After writing out the “About” page and “Aims” pages I began to try and arrange my thoughts around how to format these pages and the layout, I am trying to make it into a easy to follow day by day story about a normal persons attempt to break into IM, I’m aiming to monetise any web sites I do make to lean towards AdSense, for the simple reasons that it is simple to work with, has proven track record for paying on time and as stated in there TOS.

There are  a lot of dubious companies out there claiming all sorts of payouts, Google AdSense has been around for years and is about as safe as you can get for reputation. I will of course be using other sources of revenue, AdSense may not be right for a particular niche and other services may preform much better, its just a case of trial and error till you find the optimum media for that niche.

So the first on my list of jobs to be done is to set up this blogs layout to the way i want it, then set the actual nuts and bolts of the blog up ie plug-ins etc. I use many different plug-ins but will give a list of my main favorites.

1. Stat-press – Visitor stats, tells me everything I need to know, spiders, visitors, referrers, page views etc.
2. All in 1 SEO – Handy little add on to allow you to tweak new posts for SEO work.
3. Privacy Policy – Makes the  PP page you see on this site, keeps Google and AdSense happy.
4. Follow Me – Twitter follow me plug-in you see to the right of the screen.
5. GreetBox – Individual Greeting to new visitors based on which site they came from.
6. Sociable – Social bookmarking add on to allow visitors to easily bookmark the page from there favourite Social Site.
7. XML Sitemap – Generates a special XML site map which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog.
8. Twitter Tools – Twitters any new post, great for getting new pages indexed fast.
9. DB Backup – Backs up the database for your blog…..and that means all your posts etc.

As for the theme I have just changed the header on a standard WP Theme 10 Min’s on photoshop, I might later go on to a custom theme but so far I have always found it a pain to work on adjusting them to get them just how I want them. There are optimised themes said to generate a better CTR for AdSense and Ill take a look at some later when traffic is established and split test to see if there is any results worth looking at.

I have hosting already from previous projects so I’ve just used some spare space, I’ll be taking a more in debt look at whats around soon. So where on GoDaddy at the moment.

The aim and purpose of this blog is to track the progress I make attempting to make a living from Internet Marketing but more targeted at AdSense and AdWords but that’s not to say I won’t try other forms of affiliate income.

The About Me page gives an outline to who I am And what the goals are for this blog, it might be helpful to read that page first.

I have been researching the topic for a little over a month and have some basic ideas as to what direction I’d like to take and the way I’d like to implement them. The main purpose is to generate an income, not have the best website on the net, that being said quality original content seems to be a must, while keeping the site white-hat it won’t be strictly pure white-hat and by that it depends on your own definition of what is white/gray/black.

For those very new at this my understanding of “White-Hat” or “Black-Hat” is a name put to methods of promoting a web site (SEO) or affiliate links, again this is a personal opinion, same as whether one method is classed as Black or White will depend on your own views. My personal view of Black-Hat is that its “naughty” and could get your web site sand-boxed ( de-listed in Google ) and your AdSense account closed and since the aim here is to replace my income with a steady revenue stream from IM Black-Hat is out the window.

A very simplistic view of what needs to be sorted out now:

1. Choose topic of  Website ( Something your interested in? )
2. Research Keywords, Identify a workable niche
3. Domain Name research ( New? Old? keyword in name available, .com?)
4. Web Site Hosting (Go-Daddy, Hostgator etc)
5. Affiliate schemes Research (Reputation, Rules, Payouts, Popularity, etc)

Sounds simple ^^ but there’s a huge amount of work in just these 5 little steps, the most work is in No.2 but it is without doubt the most important one.

For this project I’m going to do 2 websites to start off with, one will be in a competitive niche and the other in a much less competitive one, a micro niche if you like. The main one is this website, AdSense and AdWords is a tuff one to get listed for but I look on this as the longer term web site, the format of this site being a blog and like a diary/journal makes it easy for me to keep it fresh with original content as 99% of what you see here will be what progress I’m making, the methods I’m using, whats working for me, whats not working etc. Because our aim is to make an income from primarily AdSense the pages should be relevant to the domain name and keywords of the site and will be mentioned in most pages naturally and not just SEO’d in every other sentence. This should be relevant and  unique content in google’s eyes which should help the site rank ok…..I hope.

Now the second site I have absolutely no Idea yet, I’ve played around at IM off and on for a few years while I had my main day job, now things have changed in my employment status it gives me the opportunity to have a go at this properly, so I’m treating it as a business, Monday to Friday 9 to 5pm minimum, now today is actually a Saturday and its a national holiday on Monday but I intend to spend some of the weekend doing some research into what the second site is to be about. I may also do some updates to this site as things pop into my head.

Update:

Just used a little online tool to check the SEO on this page, was quite pleased saying that I didn’t optimise it, just wrote what came to mind in explaining what it is I’m trying to do.

I could tweek the keywords by adding some random AdWords, Adsense text but im happy enough with the scores I got from natural writing.