Erich Stauffer

Category: Marketing

  • Keyword Metrics for Success

    Research and Analysis Metrics

    Micro-niches are identified as the number one keyword receiving at least 80 searches per day and websites containing that keyword being less than 30,000 globally. The key is to find that sweet spot on the matrix of high traffic and low competition. To do this, find keywords which match the following criteria:

    At least three keywords other keywords within the micro-niche with similar criteria must also be identified, if not, start over.  Top ten competition for the top four keywords has to be penetrable within the time allowed (usually no more than 30 days). Once you find five total keyword phrases you can begin to create a website, market, and begin testing.

    Metrics to consider are:

    • Domain age
    • # of back-links to domain
    • # of back-links to page mentioning the keyword
    • # of back-links from .gov or .edu domains
    • Exists in Yahoo! Directory?
    • Exists in BOTW (Best of the Web) Directory?
    • Exists in DMOZ (ODP) Directory?

    Need more web directories?

    If the competition has a young domain age, a low number of back-links, and does not exist in any of these directories, then the market is penetrable.  If the opposite is true, stop and start over.

    Check to see that related products are both available to be sold and are being sold by others.  If either is not true, stop and start over.

    If both of those tests pass, then make sure the products are giving a referral amount that you deem acceptable.  If not, stop and start over. Otherwise, you now have products in a penetrable micro-niche that are profitable to sell.

    Marketing and Testing

    Begin by setting up a place to place your products.  This is where your marketing efforts will point back to.  It can be a Squidoo page, Blogger, or WordPress.com or WordPress running on your own domain.

    If you are using Blogspot or WordPress, install Google Analytics to track traffic.  If using Squidoo or Hubpages, there are tracking mechanisms built into the site. You can’t manage what you are aren’t measuring so track everything you can.

    Use the following chart to give you an idea of how to setup your web site for maximum keyword use and Google dominance.

    Once you have content on your primary landing pages and sub-pages, begin to create back-links to your site by placing links to the domain, the blog posts, and the the product pages on social bookmarking, social media, and in blog comments in your related market.  Be sure to add links from .edu and .gov domains. You can search Google specifically for blogs on those domains manually by using the following syntax:

    site:.edu “post a comment” –“comments are closed” “[enter your keyword here]”

    Track the incoming page hits.  Testing for viability can begin only after your product’s page is receiving at least 200 hits per day.  If you are not getting 200 hits per day, then try these things first:

    • Increase the number of blog posts on and off the site using other services like hubpages and squidoo – then promote all of the new posts again
    • Make sure you are promoting on at least 30 different sites for each post – you can use services like ping.fm or trafficbug to assist with this task
    • Pay to have your site listed in the Yahoo! Directory
    • Pay for Google Adwords or Bing (Microsoft) AdCenter
    • Add pictures with descriptive text to get hits from search engine’s image searches
    • Add video to Youtube with links and comment on other videos in your micro-niche
    • Make sure you are posting to Twitter and Facebook regularly and engaging in conversation, not just promoting

    If after 30 days or at your own set threshold, you are still not receiving 200 hits or more per day, your product is not viable.  Consider selling your website on Flippa or Sedo.  You have just found one of your 1 in 8 failures.

    If you do have over 200 hits per day, but are not getting conversions, first try changing out your ad copy, images of the products, and/or placement of the two on the page.  If after changing all three of these variables and still your conversion rate (revenue) is below your expenses, then sell your domain and start over.  If not, you have a profitable online business.

  • Tools of the Trade

    These are the Windows tools I use to make web sites, which in turn makes me money online.

    Notepad++ – If you’ve used Windows anytime in the last 25 years you know about Notepad, but don’t let the name fool you, Notepad++ is a notable improvement over Notepad, specifically for programmers. Now you might not think of yourself as a programmer, but if you’re editing HTML, CSS, or PHP you’ll find Notepad++’s code-identifying text color changes useful as well as the ability to have multiple tabs open at once (with split screen ability), and “just how you want it to act” tab spacing. It auto-indents code and can indent rows of code at once in highlighted sections. Another neat feature is the ability to search within files or folders for text, which I have used many times.
    Filezilla – The defacto standard for open-source FTP programs, Filezilla is what I use to upload files to my host. It’s not as secure as SSH secure shell, but it gets the job done for free. Filezilla’s site manager tool can save connection information, making it easy for you to manage different FTP accounts, but I tend to just use the quickconnect bar, which saves a history of your recently visited FTP sites. Individual view windows can be turned on or off in the view file menu and more customization is available in the settings menu.
    Firebug – A browser plug-in for developers that works best in Firebug, but has versions for Chrome and Internet Explorer too that don’t work as well. This program lets you highlight items inside the browsers view screen to find out information or to make temporary changes. These temporary changes allow you to preview the affects before you make the changes permanent. This is an excellent tool and a must-have for web site developers.
    Chrome – Contained within Chrome’s tools is a feature called “Chrome developer tools,” which works much like Firebug, but is built into Chrome. It allows you to browse elements on the page or make temporary changes. One nice feature is the Audit tab which lets you review things like network utilization and web page performance. A quick run of the audit tool will yield you advice (if you need it) on CSS, Javascript, cookies, and cache usage.
    Paint.Net – For advanced photo editing with layers, Paint.Net delivers as the strongest free comparison to Adobe Photoshop. It features several advanced adjustment tools including “Black and White,” “Curves,” and “Sepia.” There are also built-in effect tools ranging from artistic, to blurs, to distortion, which rival those of Photoshop. For a comparison with Paint.Net, try GIMP. Paint.Net, GIMP, and Photoshop all are made to edit raster graphics, which are like photographs and cannot scale up without losing resolution. Vector images, on the other hand, are like those used in animation and logos and use math to create lines. This allows them to scale up and down without losing resolution since its just a recalculation of the math. Vector images can only be edited with special programs like Inkscape, which is free, or Adobe Illustrator.
    Picasa – While its biggest feature is probably its photo management and gallery functions, the reason I’ve included it in this list is as a subsidy to Paint.Net and even Photoshop for specific picture editing. There are two views, “Library” and “Edit”. Inside the edit view there are three tabs, “Basic Tuning”, “Fixes,” and “Effects”. In Basic Tuning or Fixes I use the fill light command the most as I feel it does a better job than just adding brightness using Paint.Net or Photoshop. In Effects I use “Glow”, “Soft Focus”, and “Sepia” the most. Paint.Net also has a sepia effect. Use these or the “Collage” tool in the Library view to create neat pictures for your web site.
    Inkscape – A free alternative to Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape is a fully baked open-source scalable vector image editing program. It takes some getting used to if you’re used to working with raster images in layers, but once you get the hang of manipulating objects and lines and knowing when to left-click and when to right-click, you’ll be able to make some decent iconography that might save you some money over buying stock images for your web sites. And just because it is open-sourced doesn’t mean it’s not supported. There is lots of documentation, tutorials, and online forums in a community willing to share and collaborate. If you already own Adobe Illustrator this is a fine tool and also comes highly recommended.

    If I’ve missed a Windows tool that you use, please mention it in the comments and for Apple and Linux users, feel free to add your comments as well to share with all.

  • 12 Ways to Make Money Online

    How to Make Money Online

    Making money online is not always easy.  It’s work just like any job, but it seems to have this allure to it.  I think that allure has a lot to do with a feeling of being your own boss or getting as much out of something as you put into it.  At your job, no matter how hard you work, the pay is the same (in the short term), but when you work for yourself, the dynamics are different.  Making money online is essentially like running your own business.  Where “people have dreamed about owning their own business and have not followed through because of the investment in resources,” says Jim Griffith, head of eBay University, “the Internet allows people to at least try without making a large initial investment.”

    Here are 12 ways you can make money online

    1. Online Ads – Pay-per-click (PPC) links are ads that display on your site, served up by advertising programs like Google AdSense or Chitika are a great way to get started, but don’t expect to get rich off of it unless your site has a lot of traffic. The good thing is you get paid regardless of if the advertiser makes a sale, but the bad thing is they don’t usually pay that much for the click. You don’t have to pick out what ads will display. Google will detect the type of content on your site and show relevant ads automatically. Chitika works a little differently. It goes by what a visitor searched for in order to find your site, not your site’s actual content. Although they may be one in the same, they don’t have to be. Also, Chitika ads will not show up if you browse to your site, but Google Adsense ads will. You’ll want to have good, original content either way to attract visitors and the best ads. Google saves its best paying ads for sites that rank higher and have better traffic. Google also requires that you have a privacy policy on any website displaying their ads or you could risk losing your account. If you don’t know what to write, you can use our privacy policy as an example.

    google-adsenseOnce you have an account setup, you can start to add the code to your blog, which serves up the ads.  When people click on the ads, you make money.  The more content you write and the more promotion you do, the more people will come to your web site, which increases the chance that someone will want to click on an ad.

    2. Affiliate Programs – Pay-per-purchase (PPP) links are affiliate ads that display links to products or programs where you get a percentage of the sale whenever a purchase is made. Percentages vary based on the product, manufacturer, and affiliate program. Amazon Associates, an affiliate program from Amazon, goes from 4% to 15%, but it’s a tiered scale that requires making sales at lower percentages before you can make sales at higher percentages and it resets every month. LinkShare, another affiliate advertising program, lets you choose what advertisers to work with. Once you find one you would like to promote, you can apply to add them as a product. If you run more than one site you’ll want to set up channels for each site under your account settings. Each channel will have to apply for it’s own advertiser programs even if you’ve already been approved on another channel. Commission Junction and Google Affiliate Network are two other good examples of affiliate advertising networks like LinkShare. While clicks and purchases can be less for PPP links, the payouts can be higher per purchase, making this a good next step for those who want more than just PPC links on their website.

    3. Direct Sales – If you’ve got a product to sell, whether it is something you’ve made or something you have bought to resell, if you are selling it on your site you are doing direct sales. You may also have to fulfill your own orders unless you work with an order fulfillment service. The advantage of direct sales are that you get to control how much mark-up you add to the product, but the down-side is that you are on your own for dealing directly with payment processing systems, shipping, returns, and other logistical issues that may come up. If you’ve got a good product to sell, and you’re just starting out, you might want to partner with an already established distribution company like Amazon.com, ClickBank, CafePress, Zazzle, or Threadless, depending on your product. This is a form of commissioned sales, which is the next way to make money online.

    4. Commission Sales – If you’ve created a product to sell, but don’t want the hassle of selling directly, commissioned sales is the way to go. For a share of the revenue, the distributer will handle the store front, the payment processing, and returns. All you have to do is ship the item and cash the checks. Some distributers will even store your items for you or make them on-demand. For example, ClickBank will store your ebook for distribution and CafePress, Zazzle, and Spreadshirt prints your items on t-shirts or other merchandise at the point of order. This is kind of like micro-manufacturing or on-demand manufacturing, but essentially it means very low inventory costs, which allows them to charge a decent amount and still give you a cut. You create the idea, they sell it, and give you a commission. If you want more of a commission over time, you can open your own web site, which would be a step back into direct sales. Examples of distributors include Amazon.com, iStockPhoto.com, ClickBank, Zazzle, Spreadshirt, and CafePress.

    5. Online Ad Sales – Once your site has enough traffic, you can start to sell ads directly to advertisers. This is a form of direct sales, but the product is ad space on your site that you would normally give to Google Adsense, Chitika, or an affiliate link. The upside is that you can potentially charge more for the space than Google or Chitika would give you for the same space, but you risk not making any direct ad sales at all. But if you have a large enough following and can prove visitor counts, then you may have a good chance in selling ad space to an advertiser interested in marketing to your readers. Again, the key is good content. That’s how it all starts.

    6. Domain Flipping – For those who are great at finding niches, can fill a site with content easily, know how to promote a site, and not get too emotionally attached, domain flipping is for you. It has great potential to make a lot of money and can be quite profitable if you know what you are doing. There are sites out there like Flippa or Sedo which specialize in flipping domains and there are are many tutorials out there to teach you the best way to do so. Selling a domain is equivalent to cashing out of a business you’ve started and can be a good feeling, but it’s not for everyone. Sometimes you’ll wish you never sold and then there are just those who like the slow and steady, latent income over the hussle of constantly buying and selling domains.

    7. Convert Your Content – Turn your blog into a book or your site into a magazine or your Twitter account into a television show – yes, all these things have been done before.

    While the last seven examples have been about your own content or site, the next five focus on other things you can do online to make money:

    8. Online Auctions – Sell things on Ebay or Craigslist. This can only last so long unless you go out and get more to sell, however if you get good at it, you can help other people sell things online as well, charging up to 33% commission on the sale.

    9. Online Surveys – If you know where to find them, there are plenty of sites out there that will pay you to fill out surveys. You may have to fit into a certain type of income or age group, but eventually you will find one that you can fill out for cash or gifts. This certainly won’t replace your day job, but some enjoy doing it on the side for fun money.

    10. Micro-Jobs – This is another low-on-the-totem pole idea that is worth mentioning, but will not make you rich or allow you to quit your day job. Sites like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk will allow you to bid for jobs that pay very small amounts. The upside here is speed. If you can do the jobs in a short amount of time, then your rate of pay can increase. It’s hit or miss on getting accepted to do the job though so you take a risk on how you spend your time. Try and do an opportunity cost analysis first to see if there are better ways to spend your time to make money – online or off.

    11. Freelancing – There are lots of freelancing sites out there to find work to do, but one of the most popular sites is Elance. They all pretty much work the same, though. People who need to get stuff done can post their wants or needs up on the site and people like you can then bid on doing the work. If your bid is accepted, you do the work, get paid, and the connecting site takes a commission off the sale. If you do enough, you might be able to shake the commissioned sales model and go direct, essentially starting your own business, which is the next example of how to make money online.

    12. Start Your Own Business – This is part of the American dream and very easy to do online. You can even get incorporated online, depending on your state. Whether your business idea is to become a consultant, sell a product, offer a service, or just blog for profit, starting your own business has tax benefits as well as making you feel a sense of pride. I’d recommend it to anybody who wants to experience the free enterprise system to the fullest.

    Read Forbe’s Eight Ways to Make Money Online for more tips on how to make money online.

  • How to Identify a Micro-Niche

    How to find a profitable niche to start blogging about on your new mini-site

    In a previous post I wrote about how to monetize your blog, but I didn’t mention how to find a niche market to promote. There are many ‘rules’ about this, but while I may point out some, not all are going to apply. One rule you can keep in mind though is that 7 out of 8 attempts may fail. If you’re willing to seek against those kinds of odds, keep reading.

    When choosing a new micro-niche, there are three things to keep in mind:

    1. Competition for the keyword – when you do a Google search for your keywords, how many root, top-level domains show up in the top ten search results? It’s very hard to break into the pack when competing directly with a home page of an aged domain, but if the search results show deep page listings instead you’ve got a shot.

    2. The product – First of all, is there a product to promote? Goods are easier to sell, but some service industries like lawyers and business consultants can make more – much more. Second, what are the commissions on the product? You have to be comfortable with the commission level, which varies greatly between products, to Make sure it is worth your while.

    3. Traffic (Visitors) – Even if you have low competition and a great product, if no one is looking for it then you’re dead in the water. You want to have enough traffic to sustain your business and make it profitable, but to not be in competition with the bigger niche market. The sweet spot seems to be around 20,000 daily searches for a given set of keywords. You can find this info out using Google’s External Keyword Tool or Market Samurai.

    You want some competition. This is a sign that the micro-niche is profitable. You just don’t want TOO much competition.

    How to Start

    Knowing how to do the research is one thing, but what if you can’t think of anything to start with? What if you can’t think of any ideas to search for? Some advice I heard once was to browse a magazine aisle and look at the ads in the back. If vendors can afford to advertise there they must be making money and so you can too. Be careful not to chase a niche just because you like it. Do the research and be willing to say ‘no’ to yourself if it doesn’t pan out.

  • The Monetization Connection

    How to make money from a blog or mini-site

    Previously I wrote about blogging for profit, but didn’t go into detail about how to monetize the content. In other words, how do you make money from a blog?

    There are three primary ways to make money from a blog:

    1. Ads – this is the easiest, but lowest-paying form of revenue. However, it can be a good way to get started and prove viability. Popular ad networks include Google Adsense and Chitka. Ads like these are pay-per-click or PPC which means you get paid regardless of if the advertiser makes a sale.

    2. Affiliations – Affiliate ads are potentially more profitable, but require a well defined niche or else it is too hard to attract visitors that will actually buy the products you are promoting. Affiliate ads are pay-per-purchase or PPP, which means you only get paid when the merchant advertiser makes a sale.

    3. Direct selling – This is when you are directly selling something on your site that you are responsible for fulfilling. This has more potential for profit than affiliate advertising since you can make higher margins, but its more risky and you have to do fulfillment yourself. Examples of this can be anything from ebooks to beef jerky.

    4. (Bonus) Transform – the pinnacle of a website is when it can be converted into a book or television show. This means you have hit the big time, but its because your site has the two major ingredients listed below.

    What do all four of those revenue sources have in common?

    1. Original Content – some estimates say to post up to eight times a day. If you are just starting out, shoot for once a week, then move it up to once a day per blog.

    2. Visitors – Don’t stop writing content until you have at least 200 visitors a day (track with Google Analytics). If you already have 50 or more posts, but are lacking in traffic, start promoting your sites.

    Promotion

    The easiest way to promote your site, like with SEO, is to start with your site. Make sure you are linking to previous posts with appropriate keywords (I call this ‘threading the needle’, but its also known as ‘siloing’) and displaying navigation correctly. Visitors should be able to find more content they want to browse easily, but remember the goal is to monetize by either promoting other people’s goods and services or by selling something yourself so don’t get too carried away in internal self-promotion.

    Once you have fixed any issues on your site and made internal linking a habit, begin bookmarking your posts on social bookmarking sites like Reddit, Digg, and Delicious. After that is done, look to join a relevant forum to join and comment often. Soon you will be able to add a signature that will show up on all of your forum posts with backlinks to your site.

    If you do all of these things and you are still not successful, try a different micro-niche.

  • Blogging for Profit

    How to Find a Profitable Micro-Niche to Market Online

    This is an article based on a similar article I wrote about traffic conversion in 2009. Using proven, repeatable techniques there is little risk and great rewards involved in blogging for profit. Peter Drucker in Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Practice and Principles writes, “Entrepreneurship, it is commonly believed, is enourmously risky…[but]…entrepreneurship should be the least risky rather than the most risky course,” because of how entrepreneurship, “by definition, shifts resources from areas of low productivity and yield to areas of higher productivity and yield.” Much work has already been done for us in the form of innovating processes and software tools, which eliminates risk. There are two key phases to the process:

    1. Research and Analysis – Identify a micro-niche inside a penetrable market that has profitable products that people are already selling.
    2. Marketing and Testing – Promote the products and test the results. If the traffic and/or conversions do not meet thresholds in a given time, start over.

    The rate of success with this method is anywhere between 1 in 6 to 1 in 10 and marketing and testing can take anywhere from 1 to 30 days. Success is defined as more money coming in than is going out each month and that includes all opportunity costs (time that could have been spent making money in other activities). Tracking is critical not only with the data of the results, but with the finances and time spent.

    Rules and Metrics of Phase 1 – Research and Analysis

    According to The Thirty Day Challenge (now called simply, “The Challenge“) micro-niches are identified as the #1 keyword receiving at least 80 clicks per day and websites containing that keyword being less than 30,000 globally. At least 3 keywords other keywords within the micro-niche with similar criteria must also be identified, if not, start over.

    The top 10 search results for the top 4 keywords has to be penetrable within the time allowed. Metrics to consider are:

    Test 1: If the competition has a young domain age, a low number of back-links, and does not exist in any of these directories, then the market is penetrable. If the opposite is true, stop and start over.

    Test 2: Check to see that related products are both available to be sold and are being sold by others. If either is not true, stop and start over.

    If both of those tests pass, then make sure the products are giving a referral amount that you deem acceptable. If not, stop and start over. You now have products in a penetrable micro-niche that are profitable to sell. Move on to Phase II – Marketing and Testing.

    Phase II – Marketing and Testing

    Begin by setting up a place to place your products. This is where your marketing efforts will point back to. It can be a Squidoo page, a Blogspot Blog, or WordPress running on your own domain.  If you are using Blogspot or WordPress, install Google Analytics to track traffic. If using Squidoo, there are tracking mechanisms built into the site. Once you have a place to put your products, begin writing copy (content) for the site. You will need to write the following:

    • ‘About’ and ‘Privacy’ pages – use keywords and talk about the product. A privacy policy is required by many advertisers and affiliate programs including Google Adsense.
    • Ad copy for the products – if using Market Samurai, there are built-in features for helping with this, but you can do it manually too.
    • Create posts (or pages) about the keyword subject matter within the micro-niche.
    • Next, begin to create backlinks to your site by placing links to the domain, the blog posts, and the the product pages on social bookmarking, social media, and in blog comments in your related market. Be sure to add links from .edu and .gov domains. You can search Google specifically for blogs on those domains manually, but you can do this semi-automatically with Market Samurai too.

    Track the incoming page hits on Google Analytics. Testing for viability can begin only after your product’s page is receiving at least 200 hits per day. If you are not getting 200 hits per day, then try these things first:

    • Increase the number of blog posts on and off the site using other services like hubpages and squidoo – then promote all of the new posts again.
    • Make sure you are promoting on at least 30 different sites for each post – you can use services like ping.fm or trafficbug to assist with this task.
    • Pay to have your site listed in the Yahoo! Directory.
    • Pay for Google Adwords or Bing (Microsoft) AdCenter.
    • Add pictures with descriptive text to get hits from search engine’s image searches like Google Image search.
    • Add video to Youtube with links and comment on other videos in your micro-niche.
    • Make sure you are posting to Twitter and Facebook regularly and engaging in conversation, not just promoting.

    If after 30 days or at your own set threshold, you are still not receiving 200 hits or more per day, your product is not viable. Quit and start over. You have just found one of your 6 to 10 failures. If you do have over 200 hits per day, but are not getting conversions, first try changing out your ad copy, images of the products, and/or placement of the two on the page. Refer to Dan Kennedy’s sales letter technique. If after changing all three of these variables and still your revenue is below your expenses, then start over. If not, you have a profitable business. Consider selling it for ten times it’s worth and starting over using Flippa.

  • Sign up for LinkShare

    Signing up as a LinkShare publisher is quick, easy, and free! Just complete the info on this page and you’ll be able to start making money online in no time.

    What is a LinkShare publisher?

    Publisher is LinkShare’s term for an affiliate who is promoting other company’s (Advertisers) products and services in exchange for a commission.

    Who’s eligible to become a publisher?

    Anyone with a Web site, blog, or Internet presence can join LinkShare. You will also need to provide a valid mailing address (to receive payments) and tax information.

    Does it cost anything to apply?

    No, it is completely free to become a LinkShare publisher and there is no cost in joining any LinkShare advertiser program.

    How do I generate revenue?

    As a publisher, you will have access to links and banners that you can place on your Web site, blog, or in Emails. These links will drive traffic to advertisers’ Web sites. Advertisers will pay a commission for each purchase or qualifying action you generate for them. LinkShare acts as the trusted third-party that brings together both advertisers and publishers.

    What makes LinkShare different from other affiliate networks?

    There are many affiliate marketing networks to choose from and you want to spend your valuable time on the network that will generate the most commissions for your business. LinkShare maintains one of the most successful affiliate marketing networks in the world. Leading publishers and advertisers from almost every vertical have chosen LinkShare to help increase their online revenue. We stand apart from other affiliate marketing networks in terms of experience, technology, and network quality and integrity.

    LinkShare has signed on hundreds of advertisers including some of the most prestigious and well-known brands in the world such as Wal-Mart, Macy’s, Clinique, OfficeDepot, and Apple iTunes.

    LinkShare recently introduced a completely redesigned user interface for its Publishers: the LinkShare Publisher Dashboard, which is a simple, elegant design allows you to easily find and join advertiser programs and then locate the best links for your Web site. Plus, you can see how your commissions are stacking up at any given moment in time with our easy-to-understand and advanced reporting capabilities.

    LinkShare offers many innovative link technologies that help you keep your advertiser links fresh and up-to-date including Merchandiser Product Feeds; Dynamic Rich Media (DRM); Flex Links for video, widgets, and Flash content; and Mobile Links for those publishers on the cutting edge of the next e-commerce trend.

  • Geek Hand and The Settler’s League

    Hate the Game, Not the Player

    I set out to create a new “Home” brand of technology consulting so that I could offer Indianapolis computer repair in homes without damaging the brand I was establishing with business customers.  I came up with “Professional Technology Consulting at Home,” but the domain was taken so I started looking around and trying different keywords.  I found that “codageek.com – The last geek you’ll ever need,” was available, but I kept looking.  I eventually stumbled upon “geekhand.com” after looking up synonyms for ‘friendly’ (handy).

    I liked “Geek Hand” enough to consider grabbing it, but I wanted to do a little bit of research on the name and domain first.  I found that it had been used prior by another person for personal use and had since been abandoned.  I liked that there were already a lot of backlinks to it from other sites, but because much of the links were from sites about gaming, I wondered if it was the right fit for my in-home computer repair business product I was developing for Indianapolis business consulting firm, Watershawl, Inc., where I was CEO.  It seemed like it might be better off as a part of my blog network at Cost Publishing Media Group as a board game micro-site.

    I went ahead and picked up the domain, setup WordPress, the theme, the plugins, and the SEO.  I created a logo for it which consisted of a 0 and 1 which has both game and binary code meanings.  I used this logo as a background on Twitter and as it’s icon.  By the way, I don’t hardly purchase domains unless the username is also available on Twitter.  In this case, both were available and I took that as a sign before purchasing the domain.  While all of this setup is going on I’m thinking about content and products to sell or promote.  I did a quick search on Amazon and determine that board games, video games, and card games would be my primary products with the “news” of the site being centered around the geek culture of movies, television, and conventions like Comic-Con.

    To promote the site automatically I did two things: I setup a Tumblr account to pull in WordPress posts automatically push tweets out to Twitter and a Facebook page to push out to Twitter anything I post there.  So I only really have to post in WordPress, then copy the link to the post to Facebook to post on what is now the ‘Settler’s League’ page there in order to have coverage to Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter all at once.  Sometimes I’ll bounce those around on my Facebook wall and on other Twitter accounts I manage for different brands.

    The next step was to add content and put the promotional procedure into place, which I did.  I had a minor problem with links overflowing in the footer, but a quick CSS tweak fixed that.  I have a WordPress theme that I use as a base for most of my Cost Pub sites.  I also make custom WordPress themes and do web design and SEO for the Indianapolis area using Watershawl’s Growmotion marketing where we Growmote web sites–first we build them then we promote them; don’t just promote your business, grow your business with Growmotion.

    Update: I have since converted Geek Hand into more of it’s original role of personal computer repair, but with a slant towards mobile phones – a play on the ‘hand’ in the title.  Here’s the link to the new Geek Hand Facebook page in case you’re interested and a link to Settler’s League’s home page.

  • Twitter Deactivation

    I just got a little scare when I clicked, “Sign out,” at Twitter and got the message, “Your account will be deactivated, Bye!” I logged back in successfully, but am still unsure of what is going on. Hopefully it’s just a glitch at Twitter and will be fixed soon.