Alan Hood

Okay we are finally making some headway on the back yard. The guys took out 50 tons of dirt today and it is finally off of the street in front of my house. I can’t even explain how great it looks. I am sure the girl folk will be thrilled when they get home. 50 tons of dirt may not sound like a lot to you but you would have to see the pile to get a real appreciation for the amount of dirt that left here today. The truck picking it up is a large dump tuck that carries 15 tons at a time, so they have been loading it all day a scraping the dirt around the pool flat. Funny how much better flat dirt looks than bumpy dirt. They have told me that they are going to have to pour the concrete on two different days. The first day will surround the pool and the second will fill in up to the front wall. 27 yards of concrete is like a dream come true for me. No more dust and crud on my patio and in my house.

I don’t know why anyone would get excited about concrete but it is like Christmas, my birthday, and every other holiday wrapped up in one to me. I am sure it sounds crazy but it will be such a relief to have a nice backyard that we can enjoy for a change. I have to go swimming tonight just to look at the dirt one last time before it all gets covered up. Yes I am a little wacko.

I decided to detail the journey of getting the number one spot in the SERPS for Pest control as part of the Building an Empire series so if you are interest head over to netrat.com to check it out. There will be a great deal of information on exactly how I am going about controlling the world. Well getting a good ranking for a website, controlling the world might be a little extreme.

Some of the crap that people write in mainstream news sources is thoroughly disgusting, and “The sad truth about dog fighting” by her highness Emily Deschanel is no different.  I call Miss Deschanle her highness because she obviously from this piece thinks very highly of herself and very poorly of others.  Not only that but it is quite obvious that she wrote this piece only because it is a popular topic right now and she needs the publicity.  The picture attached to the story is of her highness not of anything relevant to the story. 

Her highness starts the story with “Like most decent Americans, I have been sickened by the Michael Vick dogfighting debacle.”  Please let me interpret that for you indecent pieces of crap who disagree with her highness.  That’s right I just did.  If you disagree with her highness you are a piece of crap and clearly not a decent person at all.  Her highness goes on to call high profile rappers and Michael Vick “Twisted” and then resorts to calling Mr. Vick a “Big Shot”.  I know that I am calling this ignorant bitch her highness but she started it so it’s okay. 

Her highness tries to make a legitimate argument late in the article but fails miserably when she says “The results of a recent Chicago Police Department study bear this out: Of those arrested for animal crimes, including dogfighting, 65 percent had past arrests for battery.”  Well if you say it like that it makes me think that these people are doing the best they can to turn their lives around and not take their aggression out on people any longer.  Now if her highness had found a study that indicated that people arrested for animal crimes were later arrested for battery that would be a worthwhile statistic.  But obviously doing her homework is not something that her highness has any interest in doing.  It is much easier for her to act outraged and call names than it is to do any real reporting.

Her highness makes a point of referring to these dogs, which were bred for fighting as our “canine companions” not simply as dogs or really what they are which is warriors bred for the pit.  This is some of the most disgusting reporting I have ever seen and the editor who let this piece of crap slip by should be thrown into the pit in the middle of a fight, just so that they really have a chance to “see the light”.  Miss Deschanle if you ever happen to run across this article I would like to be the first to let you know that it is time for you to get married and let your husband take care of you, but please don’t get pregnant the world cannot handle any more like you running around.

 This past week has been very exciting around the house.  Lisa was in Austin so I decided to do a few things around the house to make her happy, and just because they really needed to get done.  First I got my friends Gordon and Brian to help me get all of the dirt from digging the pool out of the back yard.  Believe me that was a huge job.  That was such a big job that three days later my back is still killing me, but that’s life right.  The most exciting thing is that we have a concrete company coming this week to pour 27 yards of concrete in the back yard; I know that sounds like a lot of concrete but it is just the area around the pool up to the front fence.  It still leaves plenty of yard for the dogs to take care of business and run around.  The most important thing is that for the first time since we moved into this house and I started ripping up the back yard it is finally going to be about 90% finished.

Just to give you an idea of what all has been done, in the back yard alone I have taken out 8 large trees, and countless small bushes including ivy, bougainvillea, bamboo, and lots of little bushy things.  This yard was a jungle when we moved in and I knew it was going to be a huge job to get it where I wanted it to be, but I have to say that the final results are exactly what I wanted.  The pool is great, know that it is finally vacuumed out, and with concrete around it, I think it will be a real pleasure for many years to come.  Now if I can just get Gordon to finish the projects he started in December inside the house then life will be almost normal again.  Not that life in this house is anywhere close to normal.

Just a small announcement:  All future installments of building an empire will be moved to netrat.com.  I have just decided to keep this site for more personal use and no more website stuff even though websites are what I do the most of.  That’s it.

In my promise to give more of myself to this website I would like to share with everyone a song that I think is incredible.  Before you hit the play button on the video see if you can guess who the artist is just by reading the lyrics.  I am betting that very few people will be able to guess just based on reading the lyrics.

Gazing through the window at the world outside
Wondering will mother earth survive
Hoping that mankind will stop abusing her, sometime

After all there’s only just the two of us
And here we are still fighting for our lives
Watching all of history repeat itself, time after time

I’m just a dreamer
I dream my life away
I’m just a dreamer
Who dreams of better days

I watch the sun go down like everyone of us
I’m hoping that the dawn will bring good signs
A better place for those who will come after us, this time

I’m just a dreamer
I dream my life away, oh yeah
I’m just a dreamer
Who dreams of better days

Your higher power may be God or Jesus Christ
It doesn’t really matter much to me
Without each others help there ain’t no hope for us
I’m living in a dream of fantasy, oh yeah yeah yeah

If only we could all just find serenity
It would be nice if we could live as one
When will all this anger hate and bigotry be done

I’m just a dreamer
I dream my life away, today
I’m just a dreamer
Who dreams of better days, oh yeah

I’m just a dreamer
Who’s searching for the way, today
I’m just a dreamer
Dreaming my life away, oh yeah yeah yeah

I just have to let everyone here know that after applying some of the new techniques I have managed to get 2 number 1 rankings for keywords that I have been targeting with very large competition.  Each keyword has over 1 million sites in competition for it, but I have managed to get the number 1 ranking.  I am putting more of this technique to the test right now and I will be sure to give everyone the results.  By the way that same site has 61 different phrases that are on the first page of the results.  At this rate building my empire may be a faster process than I had originally thought it would be.

Not that I have a lot of spare time on my hands right now but I have been thinking about hiring out my services for other businesses who are looking to target specific key word phrases to enhance their online presence.  For right now I am content to continue to build my little empire for everyone to awe over.  A few of the websites are starting to get a significant amount of traffic which makes me very excited that I am doing all of the right things.  I also know that this website is starting to get a number of hits and readers, so please if you have any comments or questions feel free to leave them on the site. 

The directories are continuing to get links submitted every day which is still very encouraging.  But the websites that are doing the best are all built on Wordpress.  If you don’t have a blog on your site then start one right away, you will be amazed at the traffic you will receive.  And all good things start with traffic.

A couple of months ago I talked my youngest daughter into working on a couple of websites for herself, because I thought it would be fun for her and I to have a common interest.  She has been doing a lot of article writing for her personal blog and the results she is getting are just amazing.  The other day I noticed that she was getting hits from the SERPS for the term “blonde chunks” and while I was taking her to her clarinet lesson today, I told her about the hits she is getting.  Tonight after she tells me good night and goes up to her room she came back down to tell me that she searched for -blonde chunks- and her website came up number 7 in the results.  To me it is just amazing for a ninth graders 2 month old blog to be showing up in the SERPS that high for a 2 word phrase.

While we were looking at the results from our search I decided to copy another small phrase from her website and search for it.  Bam there she is number 6, now we are just beside ourselves, giving each other high fives, and looking at all of the other sites that she is ranked above.  We search another small phrase, again she shows up at number 11.  These are incredible results for such a new website.  So we talk for a few minutes and she goes back upstairs.  But I am so happy for her that I had to write a little something here to share my pride in a little girl who is dedicated and doing a great job.  I just wish that I had the same kind of success that she is having.  Okay I am a little jealous, but mostly I am glad that I could share something with her that I love and I hope that she is learning to love it just as much, with results like those I am sure she does.

I know that a lot of people are going to be upset by this however I am going to say it anyway.  And PETA you can go pee up a rope for all I care so keep your comment to yourself.  Michael Vick was wrong to participate in gambling and the brutal way that he participated in the killing of those dogs was inexcusable.  Pit bulls who are bred to fight and do not perform need to be killed.  No if ands or buts about it.  These dogs will never make good pets for anyone and are a potentially deadly hazard to anyone they come into contact with, so they needed to be put down.  Again the way it was handled was wrong, but the act itself was not the wrong thing to do.

We are a society that uses animals for our own entertainment on a continual basis, and fighting dogs is really not any worse than a rodeo, greyhound park, or horse race.  If you think I am wrong then you obviously have no clue as to the way the animals at any of those venues are treated.  Most likely you do know but you choose to turn a blind eye and continue to place your bets. 

Cock fighting is illegal but it’s okay to buy veal.  WTF you have got to be kidding me, it’s okay to practically starve a calf to death then slaughter it when it is only 1 year old or younger but you can’t let chickens fight.  This country we live in is absurd.  Torturing cows is just fine because some people like to eat fresh young tender calf meat, which by the way is laden with antibiotics and steroids, but I cant let a couple of dumb ass chickens fight to the death and eat the loser?  I have a hard time understanding the logic of the people who decided that one is okay but the other is wrong.  Wait maybe the cattle industry has better lobbyists than the cock fighters do, so they are able to come up with more bribe money, err I mean campaign contributions, making their cruelty okay. 

I love my dogs and if anybody tried to kick one of them I wouldn’t think twice about filling them full of birdshot.  My dogs were not bred for fighting, and dogs that are, have no place in this country.  If you want to stop people from fighting dogs then you need to outlaw all of the dog breeds that are raised for that purpose.  Don’t make Michael Vick out to be some kind of demon when he is only doing what other people do in this country legally every day.  I am sure that some incredibly brilliant person is going to say that the cleanup has to start somewhere and it might as well be with him, but you are wrong.  The cleanup needs to start with the industries that as of right now are legal in this country, like dog racing, horse racing, and rodeo.  Or better yet realize that chickens and pitbulls are really just the same animal as greyhounds, bulls, and horses, and the cruelty of fighting them is no worse than the cruelty that we overlook every day of our lives.

I have loved the internet since I first started playing with it 12 years ago, but I have always struggled to find the right place for me to set up camp.  I love building websites but I find the task of marketing them to be very tedious.  I have decided to continue to build sites and just ad content to them and let the chips fall where they may.  Well not exactly true I will still continue to market them on a very small scale, but mostly I am going to concentrate on the content of the sites, and hope that the content will be enough to make them long term sustainable businesses.  I feel like I have some pretty incredible ideas and websites, but they all lack good quality content, so that’s what I am going to concentrate on. 

The best time of year is coming up so I am making a commitment to share more about myself here on this blog and let everyone know what I am interested in.  Not in this post but I pledge to have future post about my awesome Dallas Cowboys the NFL of course Michael Vick and the show I love Survivor.

In this segment of building an empire I am going to discuss a new tactic that I have learned about internet marketing.  I have always known about keyword research, but I have never known how to do it effectively until now.  I have been taking a course in internet marketing and have learned to use a few tools to narrow down a market that is worth pursuing.  The basic idea is to come up with some keyword phrases that relate to the market you are thinking of going into and then research how many people search for that term and how much competition there is directly using that same term.  Sounds simple enough but correlating the data is not something that you would just know how to do without someone showing you how to do it.  We will see over the next couple of weeks how well the research pays off, instead of doing what I normally do, which is just pick a topic that interests me and go for it.  I will keep you posted and if it works out well for me I will let everyone here know how specifically to do the research.

Okay I have made a decision to work on just a few blogs since it has been so hard to write enough articles to keep multiple blogs going, what I can’t decide is which on I should put the most effort into.  I think it has to be Netrat because I love the name so much, that and the fact that it describes me so well.  The problem is that I have it set up as a Mambo site and I want to make it a Wordpress blog.  Easy work to make the change but it is going to screw up the pages that have been indexed already.  I guess the decision just needs to be made and go for it. 

So far I have been putting a little promotion effort into 3 of the directories coolfetch.com, reallylinked.com, and netrat.com/links and things are going fairly well.  They all have just over 250 links in them so far, and that is a pretty good start.  I really like directories because the structure makes it easy to find sites that are relevant to the topic that I am researching.  At this point I am not sure if I will promote the other directories at all, so that I can concentrate on these three, well four, but more on that later.  If you happen to have a website please feel free to submit it to all three directories the link are free and hopefully in a couple of years these directories will become very popular. 

All right the fourth directory is part of another site that I just set up called wordreport.com.  Wordreport.com is a great concept for people who want to set up a blog.  We will setup a Wordpress blog and host it for you for $1.00 per month.  I think it is a great deal for people who want to have their own domain name, but don’t have the expertise to set up their own blog.  At on dollar per month for a great hosting package there is really no way to go wrong.  I am sure that once the word gets out about that site it is going to be great for people.  Right now if you have a free Wordpress blog they don’t allow you to make any money from your work.  With a wordreport.com blog you can monetize you r site anyway you see fit, including blogging for money with a program like Pay Per Post.  And as part of wordreport.com I set up a directory for blogs only, you can submit your blog at wordreport.com/blogs.  Just make sure you choose the correct category if you submit to any of the directories or the submission will just be deleted.  I know it sounds harsh but really it is a pain to change the category for each site, and takes way too much time, so I have decided to just delete them and let people resubmit if they choose.