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Overwhelmed and highly discouraged with writing articles
tonyspeaks
Posts: 13
Joined: 20 Mar 07
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04 Apr 07 1:02 am

Overwhelmed and highly discouraged with writing articles

Hello everyone. I've built a new site, http://www.glad2bhome.com. It's a site that discusses the benefits of homeschooling over public schooling. The problem is pretty straight forward and common. I know that the article I wrote for this site is fine, but the content of the site will get stale and old pretty fast once it FINALLY reaches the search engines (don't get me started on that bit of anxiety). The homeschooling products I've affiliated with change fairly often, and that means that I would have to invest a lot of time keeping the site up to date. I'm afraid that won't give me any time to get another site made with a different type of product. Plus, if the same goes for that hypothetical other site, I'll soon be in over my head with sites I won't have time to update. I can't afford Elance because I'm a complete newbie with "unemployed" written all over me. Is there anything anyone can tell me that will help me? I'm afraid I might have picked the wrong approach in making this site, after looking at a few of Mark's sites. I'm afraid I've bitten off more than I can chew. Thanks for reading, and I hope someone can give me a little counsel. :oops:
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Tony Hernandez [url=http://www.glad2bhome.com:2qe2dup5]Glad2BHome[/url:2qe2dup5]
 
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sean06
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04 Apr 07 1:19 am

 Well, if you don't have the resources to continually update your sites, then pick something that doesn't change as much.

And if you build a site, the worst case scenario is that it you learn. Sure you might not make any cash, but you will learn heaps by doing it.
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tonyspeaks
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04 Apr 07 1:29 am
sean06 wrote:Well, if you don't have the resources to continually update your sites, then pick something that doesn't change as much.

And if you build a site, the worst case scenario is that it you learn. Sure you might not make any cash, but you will learn heaps by doing it.


Hi Sean. I appreciate this reply. It does look like Glad2BHome is going to be one of those flops from which I learn what not to do. Embarrassing, but at least now I know enough from that experience and from all that I've been learning not to put the cart before the horse in my next venture. The real trick is going to be finding something that doesn't change much and still be able to keep my pr reasonably high. Thanks again.
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Tony Hernandez Glad2BHome
 
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sean06
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04 Apr 07 3:19 am

 No worries, do some research and some thorough planning before you put your next site up. It will be worth it :)
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www.SixDayWeekend.com
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chatyak86
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04 Apr 07 3:44 am

 Your site banned... what did you do?
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sean06
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04 Apr 07 6:29 am

 Banned? Looks like it's ok to me.
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www.SixDayWeekend.com
Free Training Videos reveal how I make 6 figures while travelling the world
 
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promocode
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04 Apr 07 4:13 pm

 Hi Tony,

Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’ve done more than most people trying to become internet marketers - cheers for that!

Now if you think that the niche you’ve selected isn’t going to be profitable one for you as an affiliate… then turn your site into an adsense site!

To encourage adsense clicks you want to blend the colors of your ads in with the rest of your site. For example: you have a grey background on your site, make the background of your adsense ad grey also. You want it to blend in with your page rather than stand out.

I would get rid of some of the pictures on the top, they’re going to distract visitors al so get rid of your affiliate banners and put a 728 x 90 or 468 x 60 adsense banner there instead (nix the little guy you have there)

Next; put your keyword rich article title, wrapped in h1 tags of course ;) and put a paragraph of your article.

Now, put another block of adsense in, this time a 300 x 250 block, align it to the right and then paste the rest of your article on the page ( make sure your are wrapping your content around your ad AND make sure you are blending your ad in with the rest of the page.

Finally put another adsense banner on the bottom of the article and viola you’re done!

I have three websites for home schooling all designed just for adsense and they all do well for me – go for it, you CAN succeed at this – make some lemonade out of those lemons! ***Promocode feeling very corny today, sorry :roll ***

HTH,
Promo
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chatyak86
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04 Apr 07 5:29 pm
sean06 wrote:Banned? Looks like it's ok to me.


It's grey barred.
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markling
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04 Apr 07 10:15 pm

 Hi there Tony,

Promocode has some good advice there. There's no reason to get very discouraged about this site -- you can always turn it into an Adsense site, and in the very worst case scenario, you have a reasonably generic domain name that you can turn to another purpose. Plus I think the lesson you've learned is quite valuable -- next time you'll know to look at how much work is involved being an affiliate in a particular market.

If you're wanting to turn your site into an AdSense site, I would consider reducing / eliminating the plethora of links you have at the bottom of your page. Can you find similar information that you can print on your website? Can you use these sites for ideas to write your own articles? While these links provide a really good resource for your visitors... you're not being paid for them!

Hope that helps,
Mark

P.S A gray bar where your PR should be in the Google toolbar simply means that your page hasn't been indexed by Google yet. It doesn't mean you're banned, barred or anything else. If you get a link to your site from another site, this bar will probably change to a white bar.
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tonyspeaks
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05 Apr 07 1:11 am

 HI Mark and Promo and Sean. I really appreciate all this good advice. I took promo's advice on the blending. Actually, I had this blended fine when the site had a white background, but then changed it to gray and forgot about changing the ads. I know that seems strange, but I'm blind, so the color thing just slipped my mind for a bit there. Now I've gone and changed the background again, this time to a light sky blue. I remember from my seeing days as a child that that color always looked pretty soothing. A few more hex codes, a div tag, some help from my wife, and poof, brand new site. It's slow going because none of the web page wysiwyg packages out there work very well with my adaptive technology, so I've had to code it all by hand. I will be reducing the amount of links at the bottom, but there are a few I have to leave in because of reciprocal linking. I make sure all the links that I won't be making money from open in a new window. One more quick question. My wife found the pictures, and our original intent was to put fewer pics on the site, maybe just one or two, no more than that, but the pics had to be made much smaller because of their low resolution, so we had to add more pics. The site we got the pics from did give the option of buying high res versions, but they were all about $100.00 or more. Does anyone know of a place where we can get decent high res pics without spending that much? Thank you again everyone. :D
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Tony Hernandez Glad2BHome
 
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sean06
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05 Apr 07 1:21 am

 I think you can be excused for getting the colours wrong if you can't see them :)

Thats a great effort. For photos, istockphoto.com is about $2 a pic and sxc.hu is free although the quality isn't always the same.

And your site isn't banned or anything. If you remove the . at the end of .com, it comes up as white bar. So no problems there :)

Keep up the good work.
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www.SixDayWeekend.com
Free Training Videos reveal how I make 6 figures while travelling the world
 
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chatyak86
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05 Apr 07 1:23 am
MarkLing wrote:A gray bar where your PR should be in the Google toolbar simply means that your page hasn't been indexed by Google yet. It doesn't mean you're banned, barred or anything else. If you get a link to your site from another site, this bar will probably change to a white bar.


Interesting... I didn't know that...
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tonyspeaks
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05 Apr 07 1:42 am
sean06 wrote:I think you can be excused for getting the colours wrong if you can't see them :)

Thats a great effort. For photos, istockphoto.com is about $2 a pic and sxc.hu is free although the quality isn't always the same.

And your site isn't banned or anything. If you remove the . at the end of .com, it comes up as white bar. So no problems there :)

Keep up the good work.


I'm just grateful to folks who have put hexcodes out there on the net. They make things a billion times easier. Thank you for the picture sites.
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Tony Hernandez Glad2BHome
 
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promocode
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05 Apr 07 2:33 am

 Hey Tony,

Just took another peek at your site and the color of you adsense background looks great. Don't forget to test different colors for the text and links once you get traffic.

Two more things come to mind:
1) There is a line between your first adsense banner and the title of your article, if you can eliminate that it would be great. It's never a good idea to segregate your adsense from your content.

2) I like that you've added an adsense block within your article. You may find you'll get better results if you move it higher up, like besides your subheading "Styles of Learning" so that it's visible without scrolling.

You're an inspiration Tony - keep up the good work!

Promo
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