Stuart McHenry - My Internet World

**Get your SexyBack Ringtone now

Here is a funny Sexyback parody I found on youtube.com

“come scratch my back”

I see new webmasters ask the questions all the time about contextual advertising Vs affiliate marketing. New webmasters tend to think that Adsense is the greatest thing since the sliced bagel and at first… it sure does. What’s not to like with Adsense… you put some code on your webpages then make some money. Sure it’s easy and there is some decent money to be made but if you really want to make cash… get into affiliate marketing.

With Google Adsense our highest days have been in the $500-$600 range but with affiliate marketing our highest day is more than nine times that. Yep… our current single daily record is $4,674.15. (just affiliate income) Now here is the kicker… sure we bring in decent money for affiliate companies like Azoogle and CJ but we are nowhere near the top earners. There is currently tons of money to be made in the affiliate arena and some of the top earners are making seven figures per month.

Now don’t think just by putting some affiliate links on your site and BOOM your making tons of cash… it doesn’t work that way. First off you need a website with traffic.. second you need to market something your visitors might be interested in. I have got a few people that have contact me and asked why they haven’t made any sales yet in the affiliate world. They usually send me there URL and I take a look. 99.99% of the time the sites they show me would do much better if they choose the right affiliate programs to promote. People tend to get caught up in what others are making money on Vs what might work for them.

The most important thing is to test out different programs and keep in mind just b/c an affiliate has higher payout’s doesn’t mean you will make more money. Conversion is the main factor… we are currently running a program that pays 35% less than some others but we convert more and overall make more money with the lower payout program.

Anyway… if you are just getting into affiliate marketing read as much as you can and test, test and test again. You will find out you can make 3-4 times more money with affiliate marketing than you can with contextual advertising.

I have a treadmill in my office this way I can get on it and listen to a radio show.. usually something on Wemaster Radio like Jeremy AKA ShoeMoney.

Anyway… after working out a bit on the treadmill I walked over to the refrigerator and was looking for a water bottle. We almost always have dasni water in our house but on this very rare occasion we were out. I grabbed a tall glass from the cupboard and filled it with ice and walked over to the kitchen sink and filled it up.

My daughter… whom is 6 years old screamed “gross… you can drink that dishwater.” She actually thought the water was not safe for drinking b/c she has always had water bottles. I went into a very long conversation with her about drinking water and how the concept of water bottles is still fairly new… within the last 10-15 years. I’m sure some of the talk went over hear head but I thought it was very funny that she actual thought you couldn’t drink out of the kitchen faucet.

So the past weekend we spent partying it up in Las Vegas. I got a suite at the Venetian Hotel… it was the first time I had stayed there and I really enjoyed the place. The theme of the weekend was birthdays and long island ice teas. Andrew turned 21 and my wife’s cousin Jesse turned 34… *so*

We had to break Andrew in.. just turning 21 but for reasons you can imagine I cannot discuss what actually we did in VEGAS… besides I’m brainwashed by those commercials “what happens in VEAGS…” you know the rest.

The poker room there is very nice although it was hard for them to get high limit… limit games going. If you like no limit there never seemed to be a shortage of games going but trying to get a 15/30 limit game seemed difficult.

Anyway… I would write more but most of the weekend was a long island blur.

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

Yesterday I played a round of golf at the Tahquitz Creek Golf Resort. It was probably the coolest day we have had here in Palm Springs in the past two months so good time to play. My son and I played with a buddy named Alan who is a scratch golfer. We all had a decent time even though I still think it’s too hot outside for golf. We didn’t keep track of our scores only who won each hole…. I only won two holes but hey I’m a bit rusty.

The Tahquitz Course is OK… not the best course but not the worse either. I’m sure I would have enjoyed it a bit more if the temp was about 10 degrees cooler. There was adequate water stations along the way so I cannot complain too much.

The GDrive Project has a codename of “Platypus.” Corsin Camichel found a document about Platypus on Writely.com, which is Google’s online word processor.

Basically, it looks like GDrive will be your ultimate storage system for your computer. GDrive’s goal is to Store 100% of your files. Suppose you lose everything on your computer, using GDrive, you can recreate your system. GDrive will allow users to share files and there are sophisticated synchronization features for computers that use different operating systems.