Stuart McHenry - My Internet World

I wanted to start off the “Beat Today’s 36,000” series with something that is very basic… biting off more than you can chew. Sure most people have heard that expression before in their life usually from their dad, mom or colleagues but I see this happen way too often on the Internet.

Somebody makes a posts how they make $XXX,XXX dollars per month on the Internet with KW’s (KW’s = keywords) usually dating, viagra or ringtones and tons of newbie webmasters run out and register new domain names and start optimizing hoping to rank for these highly competitive KW’s. Now let me tell you the facts of what is going to happen and why.

99.99% of these people are biting off more than they can chew.. why??? Here are the top three reasons:

1) They lack the knowledge to rank for such a highly competitive KW
2) They lack the funds to rank for such a highly competitive KW
3) They lack the commitment to get the job done

First… you have to have the knowledge. Sure maybe the person has had some success with small KW’s like “blue widgets in Bumblefuck, IA” but that is often little league Vs MLS. It can take several years to gain the knowledge and then you have to stay on top of it as it’s always changing.

Second… how much money do you think it will take??? I have sites that rank for some of the most competitive KW’s in finance. This takes tons of money… the old saying “it takes money to make money” is still true today. Some of our link budgets are well over $5,000 per month. I’ve never been afraid to spend the money… people might think $5,000 per month is a lot but when you get a site that makes that in two days… you can see it’s totally worth it.

Third… some people spread themselves too thin by trying to get too many sites to rank or they let other things distract them. This has happened to all of us at one point but the key is staying focused.

So what do I recommend… well unless you have been in the business for a while and have a decent size budget don’t go after the top KW’s. So if you start a dating site don’t go after “online dating” stick to smaller KW’s that you can handle. Focus on cities or even states like “San Jose Dating” or San Jose Online Dating” and your success rate will go up.

In order to make money online a website needs traffic. Traffic can come from off-line advertising (Magazines, TV, etc.) PPC (Pay Per Click), website referrals (links and articles) and organic search. Organic search is what comes up when you go to a search engine and type in what your looking for. Most people skip over the paid advertisements and look through the search engine results. In the Internet Marketing / Search Engine Optimization world this is where everyone wants a website to rank.

Now with that said I would like to you ponder some stats for a minute. Currently there are an estimated 80,000,000+ websites (Netcraft Numbers) on the Internet of which 40,000,000 have come online in the last three years. That’s 36,829 new websites per day.

So over the next few weeks I’m going to start writing articles and giving tips about getting your site to rank well and whatnot in the search engines. I’m going to call this series of tips the “Beat Today’s 36,000″ and I hope some parts of it will be helpful to some.

I don’t work much these days… so I spend most of my time playing poker or golf. It is still really hot here in Palm Springs so golfing around here isn’t as fun. I’ve been playing a 2-3 days per week up at Oak Valley. On average it’s about 15 degrees cooler up there and the golf course isn’t half bad. Oak Valley is located in Beaumont, California and represents the nicer side of that town.

Here in Palm Springs we can get on a few courses for free. Yes… that’s right some nice course we can walk onto free. but it’s been way to hot for that so we don’t mind driving 30 minutes up the road to play in cooler weather. Golf is a game that is just more enjoyable when the weather is nice.

Next week I think we will be playing a few rounds in Northern California to continue golfing the summer away.

Ok… I wanted to get the Sony SXRD last year when it came out… the picture is unbelievable but the old model had these huge ass speakers on the side that made the TV over 63″ long. So when the new model SXRD KDS-60A2000 came out and I saw the speakers are on the bottom now… I bought it!

Here’s a little about my new toy:

“Full HD 1080p picture quality within a slim, compact design. The Grand WEGA™ SXRD™ Rear Projection HDTV is also equipped with Sony’s WEGA Engine™ system, which minimizes signal distortion to provide you with the best picture , and features enhanced connectivity with dual HDMI (1080p capability) and front component inputs (1080i).”

I bought this over the weekend and yesterday the cable company came by to install my HDTV box. My daughter thinks it’s cool since SpongeBob is like huge now… GTA doesn’t look too bad either… but the best part is it came just in time for football season.

BTW.. the new model is $500 cheaper too