Stuart McHenry - My Internet World

The US economy has headed downhill since early summer with the mortgage meltdown and the affects will be felt through 2008, if not longer. Crude oil prices are poised to cross the $100-a-barrel mark, soaring gasoline and energy prices. Wages stagnant, record level consumer debts, price increases, and declining housing prices, consumer spending will most likely decline even further.

Let’s first mention the 450,000 subprime mortgages that are expected to increase every quarter this coming year. Let’s face it most of the people that see an increase in their mortgage will not have the money and will continue to add to the foreclosure rates. We will go into more of how the real estate market effects numerous other markets in a minute, but first.

Ben Bernanke the Federal Reserve Chairman predicted an economic rebound by mid-2008. Let me tell you this is complete bullshit! (I wish it weren’t) Ben is trying to boost confidence in an economy that is sinking faster than Rosie O’Donnell trying to swim.

Anyone reading remember what Newton’s Third Law is??? “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction” well old Newton might of been referring to particles but it holds true to the real estate mess. Homes aren’t selling so this brings down a huge sector of the US economy. Realtors, agents, brokers, construction workers, asphalt companies, pool builders, security & alarms companies, lumber yards, roofers, A/C and heating companies, landscape companies and many more are directly affected by the market. We have already seen tons of these types of companies go under and many more are forced to lay off employees.

New car sales are starting to take a hit with some dealership reporting double digit sales decreases last month alone. And don’t get me started on travel because I just booked a 4 star room in a major US city for $70.00 per night. That same room was $135.00 two weeks ago and since I take this same trip every year I can tell you the price last year was $200.00 per night.

In 2008 we will see a record number of small business going under. Many small business owners rely on equity in their homes when times get tough or when they need new equipment. Guess what? There is no equity to get out of most homes and if there is it’s too little to qualify under the current lending conditions. When George the owner of the local auto shop has equipment that breaks or Ron the photographer that tries to get money out for camera equipment, won’t be able to, and their business will suffer.

I paid $3.45/per gallon for gas today, I have neighbors around me in foreclosure, some of which have already been laid off and one who owned a small business that went under. In my area of the country 1 in 43 homes is now a foreclosure and did I mention consumer spending is down. Put your seatbelts on America because 2008 will be one of the toughest years in many of our lives.

I’ve been working on a large project that has numerous people involved. The co-founder of the project is in New York and other key players are in Michigan and Nevada. So I’ve been looking for a way to bring all of us together for some meetings. I found a few websites that offer a web conference. This is a cost effective way to bring my team together. In the long run it will save tons of time and energy as the alternative is emailing, texting and working on AIM to complete this new project of mine.

Web conferencing has been around for a few years and cost as little as $75.00 per month. If you consider how much money it is to bring a team together for just one meeting your savings can well exceed thousands of dollars. Cost like flights, hotel and rental cars adds up quick not to mention meals. While researching I found a company that even offers web seminars. Web seminars are often called webinars and are great for consulting and training. A few buddies of mine that own high end Internet marketing companies often use these to train in-house search engine marketing.

People often ask me how to start out in the dot com business. The first thing I tell them to do is to read the many books, blogs and forums that are out there. Once you have a good idea of what you are doing then it’s time to get a website design. What does that involve?

You cannot just go to a designer and say I need a site for (insert idea) but rather you need to surf the web and see what designs catch your eye. When we launch a new site we spend anywhere from 4-6 hours looking at site designs and colors. The layout and design of your site can effect conversions and your overall profitability. Once you pick the colors and layout it’s important to communicate this to your web designer. What comes after the design phase?

Now it’s time to find hosting for your new site. There are different hosting plans out there from business web hosting to ecommerce web hosting and going through the plans is important. So offer more bandwidth while others offer more storage. If you’re launching an ecommerce site then more than likely you’ll need a hosting plan with a MySQL database and not all hosting companies offer this.

Once you get the design and hosting complete then it’s time to learn about search engine marketing and optimization.

Aladdin From Compton

Funny video….

Google Paid Links Algorithm Update

Just around the first of September (a few days ago) Google laid the smack down and tweaked their Algorithm. If you’ve visited a webmaster forum in the past few days you will notice it’s all the talk. Some webmasters are calling Google evil and bitching about the update. I’ve heard comments like:

They (Google) make it harder for sites to have some what of a chance in SERP’s and force them to purchase paid links through Adwords.

I’ve given up trying to rank well in Google and now just focus on Yahoo and MSN.

What a complete load of shit! First off their is a huge section of webmasters out there that don’t know there ass from a hole in the wall. They read a few post in a forum and have some basic success with a three or four word search phrase on MSN and think they are SEO’s. I’m going on five years in the dotcom world and I’m still learning stuff everyday but settling for 25% of the search engine traffic is like going to play professional baseball with a dream of only playing in the minors.

Anyway… Google’s recent algorithm update seems to target paid links. Most webmasters have noticed the change in SERPS. Some search keywords disappeared all together when others either dropped or gained a few. Why???

Well… that’s easy.. Google has said now for a long time that they will get better at detecting paid links. Some links stick out like a sore thumb. Here is my list of the top three types of links that are easy for search engines to detect.

1) Footer Links
How natural do you really think this looks??? Most are below the copyright… how important is that link really worth??? Nothing!

2) Site-Wide links
Most site-wide links are purchased… so why count them???

3) Links with the word “sponsor” or “advertising” near them
Duh! This one is a no-brainer.

Keep in mind Google doesn’t care if you are buying a link for traffic or for PR… they treat it the same way. Once they detect that the link is paid they simply discount the link so it won’t pass PR. I’m sure in some cases the link *might* not even be paid but these are few and far between.

So what are the best links to get??? Well… during this update my big sites have been virtually unchanged and one has actually moved up a decent amount. The one that moved up has tons of natural links from articles, bloggers, radio stations, newspapers and industry leading websites. Those links within the content have really sent me above the sites that had tons of paid links.

The Simpson’s Movie Review….

BTW… I like the movie!

I just got back (last night) from another vacation and I was thinking about how great it is to own a dot com company. Sure I worked my ass off the first year or two to build my online business up but now it’s a great life. When I was on vacation a few people had asked me what I do. This is never a simple answer (if you are a dot com owner you know) but I try to pawn off my favorite saying “we own a few dot com companies.” Why is this never a simple answer? People want to dig and find out what domains you own, how you make money and most of the time they even want a crash course so they can go do the same. I often feel stereotyped by people so here are the stereotypes and what really happens.

Eight Stereotypes of a Dot Com Owners:

1) Dot com owners have to be smart to think of a way to make money online.

2) Dot com owners must have taken classes on HTML and PHP from a local college.

3) Dot com owners where Atari t-shirts and work in their boxers all day.

4) Dot com owners can make tons of cash through the Internet.

5) Dot com owners work all the time and can never take vacations.

6) Dot com owners all have some kind of PORN sites.

7) Dot com owners start their business in their basement or garage.

8) Dot com owners have money to buy websites or money to create their own.

The actual truth:

1) I not dumb but I’m far away from smart… I just spent tons of hours reading the different ways to make money online.

2) I’ve never taken a class on HTML or PHP… I can do some very basic stuff in both but most of my sites are done by my great programmer Matt and a few web designers.

3) This one is true… I work in my boxers often and love it! I get up in the morning, put a t-shirt on and go downstairs to check sales for the day. The best part is I don’t have to set an alarm clock.

4) I know of some people in the business that after 2-3 years are only making $1200 per month. I also know of others making seven figures per month. How much you make online depends on so many things but most of my industry friends are in the $20K++ per month bracket.

5) I know of a few that run online stores and they have to be available to take orders and answer phones… but only a few. The others have websites that only need checking on every few days or as little as once per week. I have a handful of sites that I haven’t visited in numerous weeks and they still continue to make money… every day.

6) Not true! We don’t own *any* PORN sites. The last time I cashed a check at the bank this was the bank tellers 2nd question. Here is how the conversation went.

bank teller: WOW! Nice check… what does your company do?

me: We own a few dot com’s.

bank teller: Cool! Do you have any porn sites?

me: (head down low and shaking) No… we don’t.

7) OK… this is close. I started working out of an extra bedroom that I turned into an office. Then four months into working I had to move my stuff to the living room… when my step-son moved back home. Today I work out of my home office of my new house.

8) I started my first website with less than $600.00. My wife and I had about $550.00 saved up and we agreed to start our own business. From that original $600.00 investment I was able to more than triple my income at my day job. I spent the first year reinvesting most ALL of the profits to grow my online portfolio.

It’s been a while since I blogged anything… my wife had some major surgery two weeks ago so I’ve been busy with that. I really haven’t worked too much… done a few hours here and there. My content writer and my designer have done most of the work the past month or two. So what have I been doing?

I’ve spent a lot of time playing poker… a little Omaha and Texas Hold’em. I not a very good Omaha player… but I like the challenge of trying to learn the game better. I am however a decent Hold’em player. In the past I’ve never really tracked my winnings and losses playing poker it was more for fun. I have realized over the past few months that I do very well in cash games… so on the first of June I started tracking my winnings and losses. So far it’s early in the month but I can say that I’ve played everyday except for one and so far there are zero entries in the loss column. Now… I’m not going to quit my day job… wait I don’t really have one… anyway… keeping track has put a nice spin on the game for me.

CHeck out this funny American Idol parody… but ensure you watch the ending… Cartman is sooooooo funny.