I am amazed at people when they say they have no time to do something. If something is working then you have to make time to do it.

The other day I was on a forum and people were complaining that they had no time to do things like twitter. This always gets me thinking about how people use or waste their time doing things that don’t pay off at all.

I have a website that gets 56 percent of its traffic using Twitter. (Yes I know that’s too much from one source). Out of this traffic 10 percent sign up for my free weekly newsletter. I market to this crowd over and over and it doesn’t cost me a dime.

My time is valuable and I am sure yours is also. You need to start measuring how your roi is currently working and either do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. The tough thing is being truthful with yourself when doing the measuring.

I hear people tell me they are using Facebook to promote their sites and that’s great but playing farmville half of that time is a waste. That is not considered site promotion no matter which way you spin it. That time wasted could be used in a more productive manner.

Get honest with yourself for a few days and see where you can find time to be more productive. If you are on forums swap out some time you been wasting posting to worthless threads and do something you can track the results for.

Changing a Domain Name

This past weekend I had to change a domain name for a website I have  been using and building for a while now. As you know I have been working on an NASCAR website for the past 2 years. When I built the website I did step by step instructions on my forum. I figured it would be good to document it step by step so others could learn how I build a site.

What I thought was a good idea at the time turned out to be a mistake in the long run. This was the first website I had built without it being keyword filled in the domain. I tried to be cute with the domain name and it came back to bite me and become a hindrance so I decided to make the change now since the website will always be mine.

When it came time to make the site I was thinking it would be good to have a catchy name. I named the website AwesomeWreckage.com. I came up with this name by combining two of the songs by my favorite band The Dollyrots “Because I’m Awesome” and “Wreckage”. It seemed like a catchy name to me and since there are wrecks in NASCAR I figured I could work with this name.

This was a big mistake as people thought I was glorifying the wrecks in NASCAR by calling them awesome. This is not what my site was about at all. I wanted to build a site where NASCAR fans could get information and talk about the races with other fans, maybe share some pics or some BBQ recipes and such.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of getting press passes to a race. When we picked them up at the track a few people frowned upon the name when we mentioned the domain and a few kind of shied away from us. This to me was a sign that something had to be done. It was almost embarrassing to mention what website I was representing while I was sitting in the press box.

When we got home we applied for some press passes for other tracks and all were denied. When one of the tracks told us it was because of the domain name I knew it was a time for a change. I really knew it before this but being thick headed and didn’t want to admit failure led me to think it was OK to keep the name. Then I thought about it again and came to my senses.

I wanted to have the word Awesome in the URL and something related to the fans also. I spent a few hours in Nameboy searching and then it hit me and Awesomeracefans.com was born.

This name has actually 2 keywords in it “race and fans”. It should have been the name from the start but once again my brain freeze prevailed.

On April 1st we started switching over all the content to the new domain. It went OK except I decided to ditch the forum section for now. It wasn’t working right anyway so the clean install was a better option anyway.

The one thing that was lost that I feel bad about was the cool logos and banners that my friend Auggie made for the old site, he does outstanding work.

The reason I am making this post is to show you that even someone who knows what they are doing can make mistakes too. I will bet that in the long run the new site will double in comparison to what the old site was anyway.

( I originally wrote this post about 4 or 5 years ago. When I redesigned this site I deleted a bunch of pages that I will be bringing back that still apply.)

What Is Vinny Talking About Now?

So you are wondering what does hot dogs have to do with making a website or affiliate marketing. Well after I explained my theory to a few people they told me I should write it down somewhere so that is what I am doing. If you are experienced at making websites you should know what a keyword list is. If you don’t know then you should go find out what it is.

Just like every other website maker I know I have a keyword list that I get from either Wordtracker or one of my other places that I can’t divulge due to competition. Well instead of making a page or pages based on each keyword on my list I expand the list to some things that one may ever search for daily but eventually they will. When that time comes my page will be either #1 thru 10 on the search engines. Now I don’t play tricks with the engines because that is a waste of time. Build pages for the user and you will be better off in the search engines anyway.

Let me explain how and why this is called “My Hot Dog Theory”

Back when I was around 18 I had a job installing replacement windows, the job was ok but I had to travel all the way to New Jersey and that stunk. One of the strangest things that every happened to me came when I was working with the window company. One day we broke for lunch and we stopped at this hot dog truck on the side of the road. Although it was a regular hot dog truck they had tables and chairs and people on line waiting to get hot dogs. Being from New York City I had never saw such a thing, here we walk up to a cart and get a dirty water dog. There is no lines and no table and chairs.

As I got to the side of the hot dog truck to place my order I saw the strangest menu I had ever seen. They had over 300 varieties of items that you can get on a hot dog. The guy in front of me had string beans, cole slaw and cheddar cheese on his. They had all sorts of chili dogs but to the extreme if you know what I am talking about. I was so dumb founded by the guys order in front of me I ordered the same thing. Guess what It was great! They do great business because had repeat traffic and viral marketing due to having a variety. This is something that every website owner craves for.

Now that it is about 15 years later I am making websites and I start making my keyword list and the sites are coming along fine. As I am checking my website server logs I am finding that people are finding my sites using obscure terms. Now every site I make has a huge list of phrases that people may never search but if and when they do I am in place for that traffic. At some point someone somewhere will use a search term like “left handed hot dog” and guess what I will have the top spots across the web for it.

I seriously doubt that others will be making a list when making a site about hot dogs that includes left handed hot dog since that is not the way webmasters think. Guess what people do search for these things, join the parade and include some of my hot dog theory to your site. It can’t hurt and it doesn’t cost you a thing except for some time. The plus here is there is no competition plus some other terms from this page may make it into other search engines. You just never know!

There is a little bit more to this story but I have had your attention for about a minute or so and as you are reading this I will be making more pages. Not the data feed type crap that is out there but unique to the user and giving the user some valuable information about something like “Boston baked beans plastic casserole dish” or something similar.

Of course you have to make the page full of quality information and quality content. You can still get visitors to your site with the build it and they will come theory. You just have to know what the people are looking for in the first place.

Has Vinny lost his mind? Yep all the way to the bank. See some more of my traffic theories on my traffic building pages.

I bet you can find at least five things that your website should be doing or doing better. Odds are you have built a site and you are getting some traffic but things are not exactly how you thought they would go. Well lets take a look at five things that may help you get better results. Some are so simple it may surprise you that you haven’t thought of them on your own.

1) Does your site help the user solve a problem? This is either a yes or no. In this day and age the consumer is looking for an answer for their problem, if your product does that then explain it any way you can. This may be a video or a white paper or something of the sort. Give away the information so that the user remembers how helpful you were, they will end up telling people through word of mouth.

2) Do you know what your visitors are doing on your site? Odds are you think you do but you could be wrong. You need to get some sort of analytics set up and see how a user is navigating through your site. You may not even know what your most popular pages are,or even what your worst pages are. You may be focusing on the wrong things and wasting time.You also need to know how people are finding your site. Get a neighbor to sit down in front of a computer and put them on your site and see how they navigate it, it will not be what you thought. get a pen and paper and tell them to give you the honest truth.

3) Do you have an email newsletter? Getting traffic is hard enough so once you get a customer you should try and make them a returning customer. This saves you the worry of trying to rank in search engines and also decreases your advertising cost as you already have that customer. A lifetime customer is the best investment you can make for your site.

4) Do you have a FAQ page? Whenever you get an email asking questions about your site or product make that question into a line on your FAQ page as it will be looked for again on your site. Your answer will help others find you and use your services. It will also end up being keyword rich content that will attract the search engines and get you good long tail keywords.

5) Do you have trust pages? Every website needs to develop trust with the potential customer. Your site needs a page for privacy policy, contact us, terms of use, disclaimer, and let the customer know what you are doing with their information and what they can expect from your site.

I bet if you are not doing these things your site is not doing what you want it to do.

2009 was not the year of the elephant or year of the chicken it was the year of  “Trust”.  After getting Chris Brogans book “Trust Agents” I started to read it and as I was going along I felt as if he was talking about me and my websites. In a way he was, as most of my content websites are built around the readers and providing them with information that they can use.

By doing this I have built a trust over about 8 years on one of my better sites. I have an automotive site that was built over the years where people are sending me questions about their car and I answer it. I will Google for the answers (if I don’t already know the answer) and then write a page so others that have the same problem don’t have to send me an email.

Between all of this I ended up with a website that helps people with older models to get those hard to find parts. I have become an authority on this topic and usually when I send someone to an auto parts site they usually buy the parts as I am a trusted source.

If you are not building trust on your websites you are missing out big time. Now I get emails from readers saying thanks for the info and that they are forwarding my sites to others. Some of these readers belong to car clubs for my brand and they tell people by the hundreds about my site. Oops scratch that I meant OUR site. The website is all about them and their car.

What I did is ask people to send in pictures of their car and any info they want and I make them a web page.  They bookmark it and send it to their friends. Why its all about “Trust”. You may hear webmasters say they want the consumer off their site asap and on to the merchants site but that doesn’t always apply. I would rather get return visitors over and over again. My site visitor on average goes through 10-20 pages on my site.  These visitors get to see the ads a lot more and take action. They come back and buy over and over. They enjoy the site and “Trust” me that I would never place any type of crap on the site just to make a buck.

I am now getting emails asking for when my next newsletter is coming out, I get 10 a week asking this and another 25-50 signing up for my newsletter every week. Why because I am a trusted source.

This past week OUR site was added to the main website for this car by the manufacturer. They linked up to us on their resources page as a trusted authority for people with older models. That doesn’t happen without having a trust factor.

The other day I had a little conversation about newsletters, it amazes me that some people just don’t want to connect to their web audience. They think the days of making a good website and relying on search engine rankings will make them money especially if they are making money this way now.

Sure you can rank well and make money but you need to look at the long term results. In this day and age you need to connect to your niche audience in any way you can. If you can connect to them on their chosen platform that is a home run. My chosen method is newsletters and Twitter.

On all my sites I have it set up where there is a newsletter sign up usually on the top of every page.  Once a user signs up they usually get a newsletter to welcome them and then a few newsletters with helpful tips spread out for the first two weeks. Not a lot just a few so I am a reminder in their inbox. I cannot tell you how many times I get emails thanking me for these tips. After that every time I have a new post it also goes out as a newsletter.

You may be thinking this is a lot of work but it really isn’t. I use Aweber to set it all up and that’s it. A few auto responders and then the live blog broadcast tool makes it all come together. The thing that makes this all come together is passion. I know what you are thinking “Vinny what does passion have to do with it?” If you have a passion and convey that passion to your audience they will want to follow you and come back to your site often.

On one of my sites I have an amazing newsletter open rate. Every time I send out a newsletter I get about 140% open rate. That is off the hook and it took me a while to figure out what was happening. Not only do most of the readers on the list open the email when I send it out they also go back a few days later and open it again. Both times they end up on my site.

This has been going on for a few years and people are still signing up for the newsletters where I control how they come back to my site. No search engines involved with them coming back to my site. Sure they may be finding me initially using search engines but after that I control my site visitors. It takes time to build up a newsletter but it builds up over time. Slow and steady wins the race.

Just checking a few of my Wordpress sites and it seemed that two were hacked into. Didn’t lose any data like other people have been reporting but working on upgrading them all.

You will notice the hack as it leaves a bunch of code in the permalinks. You can read more about it here as well as a solution. Journeyetc.com.

I discovered it as I went to make a new post and filled in the title of the post in the draft and it had a bunch of code added in the permalink structure. Just follow the instructions on the link above and hopefully all will be ok.

Do You Try To Fool Google?

I am often asked about my secrets to ranking on Google, actually I don’t have a secret at all I just do many things right for the search engines. There is no sense in trying to fool Google or any search engine as odds are your page will eventually be found and stop ranking. Worse then that your site will not be considered as relevant for the topic you are wishing to cover.

When I first started out I tried all the spammy stuff and that stuff worked for a while but when I started to make serious sites about passions of mine the sites ranked very well. I copied what worked and did more of it and what didn’t work dropped from my “Must Do List”.

Now if you know anything about me I don’t listen to rumors on what works and what doesn’t I try it for myself and learn. I love hearing stuff from Google itself instead of trying to beat them I join them in their quest to find and index better sites.

I just got done watching Matt Cutts from Google discuss some things about websites and what can help you rank. It is under an hour long and I suggest you watch it.

Feel free to discuss what you have learned over on NyFalcon Forum

I have posted a few times about getting traffic on to my sites using Twitter. When I am making new sites I wouldn’t even think of not using Twitter. Now we all know its hard enough getting traffic to a new blog or website but that is not something I worry about anymore.

Each one of my sites main writer (usually me) gets its own Twitter account as soon as the site is thought of. I will be building friends before the site is even close to becoming a reality. Finding people in the niche is easy as you use search.twitter.com and place a niche keyword in there and follow some of the people that are talking about the niche.I go in every other day and post a tweet with the niche keyword or two. In no time you get some followers.

While I launch the account early, it is one of the things that build slowly so there is no sense in wasting time. When the time comes I place my url in the Twitter profile box but that may be a month or so later as the site develops.

By using the Tweetmeme Wordpress plugin everytime I place a good article on the site it ends up getting retweeted over and over by my like-minded friends on my Twitter account. Then all of a sudden their like-minded friends will retweet that. It makes people feel smarter when they are retweeting things to their friends. Its a “Hey look what I found I must have been smart to find it.”

The Tweetmeme button has a number on it showing how many retweets that post has, it is almost human nature to retweet it so you see the number go up. Now most of my stuff only gets about 10-15 retweets but after looking through my friends list and analytics I can see that even though the post may have 10-15 retweets it ends up going out to over 200-300 people and out of that I usually end up with 10 people that subscribe to my email newsletter or Rss feed. To me that is gold because that reader becomes MINE until they feel it necessary to unsubcribe which if you are producing enough quality content they never end up doing.

Now I will take it up a little, due to most of my sites having multiple writers they retweet the articles for each other as soon as its posted, so now it ends up going into the twitter stream of a few writers and their loyal followers. This can end up being a few thousand everytime a new article is posted.

Let me tell you a secret which may not necessarily be a secret: on the Internet, anyone can write an eBook. I am not kidding. Each and every one of us has a piece of information nurtured in our minds that, once shared with other people, could net for us countless rewards for marketing and financial purposes. “But I haven’t written anything my entire life,” you might say. Read on, my friend.

Creating Your EBook

The beauty of writing for the Internet is that you don’t have to be a Shakespeare or a Stephen King. In fact, the simpler your style of writing is, the better it would be for your readers. The online audience is much different from those of printed publications. Internet users are less patient, as reading your piece on the monitor is less convenient than having an actual book that you could take to bed.

But even if you’re not blessed with an iota of writing skills, or if you simply don’t have the time to come up with your own work, fret not. You could always hire a ghostwriter. There are a lot of ghostwriters in the World Wide Web, and it’s just a matter of finding the best, and most affordable, one for your particular needs.

Alternative Ways Of Coming Up With An EBook Product

There are many ways by which you could come up with your own eBook even with minimal writing on your part. You could always compile articles that you could freely download from article directories, for example, for as long as you retain their resource boxes. I don’t recommend this but you can do it, Or you could conduct an interview with an expert of a particular field and simply transcribe the same for an easy product. Better yet, you could tap into the almost infinite farm of public domain information for your much needed content, something which you could utilize free of charge.

Marketing Through Your EBook

Regardless of the manner by which you decide to create your eBook, one thing is certain. An ebook is a powerful vehicle for promoting your website. Let us take a look at some of the ways by which you could do this.

1. Your eBook can be the heart of a potent viral marketing campaign to promote your website. Viral marketing is the online equivalent of word-of-mouth advertising. With this strategy, you could achieve an increase in website traffic through the exponential spread of your business message, i.e. your website’s link. Simply populate your eBook with links to your website, and distribute the same for free. Encourage your recipients to distribute the same product to their family and friends, if ever they would love what is inside your eBook. This would result in a wildfire-like spread of your eBook to many, many people, and consequently, a wildfire-like spread of your link as well. Sometimes I tell people after they download my ebook not to share it with anyone, this makes them share it with more people because they think it will make them look smart in front of their family and friends.

2. Your eBook can be packaged as a bonus for the products that other people are offering for sale. Not only will your eBook add to the value of the said product and invite the interest of more potential customers, this tactic would also allow you to win some visitors to your website. Better yet, the visitors you stand to gain from this strategy are quality ones, as they have a history of transacting online, hence, a higher likelihood of doing business with you, if ever you’re maintaining a commercial website.

3. Your eBook can be used as a gift in exchange for a subscription to your mailing list. Your mailing list, of course, is a way for you to acquire repeat visitors. Pumping up your mailing list with more subscribers would give you some guaranteed traffic. This can even be set up using an autoresponder service. If you have a blog Feedburner works really well for that.

4. You could use your eBook in bartering for a spot on the pages of popular websites. Let other people give it away for you. This also establishes you as an expert in your field.

5. Last, but most certainly not the least, you could sell your eBook. By doing this, you stand to earn for every sale, and you could promote your website at the same time through the links contained in the product’s pages.