Alan Hood

Create a blog

I just wanted to do a quick post about one of my latest ventures, it is called create a blog. The website is createablog.ws and there are also support blogs set up for it also. The site is a video tutorial walking people through the process of setting up a Wordpress blog and getting everything right to start. There are some real advantages to setting up your blog correctly right from the start and not having to go back and change things later. The create a blog site is free but you will have to register to see the videos. I hope that anyone who is interested in creating their very own profitable blog will take the time to learn to set it up right. I have even been toying with giving people some really cool traffic driving tips, but we will have to see how response is first.

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Being consumed by websites can be dangerous to your health. I should know, because I spend way too much time playing with my websites and not doing other things that I should be doing, like finishing projects around the house. I have a dream that one day SOON that my websites will support me and that I will no longer have to go to a job every day. I am not really sure that it would be like not having a job though, because even now I spend more time working on my sites that anything else. The problem is not having a dream the problem is when the dream interferes with everything else in life that matters. Like spending time with your family and doing the other things in life that have to be done.

The one good thing that has come out of this past few months is that I have learned more about internet marking than I have in the last 8 years that I have been messing around with websites. A lot has to do with writing the correct articles that will drive traffic to your site. Not for this site, this is just my personal place to rant, but for other sites that I am trying to build. If you are interested in learning how to promote your site the right way then head over to netrat.com for some great tips on writing articles and building communities online. It is also my blog and there is nothing to buy just great articles to help new webmasters learn about building traffic.

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.

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.

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.

This is a short rant about things that have always pissed me off about the Internet.  First I just want to say that I believe everyone should own at least one website, but it sure isn’t easy.  Websites take constant attention from way too many aspects to even begin to write about right now.  At this very moment I am mad about forums.  If you are reading this you know what a forum is, so I will spare you the explanation.  Most of the forums I visit are internet related, most dealing with buying, selling or promoting websites.  Every single one of these forums is controlled by some sanctimonious holier than though jerk.  These forums put rules in place that you have to be a member for x days and have made x number of posts before you can do anything on the forum worth while.  If you even mention your website you are called a spammer or worse.  Promoting a website is no easy task and little internet sites acting like mega corporations only make the internet a worse place to try to carve a little niche.  This was a very short rant because I don’t want to get too worked up over a bunch of small people who can’t help themselves.

I am putting an end to the forum garbage, and an end to the problems faced my new webmasters with sites to promote.  I have just started Masterwebtools.com with the sole intention of helping new websites get a foothold in cyberspace.  Yes I do know how hard it will be to compete in that very established and seo’ed up market but I truly don’t care if it takes 1 year or 15 years to shake that industry up I am most certainly going to do it.  Unlike the people who I plan to help with these websites, I have the resources to keep going for 15 years if that’s what it takes. 

The first few sites are up and running so here is a short list of places to get you started if you have a website you need to promote.  First I have put up 2 link directories, Reallylinked.com and Autosix.com.  Of course you can place your link here in my links section and visit the forum at masterwebtools.com.  Coming very soon will be the leader of the pack Netrat.com.  Because I really do consider myself a net rat, I spend more time surfing the internet than a person should be allowed.  Netrat.com will be the sources of all things webmaster.  If you can’t find it on netrat.com you don’t need it.  Be patient it will take a while to accumulate all of the information I plan to have available there.

It is not my goal to have the one giant website that appeals to everyone like a Yahoo portal. It is my goal to have many websites, each of which will cater to their own little niche of people who use them. This little empire will hopefully consist of about 50 websites by the end of 1 year. Starting the end of May 2007 the first few websites went on line, alongblog.com, masterwebtools.com, and hoodala.com started the group. It has taken a while to figure out exactly what software packages I want to use for each of them and 2 different canned sites have really stood out from the crowd as great pieces of software. Mambo and Wordpress are the best applications for what I am trying to build. Wordpress is just plain easy to use and has many options that make the site run smoothly. Mambo is a content management product that again is easy to use and powerful enough to do just about anything you want.

Now that there are almost 100 websites on line the biggest trouble is writing all of content that is necessary to fill that many sites. I still have a full time job, so just about every other waking minute is controlled by the mass of websites demanding attention. I am sure that once the sites are established and situated just the way I want them it will be much easier to concentrate on the content and it will flow much faster. What I really need though is some help.

Recruiting people to build content is not as easy as you might think. I even have to bribe my own family to write articles. I will keep everyone posted on the building of an empire and talk more specifically about each website and what has been done to and for them so far. To be continued…….