Stuart McHenry - My Internet World

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

I’ve had a few emails asking why i haven’t blogged in a while. After I spent most of the month of Febuary snowboarding… I got down and worked a bit. I have to keep growing my company (Site Sift Media, Inc.) sales. Last year’s numbers are going to be hard to beat… although we are up 12% over the same period from last year.

We own 175+ websites but have three large sites we focus on each in a different industry; Internet Marketing, Real Estate and Entertainment. All three do very well but there is plenty of potential for improvement. The past three weeks has been all about the *power three* as I like to call it.

The Internet Marketing site has increased it’s rankings in the search engines and we have expanded our PPC campaigns. Traffic is up and seems to be increasing every month. I have a full time editor in place that handles the content and adding additional pages to that site.

The Entertainment site has been off the hook. It seems like every day there is something new that POPS up with this site. Traffic has been crazy… some days we bring in more that 35,000 visitors and 300,000 page views…. yes DAILY. With that kind of traffic comes challenges so this site has been keeping us real busy.

Our real estate site is still a baby in the Internet world. It’s barely over a year old but has a huge presence on the Internet. In one search engine we have over 300,000 pages index and traffic seems to grow about 15% each month with the exception of this month where we are already at 38% increase over last month with 7 days left to go. We are still just tapping the surface on how to monetize this site… even though it’s been profitable for some time now.

So what happens to my other 172 sites or so when we are focusing on the main three??? Well… I have a small team here at Site Sift Media, Inc. that handles programming, writing, editing, accounting, moderation, marketing and search engine optimization.

Over the next few weeks I will have more time for blogging… so.

Ok… I’m getting a little old sore for hitting the slopes as much as I have this month. Even though I have 19 years of snowboarding under my belt… it still can be difficult. Seven out of the last twenty days I’ve spent on the mountain, some of which was in Lake Tahoe (one week) and the rest in Big Bear.

The first day was cool… my son Andrew and I hit Big Bear after they got a couple inches of snow the night before. After that we spent some time at Kirkwood and Sierra-at-Tahoe and followed that up with another trip to big bear yesterday. My daughter (7 years old) went with us to Big Bear and did very well. (see pics below)

I want to say hello to our new friends Mindy and Andrea. (from Santa Monica) It was both their first day snowboarding and they spent a good amount of time with us working on there turns and whatnot. They didn’t snowboard in their bikini tops all day… just for a PIC to send to some friends. BTW… Andrew are you going to call Andrea??? (yep he got digits)

Mindy & Andrea

Lexy

Lexy

Andrew

Me - In Tahoe.. yeah it snowed!

Stupid Nature Shot

People are always asking *how many websites are too many?* The answer to the question is a it depends. I often feel many webmasters bite off more than they can chew. You can see evidence of this everyday on the forums… people selling off sites and/or trying to rank for the top keywords on a limited budget. Again… here are the reasons people are not successful with their online adventures:

1) lack of money to market their site(s)

4) lack of man power - creating a successful site *often* takes resources from several people (designers, programmers, etc.)

So… back to the question… how many websites is too many??? Well… for most people 2-3 successful sites are hard to archive…. provided you can get over # 2, # 3, & # 4 you are still faced with the money issue. This is listed as number one for a reason…. people often don’t really have a good idea what the cost involved will be.

Most recently I spoke with someone about a mortgage website and what it would cost to get it to rank for some geo-targeted keywords. Now if done right… the cost just for links (market value) could easily be $10K++ for the first year… sound expensive? Maybe not when you are selling $500K mortgages BUT… point being most people/companies don’t set aside enough budget to set themselves up for success.

So for *most* people 2-3 successful sites are a reality. (unless your a blackhat)

California Snow… yeah it happened and not just in the mountains… here in SoCal.

Well… I got woken up today by my daughter screaming “Dad… it’s snowing… it’s snowing!” The news said that the snow level would drop but you really never know. So as you can see we got a little bit of snow… even enough for it to stick a bit.

Backyard Completed

A little over a month ago I posted some pictures of our new house and now I want to add the backyard and custom cabinets. The backyard is good size for a California new home and is actually one of the reason why we liked the place so much. Most new homes in SoCal have small yards nowadays… this is due to the fact that land got so expensive over the past 5 years.

Anyway… here are some before and after PICs of the backyard and the custom cabinets we had installed.

Backyard Before: here, and here

Backyard During: here and here

Backyard After: here, here, here, here, here and my daughter’s teather ball. (removable)

Cabinet Before: here (no cabinet)

Cabinet After: here

*I forgot to take a PIC of the upstairs cabinet… so I will add it later.

Well 2007 is off to a good start for my company Site Sift Media, Inc. but I wanted to take a little time to reflect on 2006. One of our goals this last year was to diversify our income and I would have to say we did a great job in doing so.

Here is how 2006 broke down for us:

Sales/Services - 47%
Contextual Advertising - 10%
Affiliate Income - 43%

In 2005 the numbers were like this:

Sales/Services - 92%
Contextual Advertising - 8%
Affiliate Income - 0%

I’m very pleased in the direction we have grown and 2007 is off to a great start already. One of our main goals for 2007 is to increase brand awareness for our three main sites.

Site Sift Listings V1.30

I’m happy to announce we are releasing Site Sift Listing V1.30. Some of the upgrades to this script are the spam fighting measures. We took the feedback form the current users and added a multiple link approval/delete/renew with one click. This is by far the most anticipated feature with V1.30.

Here are the new features:

-Link scan that will check for broken links
-Security Image (help prevent spam)
-Integrated for paypal subscriptions
-Ready to use for 2CheckOut payments
-Coupons
-Domain banning
-E-mail templates for approval/deny emails
-Paid listings can be set to expire after a certain number of days
-Multiple link approval/delete/renew with one click

If you are not familiar with Site Sift Listings directory script below are all the features of this powerful script. If anyone has any question please feel free to stop by our support forum.

-Unlimited categories
-Unlimited subcategories (multi way tree design structure)
-Edit (sub)categories
-Change category from drop down menu
-Move categories around (subcategories will be changed as well)
-Change title
-Change description
-Delete (sub)categories
-Edit listings
-Change title
-Change description
-Change category
-Change URL
-Sort listings by alphabetical or date submitted
-Search both listings and categories
-Easily customize colors
-Change site meta title tag
-Change site meta keyword tag
-Change site meta description tag
-Change site default email address
-Change default currency
-Change default domain name
-One click SEO friendly URL’s
-Reciprocal links can be required (on/off switch)
-Automatic reciprocal link checking, easliy turn on/off
-Require reciprocal link to be from same domain, easliy turn on/off
-Integrated for Paypal with Instant Payment Notification
-Offer sponsored, paid, reciprocal, and free listings, easily turn any on/off
-Easily set price for paid/sponsor links
-Sponsored listings can be set to expire after a set # of days or to never expire
-Easily change links from sponsor to regular and set expiration date of sponsor links
-Google sitemap integration
-Set min/max length for site description
-Adjust the number of listings shown per page
-Database backup
-Smart meta tags every category & subcategory page has its own meta tags (keywords,title,description) all dynamic
-Link details page has its own meta tags (keywords,title,description) all dynamic
-Link scan that will check for broken links
-Ready to use for 2CheckOut payments
-Coupons
-Domain banning
-E-mail templates for approval/deny emails
-Paid listings can be set to expire after a certain number of days
-Multiple link approval/delete/renew with one click

So I finally recorded my Christmas lights. The recording is poor quality but you can get an idea of how it looks. Please ensure your speakers are turned on and the volume is up… so you can hear the music.

My Christmas Lights:

Click Here to watch them

It’s not often I like sequels but a few nights ago we watch Clerks II and I could not stop laughing. The first one was good but WTF Elias one of the characters doesn’t want to have sex with his girlfriend because he is scared of Pillow Pants the Pussy Troll:

“Well we can’t because of Pillow Pants”

We actually had to pause the movie because we were laughing so hard. If you haven’t seen the movie yet… go rent it.

Watch it for yourself. (NSFW)