Recently I made an upgrade to the header on my blog, and it was a BIG update at that! Not only did I enhance the looks of the most-viewed area of my blog, but I added a newsletter opt-in box which could potentially boost my subscribers tremendously.

But was my excitement premature!?

One of my readers, Rob from myTTOOS.com, pointed out the following:

Rob: “Really cool, but i bet it will be overseen a lot = bad conversion. Let us know if i am right.”

Jim: “Could be true… but then again I am not trying to spam people like typical marketers, haha”

Rob: “at least put the focus on the chalk board, put a few blinking stars around it or something lol”

Though it sounded silly at first, I started thinking about just how right he was! While I was all concerned with making the new opt-in newsletter box look at good as possible… I made it flow TOO WELL! Therefore, I needed a little something to get people to notice it (though I won’t be putting blinking stars on my header anytime soon, haha). So what did I do? I added a big ol’ floating arrow! Read the rest of this entry »

When you visit a website… what is the first thing you see?
The answer (to this “lay-up” question) is THE HEADER!

While it may be an overstatement to say that theNetFool.com is now sporting the greatest header that has ever been created for a weblog (and I do this simply for a great post topic ), I’ve made some more changes that I am sure you have noticed by now. By adding a clever opt-in newsletter subscription box, and in a very aesthetically pleasing manner, I will be boosting the amount of turnover this blog generates… and we all know that more subscribers = more POWER.

The Inspiration for Change?
My inspiration was actually a video I saw a week ago from one of the most famous MMO bloggers of all time, John Chow. Now, John takes a lot of heat from people who claim that all of his material is either 1) fluffy and unimportant; or 2) wrong or misleading. I feel that most of this is coming from the fact that he is a top dog, and people love to hate the champ. In summary, the video is about how he makes money blogging… and a lot of his success revolved around the fact that he used his blog as a machine to capture email addresses. I noticed that I wasn’t doing this currently, and I have Read the rest of this entry »

I’d like to set some time aside today to talk about one of my latest projects that is currently in final testing: Pirate Cash! This is going to be a new competitor in the “Get Paid To (GPT)” industry, which has had a long history of many boom-and-bust companies. However, I feel that my unique position as a former watchdog of the businesses in this niche gives PirateCash.com all the advantages in the world.

But Why GPT?

There are many reasons why I have chosen this niche to start a new project, but at the very core I would say that the reason is purely passion. When I was growing up, I remember that I wanted nothing more than to score $10-20 for free online… I had a lot of time on my hands and wasn’t eligible to get a job anywhere. Nowadays, many demographics… from teenagers, to work at home moms, to the unemployed looking to re-enter the workforce… are heavily active in this industry. The role of a “get paid to” website is literally to provide a means of profit for people that have a bit of spare time on their hands, and it really works out quite well. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve got a special today, a sale of one of the websites I am part-owner of!

BullishBankers.com is an established and popular financial research community with a strong subscriber base and pull in the industry. Recently, we had ceased to operate the site as of May 2009… so there has been a period of about 6 months where there has been nothing done to the site. HOWEVER, we believe that despite the recent activity, it will be very easy to revitalize the website and should make for an attractive buying point for any interested buyer.

There are many reasons to consider the website, including (but not limited to):

• Fully customized website, based on WordPress, that has integrated features and custom coding for a financial audience
• vBulletin-based forum, including license, that is custom-skinned to match
• Twitter account (@bullishbankers) with almost 4,000 followers
• Average 37,500 uniques/month (during normal operations, July ‘08-May ‘09)
• Averaged $700/month, with a peak monthly earnings close to $1,200/month
• Quality partnerships, including theStreet.com, Seeking Alpha and Morningstar
• RSS feed with over 1,750 daily readers
• Aweber newsletter with almost 1,500 subscribers Read the rest of this entry »

When you are first building your blog, there is no doubt in my mind that you will stumble across what are known as “blog directories.” Personally, I’ve seen recommendations to submit my site to X directory literally hundreds of times… and it used to be one of the easiest and fastest way to boost your traffic and search engine ranking positions (SERPs). The question now is: are web directories still useful?

While I hate to give this kind of ambiguous answer, the truth is that people aren’t really sure. Google is constantly revamping the way that it looks at websites, how they appear in search results, etc. However, if I had to bet money I would say that web directories are still a viable way to artificially boost the number of high quality incoming links to your blog. Sites with more links, and links of higher authority (AKA Google Pagerank), are better placed in Google results. Sounds like something we want, eh? Let’s get to submitting!

The (“Self-Proclaimed”) KING of Web Directories

One of the most frustratingly powerful directories out there on the internet is a place called DMOZ.org, the Open Directory Project. These guys are Google’s favorite directory, and will give your website a huge Pagerank 8 link back if you can get yourself listed. They don’t take cash for positions, and professional bloggers try everything from bargaining with the site’s official editors to paying $100s to people who claim to offer successful listings in order to get into this self-proclaimed dominant directory. You don’t need to bother with that… you just need to cross your fingers and submit your blog yourself for free!

How to Submit Your Website to a Directory

There are two methods to submitting your website: do it yourself, or hire a freelance worker to do it for you. I recommend the latter, as people will typically submit your website themselves dozens of times over for just a few dollars. However, many people like to save on costs (I know I sure did when I first started out) and do this themselves.

To hire a freelancer: Check out the webmaster forums at DigitalPoint or Warrior Forums. You’ll find loads of professionals ready and willing to do this.

To do it yourself: Since we are going to be filling out a lot of forms, it might be smart to automate the process with a form filler such as Roboform. You will then want to fill in on each site you enlist to things such as: Site Name, Keywords, Description, Link.

Always remember that the higher Pagerank you see on the web directory, the more powerful it is. I really wouldn’t bother submitting to anything less than Pagerank 3, as these directories won’t add much of anything to your search engine positions. I won’t be providing a list of “suggested directories” for you to apply to, as it would be more useful for you to search through Google for a few lists on your own. If you have a few bucks, the second best directory is the Yahoo! Directory… but I would argue it is overpriced.

Try your hand at getting listed in high-PR web directories, because it will potentially give life to your Google-based traffic from the start!

-Jimvesting