon.com and search for the item you want. Chances are you’ll find a variety of goods in varying quantities. For example, check out this turntable (click to make it big):
  
  You can get it new for $109.97, but used from $87.73. Does it make sense to pay more than this from eBay? No, it doesn’t.
• Check Google’s price. Likewise, check out Google’s search results and click on “shopping” at the top of the page. You’ll see a listing similar to this:
  
  You can see that even Google finds deals for under $107. Does it make sense to pay more than $107 on eBay? No, it doesn’t.
• Check eBay auctions have gone for in the past. Now head on over to eBay’s site and do a search for the item you’re looking for, but before you click “search”, click on “advanced search”. You’ll see an option that lets you select “Completed listings only”. This means that your search results will only include those auctions that have already ended. You’ll have to log on to see the results, but it’s worth your keystrokes. You’ll get to see what others have recently paid for this item and you can know what to you should expect to pay for this item on eBay.
  After running this search, I see that people have paid roughly $89 and got free shipping for this item. So, in this case, buying this turntable on eBay is a good investment.

Ok, now you’re done with step 1. You know that it’s a good idea to buy a certain item on eBay. Now you MUST learn how to bid properly on eBay. You can’t just go into the auction when there are 6 days left, enter $89 and assume you’ve won the auction. If you do this, chances are almost 100% that you’ll enter into a bidding war and end up overpaying for the item. You need to learn the art of patience, aka “Snipping”. The fewer people that bid on an auction prior to its end, the lower that the item’s final price will be. So sit back, add that auction to your favorites, and check back when there are roughly 2 hours left for the auction. Don’t bid yet, either. Enter your bid with less than 30 seconds to go in the auction and your win is almost certain.

Now you know the proper way to eBay. Go on and start researching. Find those hot items and get them at a discount, but remember to do your research and most importantly, be patient with your bidding!

Like any business, the chances that you will succeed at getting paid to blog is very small if you don’t know what you’re doing.  And chances are, you don’t know what you’re doing. Even though blogging is easy enough for anyone to do, it’s not easy to do it right and even more difficult to succeed in a competitive niche such as “making money online” blogs. John Chow, Darren Rowse from Problogger, “Shoemoney” and other super bloggers have worked hard to get where they are in status and success, but when looking at their sites from the outside it’s hard to tell how much hard work they’ve done in building their blog to achieve their current levels of success. This gap between their hard work and our perception of their hard work is what draws the masses to start blogging, but the odds are that you haven’t worked nearly as hard and won’t work that hard in the future either, and that’s why you’ll fail at blogging.

Here’s the good news: You can succeed if you really want to. If you really really want to, you too can be a successful blogger but it won’t be easy. You’ll have to posses certain qualities in order win at this game, and I’m going to show you how to do it.

Build Relationships

If you’re a blogger, chances are you know of other blogs in your niche. You have your favorite blogs and know who your favorite bloggers are. You know what they write about, you know what you like and you know what you don’t like.  If you’re a good blogger and want to be successful, you need to build a relationship with these bloggers.  Send them an email and introduce yourself.  Participate in discussions with them on blogger forums.  Kiss up a little bit.  Swallow your pride if you have to.  These bloggers are people just like you and welcome communication with fans and people from that admire their work.  Get to a point where you feel comfortable with your writing and then ask them to do a guest post.  Keep in touch with them and maybe they’ll share the love with you. A guest post is a great way to build an audience and in the long run, your relationship with the bigger bloggers will only serve to strengthen your blog.

Don’t be Stuck Up

As a newbie blogger, you are already fighting an uphill battle. There are countless other bloggers just like you, likely talking about the very same things. If you come off as a stuck up blogger right from the start, then chances are your readership will flatline in no time and you might as well pack up quit blogging. Nobody wants to read from a newbie blogger who sounds stuck up and has no credibility to back their words. If you are going to be controversial and challenge your readers, you need to first prove yourself by providing real content and value to your readers. They are the ones to whom you need to cater. You need to have a helpful attitude, treat your readers like you really want them to be there, and make sure to cater your posts to your audience based on post comments and feedback they provide you. Keep your ears up and listen to what your audience has to say…without an audience you will be failing fast!

Stick to it!

Finally, the last thing you can do (and in my opinion, probably the most important) is to keep blogging. Even if your blog starts off slow. Even if you haven’t been able to meet a lot of other bloggers. Even if you get criticism from your readers. Keep doing it. This is the reasons why so many blogs just die. The author will get tired of writing and will stop at some point. When they get back to it they’ll notice that their audience has dwindled and their influence has gone down the drain. They’ll then notice that getting back into the swing of things will be more difficult than they expected so they’ll just give up. If you really want to make in blogging, then you’ll never give up. Don’t quit typing. Set a schedule and stick to it. Make yourself goals; be it a number of posts per week or a number of of people to contact. Keep your list of goals visible and handy, and keep yourself accountable.

This article was meant to give you a scare and a jolt. I wanted to write an article that would make you to realize that blogging is getting to be big business. There are millions of ad dollars to be made every year and you should realize right now, that blogging is a business. You have to have a certain entrepreneurial spirit, competitive drive, and “stick-to-it-iveness” in order to grab a piece of the advertising dollar pie. Do you have what it takes? Will your blog be around in a year? If you build it, they will come. But if you build it right, so will the advertisers.

I’m a big fan of Matt Cutts, Google’s anti-SPAM czar. Matt is the man in charge of Google’s Webspam team and he often expresses his opinions along with helpful hints and tips on his blog. In addition to being a friendly blogger and conference speaker, Matt often posts nuggets that help us “ordinary” folks better understand Google’s algorithm and figure out how to work with the Googlebot.

Working with Google and doing our best to give it the kinds of information it wants is probably the best way to perform well in Google’s search results. While I (at times) applaud Google for their work, I often feel as though so much more could be done to help people work better with it. They’re not very specific but at the same time they provide a lot of information to help newbies create crawlable content.

It’s clear to me that there are 2 sides to Google: The search side and what I call the “show” side. The search side is self explanatory. That’s the part of the site where millions of people go to every day and look for webpages and information that they want to find. Be it for research or entertainment, Google’s search side of things is a well-oiled machine that is super easy to use and relatively easy to find the information that you’re looking for. Technicalities aside (this is a topic for another post), Google gives its search users what they want in a simple, quick, and relevant fashion. The “show” side, on the other hand, is not as simple to define but I claim that this side includes the Google Adwords ads, and every page that is displayed with a search result, including the search snippets and word highlighting.

As a publisher, it is obvious that whenever I make a web page I want it to appear above everybody else’s result. Regardless of whether the page is unique or has 10,000,000 competitors, I want searchers to find my page because I either think it’s relevant and will make their lives better or I stand to make money from it. Sometimes it is a combination of both. This page can be found through regular search or through ad placement via Adwords. This is where Google’s Catch-22 comes in. How doe Google qualify a page such that it ranks it above or below other pages? How does Google use its algorithm to place certain Adwords ads above or below other similarly priced ads? How does Google determine what to charge and Adwords advertiser?

The rest of this post will focus on the organic search results. The Adwords questions will have to wait for another post.

Although the answers to these questions are not clear nor are they stated anywhere officially, I have come up with a set of criteria that I believe help the user to figure out how to maneuver so that their results receive better treatment from Google. I do not claim that these are 100% original nor do I expect these to be 100% accurate; these are my speculations and opinions and I reserve the right to be wrong.

As you can see I believe that Google places the most emphasis on incoming links, followed by keyword density and lastly by readability. There are other factors too such as age of site and freshness of content, but I don’t believe they are weight too heavily so I allocated 5% for all of those items.

Incoming Links

I believe that incoming links account for 50% of your website’s SERP. Case and point: I have a website that has not been worked on very recently, but right after I bought the domain I spent a few weeks adding it to as many directories as I could. The directories were all semi-relevant to the domain name and I managed to add roughly 75 incoming links to the site in about a month. Even though I am able to see all but a few of those links when searching for them (using the “link:domain name” command while performing a search query on the Google site), the site still shows up in the top 100 for a keyword with medium competition. The content for the site is readable, but its keyword density is scattered and not focused. I believe that if I spent a few days boning up the content, that site would perform much better than it is currently. Hence my belief that incoming links account for 50% of your SERP score.

Keyword Density

Coming in at number 2, I think that there is a fine balance between too many and not enough keywords on a website to rank well for a page. I want to venture a guess that a page may not be stuffed with more than 4% and no less than 1% in order for the keyword density to be in the “safe” zone. If you have too many keywords, your site could be thought of as spam. If you don’t have enough keywords sprinkled throughout your text, your site may not show up at all in the results. There’s a fine balance and I believe that it is more science than art or luck.

Readability

Google wants people to be able to use the site, not robots. For this reason, they have created a set of murky guidelines that “help” webmasters to know how they should be designing and developing their websites. Within these guidelines, Google recommends:

“Use a text browser, such as Lynx, to examine your site. Most spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Macromedia Flash keep you from seeing your entire site in a text browser, then spiders may have trouble crawling it.”

This means that the crawler looks for text and text only. If you have too many flashy things going on with the site, Google may not be able to “understand” your page and in turn, it won’t be ranked correctly.

Other

This last category is pretty open-ended. There are several things that belong here such as content freshness, how relevant your domain name is to your content, age of the domain and relevancy of links, meta tags, and others. Since this area is not clear, I won’t go too far into this topic but will say that Google does care about those factors. I may not be giving enough importance to these, or I may be giving too much importance to these. Regardless, those are tidbits that I have picked up from reading the webmaster guidelines and have not seen them play too much of a role in the SERP of my sites.

Conclusion

So, in an effort to please the searchers and work with the publishers, Google is on a never ending quest to beat spammers, while the spammers are on a never ending quest to beat Google. This catch-22 will, I believe, in the long run hurt the “litte guy” like me. I’m not necessarily trying to make a ton of money from organic search results on Google with this page. I’m not promoting “enhancement” products nor am I trying to sell you anything. However, my site will remain lower on the list than someone with more links than me or someone that has a higher keyword density than me. I’ll continue to build links and do my best to write for content and not search engines, but I just can’t help myself at being frustrated at Google for not spelling out how it is that they work. Better SERP is everyone’s goal, but I think if Google provided more clear guidelines, not only would they have less SPAM but they would also have a better way at filtering it.